Comment on Does the increase in early/mail-in voting make exit polls less accurate?
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not really.
There’s have to be a population where a large amount not only voted that way, but when they voted that way it was statistically different.
Like, there may very well be something where a population like women voted differently by mail because their husbands watch.
But in my state someone is allowed to “help” so the couple in front of me the man voted, then went to the woman’s booth and “helped” her.
All while outside the cops talked to a screaming red hatter who apparently had to turn his trump shirt inside out and when he did poll workers say the multiple hand guns in his waistband.
Don’t worry tho, the poll workers let him skip the line and vote while the cops showed up and talked to him for 2 minutes before letting him drive off.
So before you think of what shady shit may happen with mail in, you need to realize plenty of shady shit happens day of too.
rdrunner@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I don’t so much mean weird situations, but perhaps just the demographics get skewed. Now that I think about it, I perhaps have a dumber question:
What the hell are exit polls are how are they conducted? The name implies they’re conducting with folks leaving the polls, but if they’re voting at home then how are they polled? This could also just simply boil down to why do we trust polls so much anyways
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah, exit polling is literally asking people as they walk out of the polls
Statistical analysis is a science.
The problem is it’s not taught in k-12 and most never learn it in college
So people don’t understand it, media represents it however they’ll get the most clicks/views.
The problem with polling isn’t polling, it’s the media’s and viewers’ misinterpreting the results that’s the problem
Tower@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Completely agree on people not understanding statistics. See: most of the polls showing a slight edge to Harris, but with a 3 to 4 point margin of error, being taken to mean that Harris had it in the bag.
SOMETHING HAPPENING 49 OUT OF 100 TIMES IS STILL VERY LIKELY!
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The craziest part is stats isn’t even complicated.
We could teach it to 6th graders and they’d do fine, same with logic classes.
The point of school isn’t teaching kids to think, it’s teaching them to follow directions, two very different things.
Just look at what we teach them.