They had her anywhere between a 70-90% chance to win. If you predict 90% chance that something will happen, and it always happens, your prediction is wrong because you should have predicted 100%.
When I hear someone say "you can't trust the polls because they got 2016 'wrong'" they are just telling me they don't understand statistics.
And its important to note that these predictions were for the pop vote, which she did actually win, so they were actually right.
I'm not sure this is entirely true. Many polls just look at the popular vote, but most of the polls that claim "chance of winning" take into account the EC.
538 had her going into the election with a 70% chance of winning the electoral college. Nate Silver also went on multiple shows basically doing everything he could to get people to understand that meant 3 out of 10 times she loses.
No, 538 (and RCP?) actually has a rolling projection of 'real' chance to win the EC. But the chances of Hillary declined from >90% to 70% in the last week or so. When she was >90% everybody would say it looked like she was going to win, and that's what people remember.
It's been awhile since I read anything about that, but it seems like the last time I read about it, was something along: "80% of polls have Hillary projected to win", but the actual polls that they were using were all almost within the margin of error.
People in almost never speak about the margin of error when presenting a poll, especially one that's favorable to them.
f you look at the fine print, and see the margin of error percentage, then you apply the maximum amount to both people in the race, you'll see a lot of times it's a tie.
I understand the point you're making about probabilities, but we're speaking in the context of politics. Polls accurately predicted the results in 2008 and 2012. Something fundamentally changed in 2016, and the polls were off across the board.
And in reality we are talking about an weighted error difference of about 1.3/1.5 points between 2008/2012 and 2016. It's not like they got it massively wrong.
You said something changed, and then I showed how last election they were actually more accurate than in the past. And I already pointed out that they were "wrong" about 2016. So I'm not sure what your point is about this.
they are just telling me they don’t understand statistics.
You're right, but in fairness to the regular person who gets their news from regular news outlets, they were being told that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning when in reality it was more like 75%. The fact is while everyone was cocky in 2016 and nervous in 2020 I was the opposite because I followed the polls and Biden in 2020 had consistently bigger leads on Trump than Clinton in 2016 with even bigger leads in swing states. His odds of winning were much greater than hers and the likely margin of victory was much higher, but they were being underestimated by a media machine that was absolutely snakebit after going all in on congratulating HRC in June for being the first woman president with a dem supermajority in both houses of congress and flipping Texas blue.
Funny that this was in response to me and not the above poster that claimed that something happened in 2016 that made them no longer reliable.
Additionally, I suspect you don't really know what you are talking about because the issue you point out is not a statistical issue, but that they are just not a good measurement to begin with. Which isn't even a good point either because they do a pretty good job of consistently getting pretty close. In the last election the mean error was only about 4.3 and they didn't seem to favor either side.
Polls would be ok if the sample was peefectly random. However it is never fully random, and in practice they always overrepresent politically active people and underrepresent the poor.
Well Hillary didnt pay off her hookers 2 weeks before the election... like that kinda means he cheated. So Id say its a lot harder to win when you play by the rules. And Im not defending Hillary cuz I know she shafted Bernie, but what she did is not even on the same scope as what donnie rapist did/does on a daily basis.
They do and they don't. Some people see polls and say "why bother". Some people see polls and scream "GET OUT AND VOTE". They may not be indicative of the final outcome, but they are a motivating factor for a lot of people.
The first sane take in this whole thread. Modern polling is unreliable when the margins for victory in certain elections can come down to literally a single vote in some cases.
Yeah, polls are stupid and useless; only the election day poll counts...though last week some idiot on here was desperately trying to defend polling is being both dependable and correct (as long as you throw out the ones that were wrong)
You know at some point you're going to have to consider it's the moral obligation of Biden and the people supporting him sending weapons to Israel to change.
What's really sad is that you think what you're doing is going to change anyone's mind about how they're going to vote.
You can be angry at people like me accusing Joe Biden of supporting genocide but if you need our votes the choice in front of you is pretty simple. Keep defending Biden and risk democracy, or do everything you can to get Biden to compromise with us.
What’s really sad is that you think what you’re doing is going to change anyone’s mind about how they’re going to vote.
lol. My man, you asked a question, and I answered it (assuming you weren't being disingenuous). All I've done since then is call out your BS. There was no attempt to change anyone's vote. This is quite the projection.
They are more or less. It's part of why our primary system sucks. There's still downballot races though and you can and should vote for progressives to be the Democrat nominee in them. And you can cast a symbolic noncommitted for president to express displeasure with Biden.
Biden has more than half the total delegate count already pledged to him. Primaries are over, Biden has won regardless of the outcome of the remaining primaries and will be the democratic nominee in 2024.