NY-23 Reality Check

jillian

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Apr 4, 2006
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The Other Side of Paradise
And once again, Nate Silver calls it like it is...

Reality Check: NY-23 Poll May Seek to Alter, Not Reflect, Reality
by Nate Silver @ 4:29 PM
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There's a lot of buzz in the conservative blogosphere today about a new poll put out by the Club For Growth which shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman leading both Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava in the special Congressional election in New York's 23rd Congressional District. The poll shows Hoffman at 31 percent, Owens at 27 percent, Scozzafava at 20 percent, and 22 percent undecided.

It's a bit disturbing how credulously the conservative blogs, most of whom are rooting for Hoffman, are taking this poll. Here are few of the concerns that a more critical observer might ask about it:

-- The Club for Growth endorsed Hoffman and just last week threw $300,000 into the race on his behalf.
-- The sample size is tiny (300 people).
-- The pollster that Club for Growth is using, Basswood Research -- I'm sure does perfectly good work for its clients -- but is not that well known** and is therefore not taking too much reputational risk with this poll. (** I'm told that Basswood does in fact do a decent amount of work for Republican candidates like Tom Coburn and Mark Sanford.)
-- The number of undecideds in the poll -- 22 percent -- is unusual for a poll just eight days out from an election and is higher than what the public polls show.
-- The poll was conducted entirely over the weekend. Although Sunday is a fairly good polling day, Saturdays are not.
-- The narrative that Club for Growth constructs around the poll is that Hoffman is taking votes from Scozzafava, but the poll also shows the Democrat Owens polling quite a bit lower than he does in the public polls. It seems unlikely that Owens voters are defecting to Hoffman. Rather, if Scozzafava's support is indeed collapsing, I'd expect Owens to be picking up some of that support in addition to Hoffman.
-- The poll was released at a time when the NRCC, which has endorsed Scozzafava, is defending its position by citing the polling evidence, and so the incentive to put out some contrary evidence to alter the inflection of the media narrative is quite high.
-- The poll shows that 59 percent of so-called likely voters have no opinion (or haven't heard of) Owens, 48 percent have no opinion of Scozzafava, and 56 percent have no opinion of Hoffman.
-- Only 14 percent of the likely voters in this poll are age 40 or under, as compared with about 40 percent in the Research 2000 poll.
-- Previous polls put out by Basswood Research and the Club for Growth in this race featured highly leading question wording, although that does not appear to be the case here.

Are any of these red flags, unto themselves? No, just a lot of yellow. To be clear, this is very probably not a case, a la Strategic Vision, where the numbers were simply fabricated. But there's an awful lot that a pollster can do short of making up numbers -- asking leading questions, applying implausible likely voter models or demographic weightings, selecting an unorthodox sample frame, etc. -- to produce a result that fits its desired narrative.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Reality Check: NY-23 Poll May Seek to Alter, Not Reflect, Reality
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.

We will see on Tuesday
 
I think it's Blumenthal on pollster.com that does a rebuttal of this, FYI in the interests of fairness,

keep in mind that in 2006 Karl Rove confidently claimed that HIS pollsters were telling him that the Republicans weren't going to lose the House.
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.

A pollster's methodology is not fair game??
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.
:lol:
All These Polls Are Meaningless
December 4, 2007
RUSH: Folks, I really would caution you on paying attention to these daily polls and trying to take a lot of out of them, because they're meaningless. Yes. You heard me right, Mr. Snerdley! These polls are meaningless.
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.

I'm rooting for Hoffman, but call a spade a spade. the article Jillian posted didn't just put holes in the poll, it blew the poll away!
 
These bogus polls serve a purpose in trying to convince voters that the tide has turned.
Nobody bothers to refute once the election is over
 
The latest poll on this is from Daily Kos, and has Owens leading.

btw, their debate yesterday is online at WSYR Syracuse if anyone cares.
 
Yes but what if Hoffman does win? Will Nate and his gang ever come back and say that these pollsters were correct and that they themselves were wrong? They might but i wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that. Hmm?
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.
:lol:
All These Polls Are Meaningless
December 4, 2007
RUSH: Folks, I really would caution you on paying attention to these daily polls and trying to take a lot of out of them, because they're meaningless. Yes. You heard me right, Mr. Snerdley! These polls are meaningless.

Yeah, except Rush cites polls all the time.
 
No this is just more of that killing the messenger if you don't like the message stuff. Kind of like this White House declaring War against anyone in the Press who dare to criticize them. Polls are often wrong but they are also often correct. Attacking pollsters has become a common tactic for all those who don't like results of particular polls. This just seems like another classic example of those kinds of tactics. Just looks like Nate Silver doesn't like the results of this particular poll. Nothing more,nothing less.
:lol:
All These Polls Are Meaningless
December 4, 2007
RUSH: Folks, I really would caution you on paying attention to these daily polls and trying to take a lot of out of them, because they're meaningless. Yes. You heard me right, Mr. Snerdley! These polls are meaningless.

Yeah, except Rush cites polls all the time.
Well of course, he's America's Hypocrite.
 
If Hoffman does win and Nate apologizes for being wrong,i pledge to come back here and apologize for being wrong about Nate not apologizing for being wrong. If Hoffman doesn't win,i also pledge to come back here and apologize to Nate for him being right and these pollsters being wrong. Now will Nate make that same kind of pledge? Hmm?
 
Last edited:
And once again, Nate Silver calls it like it is...

Reality Check: NY-23 Poll May Seek to Alter, Not Reflect, Reality
by Nate Silver @ 4:29 PM
Share This Content
There's a lot of buzz in the conservative blogosphere today about a new poll put out by the Club For Growth which shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman leading both Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dede Scozzafava in the special Congressional election in New York's 23rd Congressional District. The poll shows Hoffman at 31 percent, Owens at 27 percent, Scozzafava at 20 percent, and 22 percent undecided.

It's a bit disturbing how credulously the conservative blogs, most of whom are rooting for Hoffman, are taking this poll. Here are few of the concerns that a more critical observer might ask about it:

-- The Club for Growth endorsed Hoffman and just last week threw $300,000 into the race on his behalf.
-- The sample size is tiny (300 people).
-- The pollster that Club for Growth is using, Basswood Research -- I'm sure does perfectly good work for its clients -- but is not that well known** and is therefore not taking too much reputational risk with this poll. (** I'm told that Basswood does in fact do a decent amount of work for Republican candidates like Tom Coburn and Mark Sanford.)
-- The number of undecideds in the poll -- 22 percent -- is unusual for a poll just eight days out from an election and is higher than what the public polls show.
-- The poll was conducted entirely over the weekend. Although Sunday is a fairly good polling day, Saturdays are not.
-- The narrative that Club for Growth constructs around the poll is that Hoffman is taking votes from Scozzafava, but the poll also shows the Democrat Owens polling quite a bit lower than he does in the public polls. It seems unlikely that Owens voters are defecting to Hoffman. Rather, if Scozzafava's support is indeed collapsing, I'd expect Owens to be picking up some of that support in addition to Hoffman.
-- The poll was released at a time when the NRCC, which has endorsed Scozzafava, is defending its position by citing the polling evidence, and so the incentive to put out some contrary evidence to alter the inflection of the media narrative is quite high.
-- The poll shows that 59 percent of so-called likely voters have no opinion (or haven't heard of) Owens, 48 percent have no opinion of Scozzafava, and 56 percent have no opinion of Hoffman.
-- Only 14 percent of the likely voters in this poll are age 40 or under, as compared with about 40 percent in the Research 2000 poll.
-- Previous polls put out by Basswood Research and the Club for Growth in this race featured highly leading question wording, although that does not appear to be the case here.

Are any of these red flags, unto themselves? No, just a lot of yellow. To be clear, this is very probably not a case, a la Strategic Vision, where the numbers were simply fabricated. But there's an awful lot that a pollster can do short of making up numbers -- asking leading questions, applying implausible likely voter models or demographic weightings, selecting an unorthodox sample frame, etc. -- to produce a result that fits its desired narrative.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Reality Check: NY-23 Poll May Seek to Alter, Not Reflect, Reality

There was a second poll that showed a similar result, and a Daily Kos poll that showed a virtual dead heat.

Get up to speed Jill...
 
If Hoffman does win and Nate apologizes for being wrong,i pledge to come back here and apologize for being wrong about Nate not apologizing for being wrong. If Hoffman doesn't win,i also pledge to come back here and apologize to Nate for him being right and these pollsters being wrong. Now will Nate make that same kind of pledge? Hmm?

Why would he be wrong? A poll taken 9 or 10 days before an election isn't meant to predict where people will be 9 or 10 days later.
 
His analysis was that this poll was not credible or correct. So if Hoffman does win i expect Nate and his gang to come back and apologize to these pollsters. That would be the honorable thing to do. Just sayin. :)
 
Nate is nearly never wrong. He's good on his maths.....really good. 535 was amazing during the presidential race.

Hoffman's a dweeb. He doesn't even live in the district.
 
If you're going to impugn the integrity of others,the least you could do is come back and apologize if you're proven wrong. I don't mind questioning the numbers but he goes even further by stating that these pollsters are not credible. I think that's pretty lame. Btw,i'm not saying that Hoffman is going to win and i don't think that poll stated that either. Questioning one's integrity really is a whole other issue in my opinion. I wonder if Nate enjoys people questioning his credibility? Hmm?
 
Nate's credibility has never been questioned. He assesses polls and their margins of error and the manner in which they were taken. He's a pure math/statistics geek. He doesn't have opinions in the sense that you are suggesting, he has mathematical probabilities with judgements based on variables.
 

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