Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Some things I've learned over the years about polls.

Some things I've learned over the years about polls.

1) In every election 40% vote dem, 40% vote rep. The elections are always decided by that 20% that's left. If a poll shows that candidate A has 42% and candidate B has 54% then taking away the 40% and multiplying the remainder by 5 gives you the actual difference of votes they will actually get. 42-40=2*5=10% and 54-40=14*5=70% So we see that A is just 10% and B is 70%.

2) Every published poll is not reliable up until the last week before the vote. I think there are several reasons for this. a) Used to get people out to vote. b) Used to discourage people from voting. c) Raising money. Etc. In all cases the polling is skewed to get the desired result and because they can't be disproved the pollsters have no qualms about lying. But the pollsters don't want to be seen as wrong so during the last week they start telling the truth so they can be close to the actual vote. That's when you'll see, "surges" in the polls. Lesson, ignore the polls until the last week.

I've learned other things, mostly that their seem to be far too many dems in DC but what can you do, they keep breeding.