r/neoliberal • u/BastianMobile NATO • Nov 17 '24

Pollster Ann Selzer ending election polling, moving 'to other ventures and opportunities' News (US)

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2024/11/17/ann-selzer-conducts-iowa-poll-ending-election-polling-moving-to-other-opportunities/76334909007/
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u/eetsumkaus Nov 17 '24

In what way was it cooked though?

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u/Okbuddyliberals Nov 17 '24

It was off by 17 points from the IRL results, and indicated a result for Harris that would have been unrealistic, given current political alignments, for even the most wildly optimistic Harris results. With the Biden coalition, Harris wouldn't have won Iowa even with swings that allowed her to win an Obama 2008 level win nationally. That was a result that just wasn't remotely believable

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u/eetsumkaus Nov 17 '24

Samples are off sometimes, it happens. What I'm asking is if you saw something in her methodology to say she "cooked" it, or crosstabs to imply she wasn't honest about her reporting?

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u/Okbuddyliberals Nov 17 '24

I didn't say she was dishonest or cooked the books, just that the poll was fucked and clearly not reliable or something that should have been trusted at all

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u/eetsumkaus Nov 17 '24

Oh I see. I still don't think it was necessarily a "bad" poll though. Outliers are part of polling after all.

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u/Okbuddyliberals Nov 17 '24

Outliers are bad polls, we should be able to look at a poll that was so clearly an outlier and recognize that such a big outlier is a garbage poll, rather than taking all that blind hope from it that so many did

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u/eetsumkaus Nov 17 '24

No, outliers are outliers. Even with perfect methodology, you have a chance of getting something completely out there about 1/7 times. But we don't know when that is.

Just for reference, Selzer was ALSO an outlier the other times she was right.