So Who is Going to Win?

The next time I will be posting we may know who has one. Or we may not but may have a good idea of who will win. Maybe we will have no idea, maybe we wont until as late as January 20 for reasons previously mentioned. Do we have an idea of who is going to win at the moment? The polls seem to think so.

Polls, a controversial subject as their are many different kinds of polls, polls from different sources, and polls of different areas. There are multiple different kinds of polls so lets begin there.

Main Types of Polls

• An opinion poll is one of the most common polls given out through different forms of media. These polls can be given through phone interviews, surveys, SMS, etc. They are designed to survey the opinion of multiple topics of a general population.
• Some polls that are used by a campaign are benchmark polls, bushfire polls and a tracking poll .  These are used to track how much money a campaign will need to spend and how completive the race is. Benchmark polls are often the first set of polls released after a candidate chooses to enter the race. Bushfire polls are then sets of polls released between the benchmark and tracking polls. These are polls to see what messages are most popular and where they need to spend more money. Tracking polls are rolling polls which means they are constantly being updated and discard older data.
• Entrance and exit polls are polls that are taken at the actual polling locations. Entrance polls are taken at the door before one comes in to vote. Exit polls are taken as voters… well exit the voting place. These two polls have the lowest margin of error as they are taken at the polling place and are used by news outlets to track how an election is going.

Margin of Error

The margin of error is a statistical term to calculate how many percentage points your results will differ from the real value of a population. The margin of error is a part of polls that many seem to forget about. Usually in the bottom of a poll you will see a listed margin of error.

Here is an example poll here ^ you can notice where the margin of error is located. This means from their calculations that the results will only very by +2.5 percentage points or -2.5 percentage points.

Research from Pew Research Center has shown that actually the margin of error is typically double of what they report. They use a smaller number of usually 3 to make their poll seem more accurate. This shows that most polls pre-election are not as accurate at predicting the winner. This is part of the reason that explains Hilary’s loss in 2016, despite the polls giving her a large lead. When look at the polls take it with a grain of salt and make sure to observe this number and then double it. If a candidate has a lead larger than double the margin of error it would be safe to assume they will win that given population.

It is also important to keep in mind swing states. When look at polls it will be more beneficial to look at the polls of key states instead of the national poll. The national poll can predict the popular vote, but as we saw in 2016 this does not decide an election. The electoral college is what counts so make sure to check if the candidate you want has a lead in key states.

The Marist Poll is often regarded as a trustworthy poll: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/#sthash.Yt4BKPpw.dpbs