Because of the previous discussion on the validity of polling techniques, a
few days ago I gathered up the predictions of four polls, the first of which is
text-only and the remaining three graphs, each predicting the outcome of the
coming election as they see it now at the end of July. The four polls are at:
http://aics-research.com/election2004july.html
The first poll, as reported by the AP, gives current favor to Bush, based on
the number of electoral votes that Bush seems to clearly have in his column.
However, in this predictive poll, neither candidate has enough certain votes to
pass the 270 mark necessary to win.
This poll could easily be described as the wimpiest of the polls, and I'm not
at all certain that they have it right.
The second "poll" is not a poll at all. It's merely a historical survey by
the NY Times on how the various states have voted in past elections. It's
underlying thesis is that past inertia will dictate a similar voting pattern this
year as well.
In physical systems where inertia is high, this sort of analysis works
surprisingly well. Indeed, you can predict tomorrow's weather with a high degree of
certainty if you simply take the average (and calculate the standard
deviation) of today's and tomorrow's temperatures for the last 100 years. Tomorrow's
temperature will be very close to tomorrow's 100-year average. Your estimate can
be even improved if you take into account today's excursion from today's
average as a fraction of today's standard deviation and apply that percentage x
ca. 0.8 for tomorrow (it's presumed that today's excursion will be diminished
tomorrow as the world returns to more normal conditions).
No weathermen, no synoptic views, and no satellites are necessary for this
form of prediction. Just local conditions recorded for 100 years. And the
process works surprisingly well because of the thermal inertia inherent to the
Earth-Sun system.
However, this form of prediction has no capacity to predict the onset of
significant future excursions from the norm, such as blizzards, massive warm
fronts, hurricanes, etc., and that's the reason that it's not used. The NY TImes'
prediction suffers from the same fault.
The third poll is the one recommended by Ken Hirsch and is a complilation of
a lot of small, statewide or regional polls conducted by "professionals." This
poll has Kerry beating Bush by 310 to 217, with Tennessee being too close to
call, thus the total reported is shy 11 electoral votes.
The fourth poll is a "self-selected" AOL poll. Surprising to some, it's the
one that I trust the most. At the time of my recording the graph, 130,000 have
voted. In the states that Kerry leads, he leads decisively. In the majority of
the states in which Bush leads, he often leads by the slimest of margins,
although there are exceptions to that statement. In Alabama and Mississippi, Bush
beats Kerry by 2:1 in the popular vote.
As an aside, you can see the effect of the electoral college in the vote
totals for each state. In California, with 55 votes, 14,400 people have voted this
month, with Kerry ahead by a 2:1 margin. In South and North Dakota, each with
3 votes (the minimum possible, one for each US senator and their one US
congressman), only ca. 130 AOL members in each state voted, and in the ratio in
both was ca. 50:49 in favor of Bush. Nonetheless, those 130 people's electoral
votes weigh much more heavily than the 14,400 Californians' do [130/3 votes =
43/vote is not equal to 14,400/55 votes = 261/vote]. Indeed, at this ratio, a
Californian's vote is only worth 1/6th that of a South Dakotan's.
What makes any of these polls accurate (or not) is whether the people
participating are representative of the people most likely to vote. Although saying
anything beyond just marking these data at this point in time is fruitless, we
will nevertheless be able to look back in three months and see which of the
"polls" was the most accurate.
Wirt Atmar
* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
|
