Non-Gallup/Rasmussen tracking polls thread

[Grad Students are the Worst]

BRADLEY EFFECT MAP


MAP I MADE BY FLIPPING A COIN


Not sure about map 1, seems kinda random, but I definitely see some major Bradley Effect going on in map 2.  Must be a racist quarter.

[Iosif]

LOL J. J. is stupid.

[J. J.]

Here is what occurred:

I looked at the states where there was a strong undercounting trend for one candidate (only) with at least one poll undercounting out of the MOE:

McCain:  UT, AZ*, KY*, GA*, NH*, IA*, ND, AK*

Obama:  MA, VT, PA*, IN?*, NM*, CO*, NV*, MI*

For these, I have not included polls were both candidates were underpolled outside of the MOE on the same poll.

Note that the three in red had a high Hispanic population of Mexican origin.

Indiana had two for Obama, but it was Zogby and he might have added the samples from a previous poll. 

I looked at states that had some of these characteristics, either both candidates had a poll outside of the MOE but one strongly underpolled or there was not strong underpolling.

McCain:  MN, OH
Obama:  None

MN, Obama had one poll out of MOE, but McCain had two and underpolled, OH, McCain had two polls out of MOE, but Obama still tended to underpoll more.


Weak, but possible correlation:

McCain:  FL*, NY, DE,

In FL, Obama barely underpolled more than McCain, but one of McCain had one out of the MOE.

Obama:   VA, WA, ME*

VA, Obama  underpolled in one poll outside of MOE, but McCain underpolled more.  In WA, both underpolled but one of Obama's polls was outside of the MOE

*one poll only.

NJ was simply a mess, but the last poll was dead on.

Note this, all the strong undercounted states, McCains were in states that the Republicans won at least once in the last two cycles.  Obama's were split in that regard.  CO, NV, and NM have a large Hispanic segment and the "McCain Effect" might be that a white candidate will underpoll in a race against a black candidate with Hispanic voters of Mexican origins.

Even in the stronger correlation states, there tended to be more polls with McCain out of the MOE than Obama.

In short, Bradley is still there in some places, but it is weakening.  There may be an effect with Hispanic voters.

[memphis]

Cuz there aren't many Hispanics in Arizona, Utah, or Georgia..... Seriously, man. Let it go.

[Lunar]

McCain:  UT, AZ*, KY*, GA*, NH*, IA*, ND, AK*

Obama:  MA, VT, PA*, IN?*, NM*, CO*, NV*, MI*

Ok I brought myself to read your posts again.

Do you notice that the odds of Obama underpolling in any given state are completely equal to McCain?  Despite the fact that McCain is white?  You cited an equal number of outlier cases for both candidates.  Why can McCain underpoll for non-racial reasons but not Obama?  Why can Gore or Bush underpoll or overpoll for non-racial reasons?  Why are Obama's reasons racial!!

Is it possible that this is just statistical error or methodological error THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VOTERS LYING?

AHHOGHOHOIGOHIEHOIFHOEOHFHOEWOHFE

IT'S A COINFLIP. A NON-RACIAL COINFLIP




STOP CHERRYPICKING

[Beet]

The real question here is, are 950 heads out of 1000 is statistically significant?

[So the Heroes Fall]

So Alaska and North Dakota have Bradley Effects but no state in the south except Georgia does. And the Bradley Effect has magically vanished in the three states it supposedly appeared in in 2006. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. This is clearly the Bradley Effect as there is no other possible explanation for polls being wrong.

[Tender Branson]

So Alaska and North Dakota have Bradley Effects but no state in the south except Georgia does. And the Bradley Effect has magically vanished in the three states it supposedly appeared in in 2006. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. This is clearly the Bradley Effect as there is no other possible explanation for polls being wrong.

There was a Bradley-Effect in almost every Southern State. Take a look at this:

http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=88407.0

I'll do a full analysis in the coming weeks, when I have some time.

For example there was no Bradley-Effect in California, maybe a Latino-Effect, because the very accurate SUSA poll showed Latinos at 22% of the electorate, but they only made up 18% and they supported Obama by a slimmer margin than the poll predicted. But Whites supported Obama exactly by the margin the poll predicted.

[Lunar]

So Alaska and North Dakota have Bradley Effects but no state in the south except Georgia does. And the Bradley Effect has magically vanished in the three states it supposedly appeared in in 2006. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. This is clearly the Bradley Effect as there is no other possible explanation for polls being wrong.

There was a Bradley-Effect in almost every Southern State. Take a look at this:

http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=88407.0

I'll do a full analysis in the coming weeks, when I have some time.

For example there was no Bradley-Effect in California, maybe a Latino-Effect, because the very accurate SUSA poll showed Latinos at 22% of the electorate, but they only made up 18% and they supported Obama by a slimmer margin than the poll predicted. But Whites supported Obama exactly by the margin the poll predicted.

First off, many polls make weighting errors!!!!!!!!


Yes, that is one aspect of the Bradley Effect insofar as undecideds break strongly for the non-white candidate?  But the better question is if white undecideds in the South broke strongly for Bush in 2004!  If we are to assume this has to do with race (which any assumption of the Bradley Effect involves), then we need to compare this to a white non-Southern, recent candidate.  What did they do in 2004? 

If we can acknowledge that undecided voters often break one way or the other, then we can acknowledge that this sometimes happens because of reasons not associated with race.  If undecided voters broke towards Bill Clinton in a few states, there's at least fifty million ways to rationalize that without resorting to foolish logic.  But J.J. chooses to emphasize race as the driving variable here despite all evidence and pre-election predictions (which were based upon logical demographics -like Pennsylvania).  One asks why Obama’s has to do with race and if normal irregularities combined with standard state-associated traditional undecided-breaking schemes can explain everything within statistical significance.

And I’m not sure if the B.E. inherently includes an exception clause that says “oh but if blacks turn out it doesn’t happen.”  That’s sort of an added on claim.

And how can you separate Obama’s race from his message?!?!  His message of change, of being different?




*And of course remember that error increases if we're using exit polls versus normal polls and it increases if we're isolating crosstabs.

[So the Heroes Fall]

And those crosstabs have very high MoEs, usually double digits.

[Lunar]

Might I add that the scientific method involves making predictions and then testing them!

In order to be scientific, one cannot simply look backwards and cherrypick data that disagrees with the original hypothesis to prove the premise behind the original hypothesis true (people lying to pollsters).  If one starts out pre-election stating that Obama should actually result significantly (he'll actually end up with 1.5%?)  below his polled result for X and Y and Z reasons and those all are proven wrong by the actual result... to go into a less-polled state (out of 50 - bound to be some outliers!!!!) and claim that oh, you were wrong initially but your argument actually applies here and here is so intellectually dishonest it's mindblowing.

[Tender Branson]

And those crosstabs have very high MoEs, usually double digits.

Not the "White" crosstab. Let's examine Alabama.

The latest SUSA poll surveyed 650LV in the state, of which 74% were White. The MoE for the overall sample was 3.8%, so the White-only sample probably had a MoE of about 4.5-5.0%.

The poll showed among Whites: McCain 78%, Obama 19%, Others 2%, Undecided 1%

The exit poll (with a lower MoE) showed: McCain 88% (+10), Obama 10% (-9), Others 2%

This cannot be explained with weighting or MoE-movement. AL-Whites lied.

[Lunar]

And those crosstabs have very high MoEs, usually double digits.

Not the "White" crosstab. Let's examine Alabama.

The latest SUSA poll surveyed 650LV in the state, of which 74% were White. The MoE for the overall sample was 3.8%, so the White-only sample probably had a MoE of about 4.5-5.0%.

The poll showed among Whites: McCain 78%, Obama 19%, Others 2%, Undecided 1%

The exit poll (with a lower MoE) showed: McCain 88% (+10), Obama 10% (-9), Others 2%

This cannot be explained with weighting or MoE-movement. AL-Whites lied.

How much did they lie for Kerry?  And MoE and overall pollster bias pls for both.

[Nym90]

Bottom line on the Bradley effect is even if we could prove it has existed for every black candidate (which of course we can't) the sample size would still be too small to prove it was because of race as opposed to the 50 million other reasons why polls can be wrong. We'll have to wait until there's been several hundred black candidates all with sufficient polling data on their elections before we can reach any definitive conclusions one way or another.

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

[Beet]

Poor Tom Bradley! The first African- American mayor of Los Angeles, one of the city's longest-serving mayors, and who presided over its period of greatest growth. But instead of being known for that he is known for being the victim of some amorphous effect which may not even exist.

[So the Heroes Fall]

J. J.'s new favorite logical fallacy: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/questionable-cause.html

To compare: I have a magical T-shirt. It prevents tiger attacks. I know it works because I've never been attacked by a tiger while wearing it.

[J. J.]

Bottom line on the Bradley effect is even if we could prove it has existed for every black candidate (which of course we can't) the sample size would still be too small to prove it was because of race as opposed to the 50 million other reasons why polls can be wrong. We'll have to wait until there's been several hundred black candidates all with sufficient polling data on their elections before we can reach any definitive conclusions one way or another.

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

Actually, that is not quite the case.  Wilder underpolled, but won.

[I left.]

Bottom line on the Bradley effect is even if we could prove it has existed for every black candidate (which of course we can't) the sample size would still be too small to prove it was because of race as opposed to the 50 million other reasons why polls can be wrong. We'll have to wait until there's been several hundred black candidates all with sufficient polling data on their elections before we can reach any definitive conclusions one way or another.

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

Actually, that is not quite the case.  Wilder underpolled, but won.

what does that have to do with the theory?

[So the Heroes Fall]

Bottom line on the Bradley effect is even if we could prove it has existed for every black candidate (which of course we can't) the sample size would still be too small to prove it was because of race as opposed to the 50 million other reasons why polls can be wrong. We'll have to wait until there's been several hundred black candidates all with sufficient polling data on their elections before we can reach any definitive conclusions one way or another.

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

Actually, that is not quite the case.  Wilder underpolled, but won.

what does that have to do with the theory?

Nothing. He's just doing his standard pattern of ignoring all the counter-arguments he knows he can't rebut, so he responds to one of the less expansive ones with a red herring, and still doesn't offer any response.

[J. J.]

Bottom line on the Bradley effect is even if we could prove it has existed for every black candidate (which of course we can't) the sample size would still be too small to prove it was because of race as opposed to the 50 million other reasons why polls can be wrong. We'll have to wait until there's been several hundred black candidates all with sufficient polling data on their elections before we can reach any definitive conclusions one way or another.

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

Actually, that is not quite the case.  Wilder underpolled, but won.

what does that have to do with the theory?

It's Nym's pseudo-conspiracy theory that the Bradley Effect was invented to discourage black people from running for office.  Wilder won, but underpolled.

The interesting point is what where a traditional Bradley Effect occurred, it looks it occurred with Republicans, people who generally be predisposed not to vote for a Democratic nominee in the first place.  In other words, it is a polling effect, but not a voting effect.  White Republicans voters might be less willing to be honest about race, but they still vote the same way (actually Obama tended to run better than Kerry in the several states I looked at).  In other words, race might be a factor in polling, but not in voting (at least for a Democratic nominee).

It's possible that the polling would have showed a white Doug Wilder winning by 1-2 points back in 1989, though it's impossible to know.

The other is the fairly strong underpolling for Obama in states with large population of Mexican origin.  A voter of Mexican origin (even way back) might be less willing to admit to voting for a black candidate.  There also could be a social issue/religion aspect.  The voter might be less willing to admit to voting for a pro-choice candidate (since most Mexican origin are Catholic, with an increasing sizable minority being Evangelical).

That effect will be the one to watch for in the future.  The traditional Bradley Effect may be decreasing, while this "Reverse Bradley Effect," "McCain Effect" "Mexican-American Effect" might be increasing.  And it looks like more of a voting effect than a polling effect.

[I left.]

It's Nym's pseudo-conspiracy theory that the Bradley Effect was invented to discourage black people from running for office.  Wilder won, but underpolled.

Now I don't believe in the "conspiracy theory", but the fact that Wilder managed to win has nothing to do with the theory behind it. The mere fact the he underpolled...assuming that was due to race...could be enough to scare parties enough to refrain from nominating black candidates, in theory.


As a non-related comparison, which of the following polls is better? (final result is Smith +2)

A: Smith +20
B: opponent +2

By your logic, Poll A must be more accurate, because it correctly predicted the winner.

[J. J.]

It's Nym's pseudo-conspiracy theory that the Bradley Effect was invented to discourage black people from running for office.  Wilder won, but underpolled.

Now I don't believe in the "conspiracy theory", but the fact that Wilder managed to win has nothing to do with the theory behind it. The mere fact the he underpolled...assuming that was due to race...could be enough to scare parties enough to refrain from nominating black candidates, in theory.

Nym's comment was this:

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

No, the Bradley Effect was observed, not invented.  It was also observed decreasing in 2006 (and continuing to decrease in 2008).

As a non-related comparison, which of the following polls is better? (final result is Smith +2)

A: Smith +20
B: opponent +2

By your logic, Poll A must be more accurate, because it correctly predicted the winner.

No, since I'm looking at polls that scored outside of the MOE, and states where the candidates both underpolled and overpolled.  Poll A was still bad, and that would put it well below the MOE, even if Smith won.

[Nym90]

It's Nym's pseudo-conspiracy theory that the Bradley Effect was invented to discourage black people from running for office.  Wilder won, but underpolled.

Now I don't believe in the "conspiracy theory", but the fact that Wilder managed to win has nothing to do with the theory behind it. The mere fact the he underpolled...assuming that was due to race...could be enough to scare parties enough to refrain from nominating black candidates, in theory.

Nym's comment was this:

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

No, the Bradley Effect was observed, not invented.  It was also observed decreasing in 2006 (and continuing to decrease in 2008).

As a non-related comparison, which of the following polls is better? (final result is Smith +2)

A: Smith +20
B: opponent +2

By your logic, Poll A must be more accurate, because it correctly predicted the winner.

No, since I'm looking at polls that scored outside of the MOE, and states where the candidates both underpolled and overpolled.  Poll A was still bad, and that would put it well below the MOE, even if Smith won.

Part of my point was that it isn't actually observed (in any scientific sense). The sample size is far too small to prove it exists in any scientific manner whatsoever, even if it could be proven that the relatively few black candidates with solid polling statistics to analyze in their races have consistently underpolled (of which the evidence is very mixed at best anyway).

So, given the fact that a couple black candidates underpolled, someone creates the theory that black candidates always underpoll, in the hopes of discouraging parties from nominating them. I actually was being honest in saying that I don't believe this to be true, however I don't completely discount the possibility either. It's either that or just people being highly illogical in their poll analysis in terms of ignoring sample size.

If I found 2 or 3 left handed candidates who underpolled, no one would take me seriously if I tried to claim that left handed candidates tend to underpoll. Everyone would of course understand that it was just a coincidence and wasn't meaningful.

[Stranger in a strange land]

The other is the fairly strong underpolling for Obama in states with large population of Mexican origin.  A voter of Mexican origin (even way back) might be less willing to admit to voting for a black candidate.  There also could be a social issue/religion aspect.  The voter might be less willing to admit to voting for a pro-choice candidate (since most Mexican origin are Catholic, with an increasing sizable minority being Evangelical).

That effect will be the one to watch for in the future.  The traditional Bradley Effect may be decreasing, while this "Reverse Bradley Effect," "McCain Effect" "Mexican-American Effect" might be increasing.  And it looks like more of a voting effect than a polling effect.

It could also be that pollsters undersampled Hispanics because Hispanic turnout in the past has been very low, or because they bought into the nonsense from the Hillary campaign and others about how Hispanics wouldn't vote for a black man.

[J. J.]

It's Nym's pseudo-conspiracy theory that the Bradley Effect was invented to discourage black people from running for office.  Wilder won, but underpolled.

Now I don't believe in the "conspiracy theory", but the fact that Wilder managed to win has nothing to do with the theory behind it. The mere fact the he underpolled...assuming that was due to race...could be enough to scare parties enough to refrain from nominating black candidates, in theory.

Nym's comment was this:

If I was cynical, I'd say that the people who invented the concept of a "Bradley effect" did so because they didn't want black candidates to be nominated for office by the political parties. Since I'm not, I won't say that.

No, the Bradley Effect was observed, not invented.  It was also observed decreasing in 2006 (and continuing to decrease in 2008).

As a non-related comparison, which of the following polls is better? (final result is Smith +2)

A: Smith +20
B: opponent +2

By your logic, Poll A must be more accurate, because it correctly predicted the winner.

No, since I'm looking at polls that scored outside of the MOE, and states where the candidates both underpolled and overpolled.  Poll A was still bad, and that would put it well below the MOE, even if Smith won.

Part of my point was that it isn't actually observed (in any scientific sense). The sample size is far too small to prove it exists in any scientific manner whatsoever, even if it could be proven that the relatively few black candidates with solid polling statistics to analyze in their races have consistently underpolled (of which the evidence is very mixed at best anyway).

Nym, until a few dozen black candidates run statewide, we won't adequate data.  At best he have this, and I'm looking for an effect that does not appear to be uniform nor large, which is what I expected.  I also expect the effect to change over time.

The underpolling of Mexican-American might be an under sampling but it is something that we should watch.