A better use of polls
People usually consume polls in a passive manner, as they would a sports game or a television program. In Friday’s Washington Post I argue (gift link) that in a close election year, we can use polls to guide our canvassing and donations – using Bayesian reasoning to estimate where we can make the most difference.
The Electoral Innovation Lab has created a detailed resource to help you with this! See VoteMaximizer.org. Also, feel free to support our efforts!
Open thread.
Topics:
Dr. Wang–
Might you take a moment to opine on the recent cliff-dive the electoral college median result has performed in the last few days. Other sites note / claim that there has been a slew of biased or intentionally misleading polls over the last week, basically designed to sow uncertainty and plant seeds for future allegations of rigging. No one (that I have seen, anyway) has produced an actual list of such polls and their funders, but it has been discussed as a truth even in reputable / mainstream sites. Do you note such a process in your incoming data, or account for biases in polls, or is it more of an automatic throw-it-in-the-hopper process ?
Thank you.
–Curious John