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Notes -
There’s been a major swing in predictions markets with Harris gaining serious momentum.
this is due to a new Selzer poll. Selzer is apparently one of the most highly credible polling firms out there, with very high historical accuracy, and it shows Harris winning Iowa by several points. If true, this signifies a potential Harris blowout victory across the entire country.
Either way, it seems polling is fundamentally broken for calling elections now. Emerson is showing a 10 point lead for Trump in Iowa. All the other polls showed Trump ahead for a long time, but they either were subject to “herding” or were just massively off in the opposite direction of previous elections.
Previously I thought Trump had a pretty solid shot at winning this but I’m seriously thinking Harris has it in the bag now, against all odds.
In general it just doesn’t make sense, given that the demographics showing Harris making new headway compared to Biden are basically swapped in comparison to what you would usually suspect. Crosstab-delving within polls is generally discouraged unless they have wild results, but the issue in this cycle is that all top-line polls are being exceedingly risk-averse in anticipation that their jobs are on the line if they get another huge overwhelming ‘miss’ in getting Trump wrong after the last two elections. The only A-rated pollster (before Selzer) whose methodology isn’t just ‘herd now, answer questions after the election’ so far is AtlasIntel, and they just released a poll stating that Trump is ahead in all swing states.
I would recommend buying the dip in terms of Trump’s odds of winning Iowa obviously, but polling is just totally broken this year. Emerson releasing a poll showing the exact opposite of Selzer in Iowa today (even as Emerson has historically underestimated Trump) is just another example.
Both Emerson and Atlasintel are on watch as some of the worst herders this year. Emerson is especially bad. I'd trust Selzer over these guys just based on reputation beforehand, but especially after learning they're cooking the statistical books.
That’s not true according to Silver. https://www.natesilver.net/p/theres-more-herding-in-swing-state
Yes Emerson herds but Atlasintel he is showing as one of the higher quality ones. Also they’ve been very accurate in the past.
The list in that article isn't a list of all pollers, it's just the ones that he's accusing of herding. Atlasintel is borderline. It only looks OK relative to Emerson, where the evidence is more incontrovertible.
That’s not how Silver is framing it. He states:
By contrast, the most highly-rated polling firms like the Washington Post show much less evidence of herding. YouGov has actually had fewer close polls than you’d expect, although that’s partly because they’ve tended to be one of Harris’s best pollsters, so their surveys often gravitate toward numbers like Harris +3 rather than showing a tie.
Note that WaPo has the same odds of herding as AtlesIntel. So if Silver thinks WaPo isn’t herding, then he thinks atlasintel isn’t either.
Alright, yeah I've reread it and you're correct.
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