Pollster Ann Selzer ending election polling, moving 'to other ventures and opportunities'

[u/BastianMobile]

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/11/17/ann-selzer-conducts-iowa-poll-ending-election-polling-moving-to-other-opportunities/76334909007/

[u/chillinwithmoes]

This sub was so confident about that damn poll. “Either this election will be a landslide or the best pollster alive is wrong” lol

[u/BroBeansBMS → u/chillinwithmoes]

It’s really cringe for me to look back on. I really thought that things were going to go our way.

[u/Leonflames → u/BroBeansBMS]

That's what happens when a whole subreddit disregards any negative polls as "doomerism" and uses one poll like this to predict the electoral outcome.

The only reason why this sub clinged onto this poll was due to the extremely favorable electoral prospects it was predicting for Kamala's campaign.

[u/WooStripes → u/Leonflames]

I disagree with your gloss. First, I don't think people's views of the race changed that much. My own reaction to the poll was pretty joyous, but only insofar as it changed my view from "the polling average is a toss-up but my gut says Trump, so I'm dooming" to "the polling average is a toss-up but my gut say Kamala, so I'm blooming." That's enough to flip the mood of the sub without any of us putting disproportionate faith in the poll.

Second, the poll genuinely was a good signal for Democrats—not merely a blip that we clung to after the fact. It caused significant movement on Polymarket and PredictIt, with the latter flipping to Harris. I was waiting for this poll to drop for about a day before it dropped, and I would have doomed if it showed a bad result. In other words, I was not looking for one good poll to bloom about; I was looking for whatever this poll said.

Third, this arguably made sense to do because polls were herding, and Selzer had a remarkable track record and stuck her neck out for this poll. There's a reason this poll moved betting markets.

On the DT I posted a comment pointing out all the ways this could go wrong for Democrats: (1) Even if the poll was within the margin of error, which would drop it it to +3 Trump; (2) Iowa is pretty white and it looks like minorities are shifting to Trump more than whites; (3) abortion bans are a more salient issue in Iowa then elsewhere. Still, even with all this, it was good news for Democrats.

By the way, Selzer's poll had Harris at 47%, and she ended up getting 43%—outside the margin of error, but not by much. We now know that those who remained undecided until the final week or two overwhelmingly broke for Trump. Overall, I think it was reasonable to believe that Selzer was the best pollster in the industry, understand that the poll was an outlier and statistical fluke, and still bloom on the margins.

[u/SLCer → u/WooStripes]

That's how I felt. Prior to the poll, it did seem like momentum was maybe in Trump's favor (well prior to the final week leading up to the poll). Then the final week + that poll indicated maybe the race was very gradually breaking for Harris and that she was looking at pulling out a tight win.

Alas...

[u/FearlessPark4588 → u/WooStripes]

Her margin of error for Trump would be much larger.

[u/WooStripes → u/FearlessPark4588]

Correct, but we know the late-deciding independents broke for Trump, and her poll had a significant number of people still undecided.

Margin of error captures the 95% confidence interval of the “true” number of Iowans who knew they were voting for Trump when they answered the survey. If Selzer’s error were 0, Iowa would have been +3 Kamala if and only if independents broke evenly for both candidates. They didn’t.

There are three sources of possible “error” with the Selzer poll: (1) she made mistakes; (2) random statistical error (3.3 margin on this poll so 1 in 20 times there will be a net swing of 6.6 or more); and (3) independents could break heavily for one candidate.

Here I’m saying (3) was a large source of “error”—and it’s not even really an error because it’s fully consistent with what she reported.

Totally possible (and perhaps even likely) that there was some error of the first kind, but also the results we saw can be almost fully explained by (2) and (3).

[u/Khiva → u/WooStripes]

Totally possible (and perhaps even likely) that there was some error of the first kind, but also the results we saw can be almost fully explained by (2) and (3)

Thank you for this take, because it's a bit exhausting to see people run from The election has been decided by Selzer! to OMG it was so stupid to ever believe her, what cringe.

Late deciders going heavily Trump would make a lot of sense, throwing off every poll leading to a shock result. I mean, that is literally what happened once already.