Seems like an absurd claim given it was less than 2 weeks out from the election and polls that show a side losing can often have a motivating effect on a base
Truth is that voter behavior changes more radically than pollsters admit from election to election. We can statistically model direction of "error" but we can't statistically model direction of "bias". A grade A pollster like Ann Selzer could have the perfect formula one election but that formula could be a total miss the next
The important thing that forecasters like Silver point out is that we need those pollsters to stick around and use the SAME methodology. Even if gets less useful at predicting the outcome, having a consistent signal with the same methodology can still be of immense statistical importance. And it's extremely important that we don't scare away pollsters from publishing "outlier" results. Doing so only encourages herding which is a growing problem in polling
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/ann-selzer-io...
Seems like an absurd claim given it was less than 2 weeks out from the election and polls that show a side losing can often have a motivating effect on a base
Truth is that voter behavior changes more radically than pollsters admit from election to election. We can statistically model direction of "error" but we can't statistically model direction of "bias". A grade A pollster like Ann Selzer could have the perfect formula one election but that formula could be a total miss the next
The important thing that forecasters like Silver point out is that we need those pollsters to stick around and use the SAME methodology. Even if gets less useful at predicting the outcome, having a consistent signal with the same methodology can still be of immense statistical importance. And it's extremely important that we don't scare away pollsters from publishing "outlier" results. Doing so only encourages herding which is a growing problem in polling