This post is more of a question. I didn't think it was going to be so philosophical until I started thinking about it, but it does have some real ramifications. Hillary beat Bernie Sanders in South Carolina 73.5% to 26%. That's a 47.5% spread. She cleaned his clock. Her ability to turn out the minority vote seems to be very much locked in place and will have significant ramifications throughout the rest of the election cycle. Bernie's ability to win will be under significant scrutiny at this point. However, that's not the issue. The issue is that on average she was expected to win SC by 27.5% (that's from a poll composite).
So how does 27.5% turn into 47.5%? It's not surprising she won, but 20% is a pretty significant error. If it had been anywhere close it could have turned what was a comfortable lead into a loss. What happened? I am not aware of any significant event that would have changed that many people's minds in the last few days. So that just leaves the efficacy of the polls themselves. How could they be that wrong? There are a lot of factors I am sure, and I might talk about that some other time. What I want to know though is what does this mean?
What does it mean when the polls, which are the life blood of the whole primary process can be that wrong? The Republican party had five presumably A-list candidates drop out of the race before the Iowa caucuses because of poor poll performance and the subsequent lack of donors. Given the number of candidates there were to begin with even an error of 2-3% could make the difference between a contender and a drop-out. So if the polls are not accurate what are we basing our democratic process on?
I don't have any answers really. If the polls can't be trusted I don't know what would be better. Do we even need them?
No comments:
Post a Comment