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/Leonflames]

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/Trim345 → u/Leonflames]

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.

[u/Tartaruchus → u/Trim345]

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.

[u/ArcFault → u/Tartaruchus]

You left out the somewhat well founded accusations of herding amongst other pollsters. Still should have been considered an outlier.