General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums538 What The Hell Is Happening With These Alabama Polls?
Snip
In other words, SurveyMonkeys raw data was showing a much more purple electorate than the solid-red one that you usually get in Alabama. If that manifests in actual turnout patterns if Democrats are more likely to respond to surveys and are more likely to vote because of their greater enthusiasm Jones will probably win. If there are some shy Moore voters, however, then Moore will probably win. To make another generalization, traditional pollsters usually assume that their polls dont have partisan non-response bias, while automated polls (and some online polls such as YouGov) generally assume that they do have it, which is part of why theyre showing such different results.
Because youve read so much detail about the polls, I dont want to leave you without some characterization of the race. I still think Moore is favored, although not by much; Joness chances are probably somewhere in the same ballpark as Trumps were of winning the Electoral College last November (about 30 percent).
The reason I say that is because in a state as red as Alabama, Jones needs two things to go right for him: He needs a lopsided turnout in his favor, and he needs pretty much all of the swing voters in Alabama (and there arent all that many of them) to vote for him. Neither of these are all that implausible. But if either one goes wrong for Jones, Moore will probably win narrowly (and if both go wrong, Moore could still win in a landslide). The stakes couldnt be much higher for the candidates or for the pollsters who surveyed the race.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-hell-is-happening-with-these-alabama-polls/
still_one
(92,219 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,414 posts)Most Moore supporters aren't all that "shy" about supporting/voting for him and if they truly are "shy" about voting for him, that means that they know that they are doing something shameful- but don't care and are doing it anyway.
DeminPennswoods
(15,286 posts)on what kind of future Alabamans want for their state. If they elect Moore, as a Penn State graduate I predict he will inflict Sandusky-level damage on Alabama's already poor reputation.
marybourg
(12,633 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,670 posts)where it has been difficult to get meaningful results.
ProfessorGAC
(65,076 posts)... I don't know! What good is that?
Isn't 538's job to make sense of statistics?
I know a guy who could help!
Know him well!
He's the guy I see when I'm shaving.
If I see data that can't be used to conclude, there's a simple solution!
Say nothing!!!l!!
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)They can't both be right, but they can both be wrong. But a 19 point difference between polls* just isn't supposed to happen with what we know of statistics and sample sizes and the like. If you're that catastrophically wrong, who is going to hire you in the next election cycle?
*This assumes that both polling outfits want to keep going as polling outfits.
DeminPennswoods
(15,286 posts)the different results. Most "LV" poll results don't show the criteria they use for weighting and/or determining who they consider a likely voter. They don't generally show the results for the registered voters they contacted, then used to cull out the likely voters either.
The highly scattered poll results merely show that pollsters simply don't know who's going to turnout.
librechik
(30,674 posts)sadly, more than turnout in a place like AL.