How did polls miss the presidential election result so badly?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/09/why-polling-faces-a-moment-of-reckoning-after-the-2016-election/
This is a piece of news that comments on the 2016 Presidential election and why all the pollsters are so far off the actual result. This is the second time straight that polls have made the wrong prediction, and even worse than the first time, they missed it by a huge margin. The primary issue gets down to the fact that pollster’s prediction as to who would be voting is wrong. People who claim to vote for one candidate might not have voted or even have voted for another candidate. On the other hand, people who seem to be indifferent about the election have in fact voted. Both traditional polling methods(phone calls) and internet polling actually have the same problem, which is something analysts need to work on in the future, as as what Cohen says in the interview “Quality, not quantity, is at issue here. That needs to be our focus.”
The problem that emerges from this election makes me think about information cascades that we have learnt in class as well as the problem of if people are actually telling the truth or not. One obvious thing to notice about is that most Hillary supporters are very outspoken,especially on social media like Facebook. Trump supporters, although equal, if not more, in numbers, are very quiet. It is mostly informational effects that start the cascade because if a Hillary supporter sees a lot of supportive posts for Hillary on Facebook, it is likely for that person to post similar things to conform to the behavior of others. On the flip side, if a Trump supporter sees a lot of negative comments about supporting Trump, it is hard for the person to go against the “public opinion” and expresses their own view. Because of the “conforming to others’ behaviors” trend, we don’t get to hear a lot of opinions from Trump supporters, but they do exist by a large number. It is why the election result is so surprising.