Expectation VS Reality
It was the morning of November 7, 2016 and my friend Maddie
and I were walking to class. Maddie was a very strong Clinton supporter. I looked at Maddie and said “Congratulations
Hillary Clinton is going to win tomorrow ” and Maddie agreed. I believe that
this was the same mindset of many other Americans had. Most media and election polls supported the
idea that Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States. So
how was everyone wrong?? For that very reason polls are important. Polls
persuade American’s to vote or to stay home. Poll also gives Americans an idea
of who is going to win the election. This year we were all shocked when the
polls misled us. Who knows how significant
of an effect the skewed polls had on the election.
When searching online for something the polls determined
correctly about Trump I have a really difficult time coming up with anything.
One of the only pieces of information that the poll calculated correctly is
that Trump would win the notoriously republic states such as Kansas. When
looking at FiveThirtyEight’s article “The Polls Missed Trump. We Asked The
Pollsters Why” there is a chart that shows the swing states, what polls
predicted about them and then the actual result it is almost shocking how
consistently incorrect it is. Trump was underestimated and over preformed in
almost ever state listed. So I think it is safe to say the polls missed Trump,
they completely underestimated him and his favorability among voters. Trump was secretly stealing American's hearts one baby at a time. 
I am attributing this mistake to two different errors the
issue of administrators bias and secondly not accounting for every demographic.
For quite sometime America took Donald Trump running for president as a joke. I
don’t think anyone predicted he would make it far in the election. So perhaps
when polls were administered there was a bias towards the belief that Hillary
Clinton would win. The second limitation of polls is with leaving out
demographics. In this election I feel there was a bit of a generational divide.
A lot of the older people I spoke to were more in favor of Donald Trump opposed
to Hillary Clinton but did the polls reach the elderly? When thinking about my
Grandparents they do not use a laptop or the Internet and they do not answer
the phone if it’s an unknown number. So the chances of them being reached for
an opinion on the election is slim to none. I believe this was the case for
many elderly voters in the U.S.
It is difficult to find a way to
overcome this polling issue but I think the best way to do so is by lessening
how seriously we take the poll. At the beginning of my blog post I mentioned a
story of my friend believing Hillary Clinton would win because of the polling
system. If we just took polls as a light estimate and not so seriously they
would be ok. There is just not a scientifically sound way to run an accurate
poll of what Americans are thinking about candidates without requiring someone
from every demographic to participate. So the fix here is to just not rely on
polls so heavily and take it more as a rough estimate instead of a true
determination of the election.
If I were truly trying to figure out
how people felt about my candidate I would ask questions that lacked any sense
of biases. I would ask questions such as:
I have faith in Donald Trump’s capability as president:
Strongly Agree, Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Somewhat Disagree, Disagree
A question like this
allows for the poller to give an unbiased opinion of what they really feel
without a question persuading their answer. This will give the presidential
party an accurate account of how American’s are feeling.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/news/economy/hillary-clinton-win-forecast-moodys-analytics/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/
I agree with you that in some way polls are important, but as you said they mislead us. So wouldn’t that be an argument against the importance of polls. I mean if they are going to mislead us what is the point of them? The main reason that the majority of polls got the election wrong was because they did not take into account that a lot of Trump supporters were staying silent and not publicly supporting him. I think the American people, treating Trump like a joke was the biggest mistake we could have made. By doing this I feel like the Democratic Party got to complacent and just coasted the last couple weeks leading up to Election Day. Overall, a well-written blogpost!
ReplyDeleteI really like your point in adjusting the natural bias that may be within polling questions, the questions can really skew results in a negative way towards a candidate. I also agree that the public should put less emphasis on the importance of polling, but I think that is easier said than done. The public relies on polls in elections and I think that would be a difficult narrative to change since it has been a predictor for many influential elections (with the exception of this one).
ReplyDeleteMany Americans, including myself believed what Maddie believed. The polls mislead us, and the question you posted in your blog is a great question. I like that you have Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Agree, Neither, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, etc. When polls are just Agree or disagree, it is very Black and White, with no grey in the middle. Humans often don't think one way or another, there has to be a little reason in what you think. It vague to ask a yes or no question about how a person can perform in a job. So by adding the "somewhat" category it certainly gives people a less vague option. Also, I like the GIF. Very Funny!
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