Overtime Politics Thread (WARNING: Possible fraud)

[Ebsy]

How hilarious is it to read this thread in hindsight? Especially the ones defending them.

Especially considering just who was defending them.

[The Other Castro]

How hilarious is it to read this thread in hindsight? Especially the ones defending them.

Especially considering just who was defending them.

It's kind of funny how the first post is in this thread was from you though.

[Ebsy]

How hilarious is it to read this thread in hindsight? Especially the ones defending them.

Especially considering just who was defending them.

It's kind of funny how the first post is in this thread was from you though.

I was also the one that proposed putting all of this junk in the same thread. I didn't really ever defend the pollster, just posted the first poll before we knew anything about them. I didn't think they would churn out 3+ obviously fraudulent polls a week.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

[emailking]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Does it matter? The crosstabs proved the numbers were made up. It was way worse than what Silver used to take down Strategic Vision.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

[BundouYMB]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

I mean, a fake pollster *should* do better than quite a few real pollsters assuming they simply put out polls that are close the current polling average. Assuming that you did that, you'll always do better than whoever was on the "wrong" side of the average. I think one of the things that got people initially sniffing around Research 2000 was that their polls were <i>never</i> "out there." In fact, they virtually all tracked extremely close to the average, or in lieu of that to whatever you'd expect according to the conventional wisdom. In real polling even slight mistakes in weighting or sampling in real polls have the potential to produce wildly incorrect results, so it's expected for there to be occasional junkers (especially given the generally low standard of work of all American pollsters, but I digress.)

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

I mean, a fake pollster *should* do better than quite a few real pollsters assuming they simply put out polls that are close the current polling average. Assuming that you did that, you'll always do better than whoever was on the "wrong" side of the average. I think one of the things that got people initially sniffing around Research 2000 was that their polls were <i>never</i> "out there." In fact, they virtually all tracked extremely close to the average, or in lieu of that to whatever you'd expect according to the conventional wisdom. In real polling even slight mistakes in weighting or sampling in real polls have the potential to produce wildly incorrect results, so it's expected for there to be occasional junkers (especially given the generally low standard of work of all American pollsters, but I digress.)

PPP has a history of having their the scale, so that isn't an issue limited to fake pollster.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/

[BundouYMB]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

I mean, a fake pollster *should* do better than quite a few real pollsters assuming they simply put out polls that are close the current polling average. Assuming that you did that, you'll always do better than whoever was on the "wrong" side of the average. I think one of the things that got people initially sniffing around Research 2000 was that their polls were <i>never</i> "out there." In fact, they virtually all tracked extremely close to the average, or in lieu of that to whatever you'd expect according to the conventional wisdom. In real polling even slight mistakes in weighting or sampling in real polls have the potential to produce wildly incorrect results, so it's expected for there to be occasional junkers (especially given the generally low standard of work of all American pollsters, but I digress.)

PPP has a history of having their the scale, so that isn't an issue limited to fake pollster.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/

Are you kidding me? I wrote a long reply and then it told me I was logged out when I tried to post it and I lost it. >_> Anyways, I'll just summarize what I wrote and say that while that's true there's obviously a huge difference between putting out real data, that's still completely usable to statisticians or really anyone, and putting your thumb on the scale during weighting to hedge your bets and putting out fake, made up data that's totally useless and pollutes real statistical analysis. After all, anyone can re-weight those PPP polls themselves and the result is the same as if PPP had done it. The data is still totally usable.

Also, I pointed out that the reason PPP does this is understandable and sympathetic. There's no way to reliably get a representative sample, and outliers are inevitable, especially when you poll as often as PPP does. Yet all it takes is one crazy outlier, like that Chicago Tribune poll you posted, and you get branded a bad pollster by morons who don't understand statistics (I'm not saying Chicago Tribune is a good pollster mind you -- just that one crazy result doesn't prove they're a bad one.) I mean, PPP gets their money from the candidates who hire them, and those candidates use PPP's polls at fundraisers and such to argue that their candidacies are viable. PPP can't afford to get a bad reputation from one outlier. And what they do is still good. They do a lot of polling pro bono and that's perfectly good data, even if PPP's in house weighting is bad. It's actually quite an unfortunate situation all around, and I don't think it's totally or even mostly the fault of pollsters who do this like PPP. It's mainly the fact that there's a lot of misinformation about polling out there, and it's one of those topics that everyone thinks they understand and few people actually do.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

I mean, a fake pollster *should* do better than quite a few real pollsters assuming they simply put out polls that are close the current polling average. Assuming that you did that, you'll always do better than whoever was on the "wrong" side of the average. I think one of the things that got people initially sniffing around Research 2000 was that their polls were <i>never</i> "out there." In fact, they virtually all tracked extremely close to the average, or in lieu of that to whatever you'd expect according to the conventional wisdom. In real polling even slight mistakes in weighting or sampling in real polls have the potential to produce wildly incorrect results, so it's expected for there to be occasional junkers (especially given the generally low standard of work of all American pollsters, but I digress.)

PPP has a history of having their the scale, so that isn't an issue limited to fake pollster.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/

Are you kidding me? I wrote a long reply and then it told me I was logged out when I tried to post it and I lost it. >_> Anyways, I'll just summarize what I wrote and say that while that's true there's obviously a huge difference between putting out real data, that's still completely usable to statisticians or really anyone, and putting your thumb on the scale during weighting to hedge your bets and putting out fake, made up data that's totally useless and pollutes real statistical analysis. After all, anyone can re-weight those PPP polls themselves and the result is the same as if PPP had done it. The data is still totally usable.

Also, I pointed out that the reason PPP does this is understandable and sympathetic. There's no way to reliably get a representative sample, and outliers are inevitable, especially when you poll as often as PPP does. Yet all it takes is one crazy outlier, like that Chicago Tribune poll you posted, and you get branded a bad pollster by morons who don't understand statistics (I'm not saying Chicago Tribune is a good pollster mind you -- just that one crazy result doesn't prove they're a bad one.) I mean, PPP gets their money from the candidates who hire them, and those candidates use PPP's polls at fundraisers and such to argue that their candidacies are viable. PPP can't afford to get a bad reputation from one outlier. And what they do is still good. They do a lot of polling pro bono and that's perfectly good data, even if PPP's in house weighting is bad. It's actually quite an unfortunate situation all around, and I don't think it's totally or even mostly the fault of pollsters who do this like PPP. It's mainly the fact that there's a lot of misinformation about polling out there, and it's one of those topics that everyone thinks they understand and few people actually do.

But it lowers the statistical value of a poll if it already takes into account all the recent polls.

[Mr. Morden]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Why does it matter?

Bullsh!t made up polls are bullsh!t made up polls. Even if the numbers end up being closer than others. If you look at our predictions threads some posters come close to predicting the actual results. But if they set up what they claimed was a polling company and that those predicted numbers were from polls, that doesn't mean they'd be correct or that the polls would be any less nonsense.

This was still a pure fraud and I have to laugh at anyone whoever took it seriously after all the evidence came in. What's embarrassing is Atlas was the only place where that was the case, even r/sandersforpresident quit citing it.

I don't think anyone took them seriously after Super Tuesday. It's just funny that a number of polls were much worse than some fake pollster.

I mean, a fake pollster *should* do better than quite a few real pollsters assuming they simply put out polls that are close the current polling average. Assuming that you did that, you'll always do better than whoever was on the "wrong" side of the average. I think one of the things that got people initially sniffing around Research 2000 was that their polls were <i>never</i> "out there." In fact, they virtually all tracked extremely close to the average, or in lieu of that to whatever you'd expect according to the conventional wisdom. In real polling even slight mistakes in weighting or sampling in real polls have the potential to produce wildly incorrect results, so it's expected for there to be occasional junkers (especially given the generally low standard of work of all American pollsters, but I digress.)

PPP has a history of having their the scale, so that isn't an issue limited to fake pollster.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-proof-some-pollsters-are-putting-a-thumb-on-the-scale/

Are you kidding me? I wrote a long reply and then it told me I was logged out when I tried to post it and I lost it. >_> Anyways, I'll just summarize what I wrote and say that while that's true there's obviously a huge difference between putting out real data, that's still completely usable to statisticians or really anyone, and putting your thumb on the scale during weighting to hedge your bets and putting out fake, made up data that's totally useless and pollutes real statistical analysis. After all, anyone can re-weight those PPP polls themselves and the result is the same as if PPP had done it. The data is still totally usable.

Also, I pointed out that the reason PPP does this is understandable and sympathetic. There's no way to reliably get a representative sample, and outliers are inevitable, especially when you poll as often as PPP does. Yet all it takes is one crazy outlier, like that Chicago Tribune poll you posted, and you get branded a bad pollster by morons who don't understand statistics (I'm not saying Chicago Tribune is a good pollster mind you -- just that one crazy result doesn't prove they're a bad one.) I mean, PPP gets their money from the candidates who hire them, and those candidates use PPP's polls at fundraisers and such to argue that their candidacies are viable. PPP can't afford to get a bad reputation from one outlier. And what they do is still good. They do a lot of polling pro bono and that's perfectly good data, even if PPP's in house weighting is bad. It's actually quite an unfortunate situation all around, and I don't think it's totally or even mostly the fault of pollsters who do this like PPP. It's mainly the fact that there's a lot of misinformation about polling out there, and it's one of those topics that everyone thinks they understand and few people actually do.

But it lowers the statistical value of a poll if it already takes into account all the recent polls.

Yeah, even though PPP isn't making up #s out of thin air, they are definitely engaging in some methodological shadiness, as discussed in that 538 link, as well as other criticisms from Nate Cohn, among others.  And a similar argument applies to them: The fact that they still turn out to be accurate much of the time isn't a defense.

Contrast that with, say, Ann Selzer.  Sometimes she's wrong, but the numbers are the numbers.  If she has a poll that "looks wrong", she's not going to hide it with methodological shenanigans.

[IceSpear]

Did they put out anything as inaccurate this poll?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-2016-democrat-president-primary-clinton-sanders-met-0308-20160308-story.html

Uh...yes.

Overtime Politics is the best. They were only off by 48 points in Alabama.

[Ebsy]

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

BANNED by 538.

Also their domain has expired and all trace of them swept from the internet.

[Eraserhead]

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

BANNED by 538.

Also their domain has expired and all trace of them swept from the internet.

They only banned them just now?

[Likely Voter]

Getting an F rating along with biased and crappy pollsters is still kind of a win for Overtime as those other outfits are at least nominally pollsters.  I still don't believe "Fred" ever conducted a single poll.

[Lief 🗽]

Those who entered these polls into our once beautiful database should be permanently banned IMO.