{"id":1202000,"date":"2020-08-13T13:57:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T18:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyreckoning.com\/?p=109570"},"modified":"2020-08-13T13:57:45","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T18:57:45","slug":"why-you-cant-trust-the-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1202000","title":{"rendered":"Why You Can\u2019t Trust the Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post Why You Can\u2019t Trust the Polls<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Right now Biden is trashing Trump in all the polls. Biden\u2019s leading in the national polls. He\u2019s leading in a lot of state by state polls, which are more significant. I\u2019ll explain why in a minute. And if you just count all the electoral votes, based on that, you\u2019d say \u201cBiden\u2019s going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a lot of nonsense in that sentiment. First off, national polls don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Forget national polls because we don\u2019t have national elections. We have state by state elections. Montana has an election, New York has an election, Texas has an election and so forth. A candidate wins so-called electors in each state. Then those electors get together in December and elect a president.<\/p>\n

So the popular vote doesn\u2019t ultimately count. Winning the popular vote doesn\u2019t matter if you don\u2019t win the electors. In fact, in 2000 and 2016, in Bush versus Gore and Hillary versus Trump, the person who was elected president lost the popular vote.<\/p>\n

Biden will get five million more popular votes in California, but you can\u2019t win California twice. You can only win it once. Meaning you just need one more vote than the other guy to win California. Well, if you have five million more votes, 4.9999 million votes are basically wasted. Again, you can\u2019t win the state twice.<\/p>\n

You only have to win Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Florida and some other places by one vote. That\u2019s where the rubber meets the road. Now Biden is ahead in those state polls. But when you deconstruct the polls, you find out that they\u2019re built in a way to favor Democrats and hurt Republicans. How do they do that?<\/p>\n

The first question to ask is, whom are you polling? Whom are you asking who they intend to vote for? And you can select all adults. Well, if you\u2019re pulling all adults, your poll is garbage because many will not vote at all.<\/p>\n

Or you can limit your poll to registered voters. That makes sense, because if you\u2019re not registered, you can\u2019t vote. But that\u2019s also a problem because 50% of registered voters don\u2019t vote. Then you have to ask, \u201cWho are the likely voters?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a subset of registered voters who voted in the last few elections and are likely to vote again. That\u2019s a much smaller group. Only if you\u2019re polling registered likely voters will you get a legitimate polling group.<\/p>\n

But you\u2019ll find that a lot of the polls don\u2019t do that. So throw away the polls that aren\u2019t focusing on the right group. And even within that group of likely voters, you have to ask, \u201cHow many Republicans am I going to ask and how many Democrats am I going to ask?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a fair question. There are more registered Democrats than there are registered Republicans. If you\u2019re trying to be accurate, you would have more Democrats in your sample.<\/p>\n

The question is, how many more? The proper skew is maybe 54% Democrat, 46% Republican, but these pollsters are all liberal so they\u2019re doing 58% Democrats, 42% Republicans. And even within that sub-group, they can include more African-Americans than whites and African-Americans vote 90% Democrat.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like tipping the boat to one side. In other words, pollsters are stacking the deck against Trump. You need to know all this to deconstruct the polling data and reverse engineer it in effect, which I do. Then you\u2019ll see that the races are actually very close despite all the headlines. But the headlines are designed to demoralize Republicans.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve actually done polling for presidential candidates, so I know how it works. Let\u2019s get a little deeper into the weeds to see how polls can be misleading\u2026<\/p>\n

For 70 years, pollsters have been asking two questions. The first question is who you\u2019re voting for. In this case your choices would be Trump or Biden. But you must then subject the answer to all the other disclaimers I just went through. But then they ask another question: Regardless of who you\u2019re voting for, who do you think is going to win?<\/p>\n

There you can get a different answer. Because someone could say, \u201cI\u2019m voting for A, but I actually think that B is going to win.\u201d So the first question is called the intention question, for whom do you intend to vote, Trump or Biden? The second question is called the expectation question, which is regardless of whom you\u2019re voting for, who do you expect to win?<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that from a data perspective, the expectation question has more information in it. Why? Because if you ask the expectation question, every person answering the poll is including a larger network of maybe 20 to a 100 friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, et cetera.<\/p>\n

So now all of a sudden your polling sample expands. It\u2019s a more accurate poll because there\u2019s more data in it. Right now, Biden is winning the intention question, where people say, \u201cI\u2019m voting for Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump is winning the expectation question. People in effect are saying, \u201cI\u2019m voting for Biden, but I think Trump\u2019s going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Importantly, the expectation question has a 78% accuracy rate. In other words, it has a better history of getting it right. Meanwhile, the intention question only has a 22% accuracy rate.<\/p>\n

And Trump\u2019s leading 55% to 45% in the all-important expectation question.<\/p>\n

So the polls, if you properly understand how to interpret them, say Trump has a slight edge. That\u2019s why you have to take the headlines with a grain of salt. I believe the election is going to be close. But seen from the important polling data, Trump has an edge. Not a huge edge, but a slight edge. Also, polls work with a lag.<\/p>\n

It could take a week or more to sift through data. So, if Trump\u2019s getting good news, which is admittedly rare, it can take 7 to 10 days for that to show up in the polls.<\/p>\n

If Trump has a good week people say, \u201cFine, but Biden\u2019s still ahead in the polls.\u201d But those polls reflect the situation a week to 10 days prior. You\u2019d have to wait a week and see if those polls say confirm what they were saying earlier.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to understand how all this actually works, which is why you can\u2019t just accept what the headlines are saying. Again, based on the deeper polling data, right now I\u2019d give Trump a slight edge. But only slight. It\u2019s going to be a close election.<\/p>\n

And the predictive models I use constantly need to be updated. Too much can change, one way or the other. So please don\u2019t put a stake in the ground based on what I\u2019m saying today. I\u2019m only telling you what would happen if the election were held today, but we got 80 days left.<\/p>\n

But get ready for a wild ride.<\/p>\n

Regards,<\/p>\n

Jim Rickards
\nfor The Daily Reckoning<\/i><\/p>\n

The post Why You Can\u2019t Trust the Polls<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post Why You Can’t Trust the Polls<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jim Rickards shows you why you can’t trust most polls, except perhaps the one that presently gives Trump the lead…<\/p>\n

The post Why You Can’t Trust the Polls<\/a> appeared first on Daily Reckoning<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2458,3724,366,4493,4548,465,4413,463],"tags":[281],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1202000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202001,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202000\/revisions\/1202001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1202000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1202000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1202000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}