LAST EDITED ON Apr-26-17 AT 08:50 AM (EDT)
 
>>actually getting your
>>hands on that sweet, sweet data is super hard.
>
>That's why I don't put any credence in election-season
>polls—whenever I'm not hanging up on those people I'm lying to
>them for the sheer sport of it, and I can't be the only one.

Oddly enough, presidential election polling (specifically that, with a "sometimes Senate races" asterisk) is considered the gold standard within the industry, and is looked upon enviously by everyone else.

This isn't to say there have not been polling failures in that regard. There have been. But for the past three or four decades presidential election polling has almost always gotten within the margin of error, and if you can do that reliably in statistics (and your confidence interval isn't something utterly ridiculous like 30%) you're basically considered a walking god.

But the reason for that is real simple: resources. Presidential election polling has enormous resources behind it, and when you have effectively unlimited money you can brute-force your sample sizes to be robust enough to survive just about anything that is thrown at them. That's the reason for the "Senate race" asterisk; high-dollar Senate races in certain states can also haul in enough resources to get very accurate.

This provokes some white-hot envy in people who don't command those kinds of resources but are expected by their clients to produce the kind of results those resources command. They're like "why can't you get me the sort of charts I see John King and Wolf Blitzer standing next to" and its like "because you didn't back a dump truck full of money up to our loading dock, jackhole, you picked our cheapest package in order to find out what people think of your barbeque sauce. It isn't useless or shoddy, but it is weaker than it would otherwise be. Jesus Christ, I have a double masters in Math and Sociology, I don't need this. You think I don't want to be waving my arms at holograms on national TV? I would love to be doing that!"

This is without even getting into the people who don't want accurate, they want the company name put to a survey report that matches their agenda so they can claim independent authority. We get that a lot. My impression is that some parts of the company comply with that request more than they should. But that's another rant.

-Merc
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