Difference between revisions of "Talk:2357: Polls vs the Street"
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Love the title text! [[User:Fwacer|Fwacer]] ([[User talk:Fwacer|talk]]) 23:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC) | Love the title text! [[User:Fwacer|Fwacer]] ([[User talk:Fwacer|talk]]) 23:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC) | ||
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| + | I Edit Conflicted with someone (2 minutes too late, after quite a bit of typing. If anyone wants to review my attempt, I'm HTML-commenting it in this gap... | ||
| + | <!-- Perhaps being prompted by the nearing of the 2020 US Presidential (and also a vote for a selection of Senatorial seats) on November 3rd, Randall is taking a poke at some attitudes to polling numbefs. | ||
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| + | Many pollsters, commentators and party-faithful have been opining upon the eventual results for some time now, with varying degrees of self-certainty and possibly even self-bias. A very common attempt to refute (other) experts is to point out that one's own experience is totally unlike theirs, so obviously ''they'' are wrong. | ||
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| + | "The man on the street" (usually Main Street, rather than Wall Street, at least figuratively) is a common epithet for the 'average' voter, reflecting the modal viewpoint of the general public. | ||
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| + | Ideally, a national poll should be properly aggregating all the views that will bring about the eventual result. One failing of the equivalent 2016 election analyses (those that turned out 'wrong') was that the mix of polled persons did not properly reflect the eventual voters. And/or too little account was made of the disproportionate influence of the result of certain constituencies. White Hat, here, may be making the mistake of limiting his mix of future voters to just those he meets on an ''actual'' street. It is unlikely that any given street holds a properly representative population. Depending on where this street is, it will probably be heavily biased for one or other candidate or party for many localised reasons. It appears White Hat's chosen street is biased against whichever viewpoint the professional pollsters are predicting. (Noting that different pollsters have their own potential biases, too, intentionally or as a result of their ultimate focus.) | ||
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| + | To amplify his personal bias, he questions the apparent information that most of those more officially polled are not where he is. From his viewpoint an overwhelming number of those he talks to on his street are local to there. Of course, the truth is that with so many other streets (lanes, highways, tracks, strips, trails, etc) out there, it is inevitable that he is wrong about this.{{Citation needed}} | ||
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| + | He also seems to have a disproportionate number of respondents enjoying "playing in traffic". It is unclear which actual polls his observations disagree with, but clearly they do. What is less clear is whether this is because he is not just "on the street" but on the ''roadway'', thus ending up avoiding talking to those who are keener to walk on the adjacent pedestrian sidewalks and instead mostly getting information about jaywalkers and similar. | ||
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| + | Finally, the titletext addresses an inherent bias insofar as participation. A big problem with pollsters is not being able to question those unwilling or unable to be polled, thus missing their possibly important attitudes. His more 'direct' experience seems to suggest that, of those who were happy enough to talk to him, most (but not quite all) ''said'' they were happy enough to talk to him. Just one out of 25 (giving a rough lower limit to his eventual sample size) may have reported that they'd be unlikely to talk to him - while talking to him.--> | ||
| + | ...I already knew I'd have to Wikilink some bits, and can see at least one typo. Maybe I'll integrate some into what's there now, myself but probably not tonight. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.241|162.158.158.241]] 00:39, 10 September 2020 (UTC) | ||
Revision as of 00:39, 10 September 2020
Love the title text! Fwacer (talk) 23:56, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
I Edit Conflicted with someone (2 minutes too late, after quite a bit of typing. If anyone wants to review my attempt, I'm HTML-commenting it in this gap... ...I already knew I'd have to Wikilink some bits, and can see at least one typo. Maybe I'll integrate some into what's there now, myself but probably not tonight. 162.158.158.241 00:39, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
