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/No1PaulKeatingfan Paul Keating Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

That destroys my theory that she did this as a morale boost for the Dems huh

496

u/chillinwithmoes Nov 17 '24

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

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u/BroBeansBMS Nov 17 '24

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

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u/Leonflames Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

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.

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u/Trim345 Effective Altruist Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

It's complicated. In 2020, Selzer's poll was much more negative for Biden than the other polls, which turned out to be accurate, which gave credence to her poll this time being right too. Also, Trump did better than all the other Iowa pollsters showed too: none of them gave him more than +9, but his actual result is +14.

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u/Tartaruchus YIMBY Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

I don’t really see how it is complicated. The fact is that Selzer is an individual pollster, like any other, and even the best pollster is statistically certain to occasionally produce outlier polls in both directions.

No matter how good Selzer’s polling history has been, this was clearly an outlier. The chances of it being right while every other poll conducted in the state, including by Selzer itself, was wrong, was exceedingly slim.

The fact that people here just outright refused to acknowledge this was entirely due to a willingness to just ignore reality in favor of a narrative that felt good.

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '24

It’s interesting how you twisted his comment so you could still be right. It wasn’t just Ann selzer it was numerous other pollsters of Iowa showing 2020 environment. None of them had him plus 14 even within the margin of error. Polling is broken and bad and more and more people should just accept it