Polling

                                                                     Family Feud

Yeah, I'll fuck up a good thing if you let me

Let me alone, Becky

A man that don't take care his family can't be rich

I'll watch Godfather, I miss that whole shit

My consciousness was Michael's common sense

I missed the karma, that came as a consequence

Niggas bustin' off through the curtains 'cause she hurtin'

Can't losin' the babies 'cause their future's uncertain

Nobody wins when the family feuds

Survey says!

One of my favorite podcasts, Planet Money, most recent episode was on polling.   As the episode highlighted, the mistakes in the Alf Landon and Tom Dewey polls were the problems of NOT being a representative sample.  Ironically, the Supreme Court will hear cases on representative samples which are being called  Affirmative Action.  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/08/affirmative-action.html

The golden age of polling was in 2012 was because not only was robo calling in polling still allowed, and caller ID was not yet ubiquitous, but also because land line phones defined geography.  Today, a cell phone's area code means nothing.  My household cut the phone cord shortly after 2012. Now not only do we have cellphones with caller ID, this has been compounded by keeping your cellphone number when you move such that the area code NO LONGER means geography.  My colleague, who has lived in Tallahassee for almost 20 years,  has a (617) Area code because he obtained the cellphone when he worked in Massachusetts.  My cell phone has my work Area Code (617), not my suburban home Area Code, (508).  My son in LA cellphone has our suburban home in Massachusetts Area Code.  He got my wife her cell phone and thus she has a LA (310) Area Code.

Phone polling was not all that is cracked up to be anyway.  Phone ownership is highly correlated with income.  Lower incomes might not have a land line.  So phone polls have always been biased against low incomes.  And replacing phone polls with internet polls?!?  Don't get me started!

And even if it did work, there is this thing called spurious correlation.  As pointed out in https://www.amazon.com/Spurious-Correlations-Tyler-Vigen/dp/0316339431, despite the fact that pool drowning deaths are well correlated with the release of Nick Cage movies, Nick Cage did not cause pool deaths.  As we say in my profession, Correlation is NOT causation.

Personally, I hope that the wisdom of crowds is wrong in the vote.  What is in your heart is not always what you show or tell the world. Sometime you are pretending. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/10/passing.html

And anyway,  polling for elections is wanting to know what  the future will be.  Push a pollster hard enough and you will find that they always wanted to be Hari Sheldon and discover psychohisotry.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QYV5GTz7c But the future is not ours to see, Que Sera, Sera. That is why we vote, even though we poll.  

But when you vote, do so for the nation. As Jay-Z said in the song, "Nobody wins when the family feuds".