Re:Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided ...
by qznc on Saturday November 07, 2020 @03:26PM
(#25018900)
What would you expect of a pollster? "Sorry, we are currently unable to provide satisfyingly accurate polls so we close shop for this election?"
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Re:Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided ...
by listenallyall on Saturday November 07, 2020 @05:06PM
(#25020016)
That's a rather defeatist attitude. Perhaps be a bit more creative in how you ask the questions? Find new ways to interact with a more diverse group of people? Take larger samples?
Further, the media could refuse to echo consistently unreliable poll results. Ultimately the media loses when people can't trust what's being reported.
Re:Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided ...
by Karrot_Kream on Saturday November 07, 2020 @07:18PM
(#25021301)
Right, but given how infrequently elections occur, how do you receive the feedback loop to iterate on your models? The reason why statisticians and ML folk like to get huge datasets is that it helps them refine their models. Elections occur every 4 years and often reflect very different political circumstances from previous races. Perhaps if we had continuous polling, then pollsters and models could become more accurate, but as it stands now, most of these models are based on historical data.