Thinking about Elections

LIKELY VOTERS = FLAWED POLLING. Polling “likely voters” is a flawed process. “Likely” and “unlikely” are probabilities, and pollsters don’t have effective methods for predicting these probabilities. It’s an error to focus on likely voters, as this article explains. Research shows that a significant percent of likely voters don’t actually vote, and a significant percent of unlikely voters in fact do vote:

…” 64 percent of those who maintained they were “definitely” going to vote did so. Only 68 percent of those who claimed they had already voted actually cast a ballot at any point. Meanwhile, 18 percent of self-reported “less likely” did turn out, as did 9 percent of those who claimed they had no intention of voting.”…

I like articles like this one because it explains something I’ve not thought about and take for granted. I’m used to a poll stating that it contacted “likely voters” so I don’t even think about it analytically; I accept it even though I know that not all polls are equal, and many are misleading. The quality of polls vary greatly depending on methodology used. Now I will take with a further grain (or truckload) of salt any polls that survey “likely voters”.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/516655-mellman-the-likely-voter-sham