Evidence for massive liberal bias in Ipsos polling of the Trump vs. Clinton match-up

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: AMERICAN THINKER

URL: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/evidence_for_massive_liberal_bias_in_ipsos_polling_of_the_trump_vs_clinton_matchup.html

by Sierra Rayne


Stepping out of reality into the rapidly expanding landfill of polling data biased against Donald Trump reveals what a disaster is taking place when it comes to surveying the public's actual opinion -- rather than the desired liberal narrative -- about the 2016 general election.

Public Policy Polling (PPP) has released yet another state poll on the Trump versus Hillary Clinton match-up, this time for Virginia. Yesterday's article examined a range of PPP's state-level polling data in the Trump v. Clinton cage match, revealing some apparently serious liberal bias. The Virginia poll just adds to the concerns.

The proverbial "tell" in these types of data sets is how respondents answered the question regarding their presidential vote in 2012. If the poll is representative of the public, the relative percentages of Obama 2012 versus Romney 2012 voters surveyed should approximate -- within reason -- how the state in question actually voted in 2012. But if there are significant deviations between the poll's composition and the 2012 results, the cause either needs to be fully explained by the pollster, or we default to the assumption of a bias.

PPP's Virginia poll, representing "one of the most important swing states in the country," claims the following:

The Presidential race in Virginia is pretty tight. Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 42-39, with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 6% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2%. In a head to head contest Clinton's lead remains 3 points at 48/45. Clinton's benefiting from Democrats in Virginia (83/8) being more unified around her than Republicans (76/5) are around Trump. But with independents Trump's up 42/29.

When asked who they voted for in the last presidential election, 50% of respondents said Obama while just 41% said Romney, for a 9% Obama (read: liberal) edge. But Obama only won the state by 3.9% in 2012, meaning there appears to be at least a 5% liberal bias in the survey composition.

Remove that bias favoring the Democratic candidate, and Clinton's lead disappears -- leaving Trump likely leading by 2% or more in Virginia, depending on the potential presence of other compounding biases in the poll.

Then there is the latest edition of Reuter's Polling Explorer from June 14, supposedly showing Clinton up by 8.5% over Trump, 39.1% to 30.6%. But of the 1,481 respondents, 642 (43.3%) are Democrats, 493 (33.3%) are Republicans, and 206 (13.9%) are Independents, with 138 (9.3%) "members of another party." A 10% bias of Democrats over Republicans is 9% above the past two-month average of actual party affiliations. Remove that liberal bias, and now the race is a statistical tie.

Even worse, when asked who they voted for in 2012, 582 (39.3%) said Obama and just 355 (24.0%) said Romney. Thus, since the national results in 2012 only had Obama ahead of Romney in the popular vote by 3.9%, we conclude this suggests a 11.4% liberal bias in the survey composition. Based on this built-in bias, it appears Trump may actually be ahead of Clinton by nearly 3% at the national level once the bias is corrected for.

Finally, there is a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday -- and conducted June 11-15 -- that claims Clinton is up 9% over Trump in the head-to-head. No demographic data was released with the poll, which should raise a red flag. With what information we can tease out of the information provided, significant flaws are apparent.

Based on the data for "All Adult Americans" surveyed on issues such as the major problems facing the nation, as well as Obama's approval rating and whether the nation is headed on the right track or not, it is clear that the ratio of Democrats:Republicans in the poll was a remarkably high 2:1! For interested readers, the general math behind such calculations is described in my previous article.

Moving on to the head-to-head match-up among registered voters, solving the available polling data with a 3-equation system solver reveals that the Trump versus Clinton poll appears to be comprised of about 46% Democrats and 36% Republicans, for a 10% Democrat bias. Yet again, remove the clear bias, and Clinton's lead is gone.

This isn't surprising, given the source. Serious concerns have been raised previously over the possible political motivations behind liberal bias in Ipsos polling.

Overall, in all polls seen to date at the state or national levels, systematic liberal bias is clear. In some cases, Democrats are being polled at apparent 2:1 ratios over Republicans, and in all situations, once the polling bias is removed, so is any Clinton lead.

[sinkspur]

This is the third poll this week that the American Thinker (an adjunct of the Trump campaign) has railed against as being biased.  If you go to the website, you will see that this Rayne fella (who has a degree in Chemistry) points out some state polls that are wrong too.

Unsurprisingly, the polls he cites are all negative to Trump.

It is a statistical fact that there are seven million more registered Democrats in the country than Republicans.  So, whatever weighting the polls are giving that number, they are ALL doing it. 

What is the likelihood that professional pollsters (who are in competition with each other) would all be wrong about the direction of the highest profile race in the country?   Even Rasmussen, who is known to give a bias to Republicans, has Trump down by 4.

I don't buy it.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Hahahahaha more unskewed polls? I thought that idiocy had pretty much been extinguished with Romney's loss? Guess not.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

This is the third poll this week that the American Thinker (an adjunct of the Trump campaign) has railed against as being biased.  If you go to the website, you will see that this Rayne fella (who has a degree in Chemistry) points out some state polls that are wrong too.

Unsurprisingly, the polls he cites are all negative to Trump.

It is a statistical fact that there are seven million more registered Democrats in the country than Republicans.  So, whatever weighting the polls are giving that number, they are ALL doing it. 

What is the likelihood that professional pollsters (who are in competition with each other) would all be wrong about the direction of the highest profile race in the country?   Even Rasmussen, who is known to give a bias to Republicans, has Trump down by 4.

I don't buy it.

Trump either wins polls or they're biased. He's never legitimately losing.

[240B]

Polls? really!!? Are we really still talking about what some stupid 'poll' says. Have we been transported back to the 1970s somehow.

Polls, as they are called, are not intended to actually measure anything. Polls are intended to shape public opinion, not measure it. The purpose of a poll today is to generate a desired result while being able to justify it in one way or another by couching the preconceived, desired, outcome in an entirely malleable, pseudo-scientific method.

Polls today are merely intended to reinforce the opinion of the sponsors of the poll, and or the persons conducting the survey.

I do not believe in polls, nor does Trump from what I have read. If I sponsored six polling groups to poll one thousand people about whether or not the glass is half full or half empty, I could easily get three of them to return half full, and the other three to return half empty.

If I hired a private group to do a real private poll under my terms, then I would have at least some faith in what they report to me.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Polls? really!!? Are we really still talking about what some stupid 'poll' says. Have we been transported back to the 1970s somehow.

Polls, as they are called, are not intended to actually measure anything. Polls are intended to shape public opinion, not measure it. The purpose of a poll today is to generate a desired result while being able to justify it in one way or another by couching the preconceived, desired, outcome in an entirely malleable, pseudo-scientific method.

Polls today are merely intended to reinforce the opinion of the sponsors of the poll, and or the persons conducting the survey.

I do not believe in polls, nor does Trump from what I have read. If I sponsored six polling groups to poll one thousand people about whether or not the glass is half full or half empty, I could easily get three of them to return half full, and the other three to return half empty.

If I hired a private group to do a real private poll under my terms, then I would have at least some faith in what they report to me.

If the polls show Trump winning then they're ok and should be posted. If they show Trump losing then it's "polls are merely there to craft public opinion".

[Mechanicos]

In U.S., New Record 43% Are Political Independents

An average 43% of Americans identified politically as independents in 2014, establishing a new high in Gallup telephone poll trends back to 1988. In terms of national identification with the two major parties, Democrats continued to hold a modest edge over Republicans, 30% to 26%.
...
The recent rise in political independence has come at the expense of both parties, but more among Democrats than among Republicans. Over the last six years, Democratic identification has fallen from 36% -- the highest in the last 25 years -- to 30%. Meanwhile, Republican identification is down from 28% in 2008 to 26% last year.

....
http://www.gallup.com/poll/180440/new-record-political-independents.aspx

This is from January 2015. The  Trend continued. In 2016 its only one percent difference between Democrats and republicans, with the vast majority of voters not belonging to either party. So yes the polls are bogus who are over sampling Democrats by the same percent as they claim Hillary is winning.

[sinkspur]

I do not believe in polls, nor does Trump from what I have read.

Are you kidding?  Trump spent the entire primary season citing polls.  In fact, just this past week, Trump said "There was never any interest in polls until I came along.  Now, all of a sudden, polls matter."

Amazing that he's no longer citing polls, since they're all against him.  ALL OF THEM. 

Trump has no pollsters, except a discredited dude named John McLaughlin that he hired to poll, of all places, New York where he stands no chance.

So the public polls are all he has to rely on.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Ignoring polls has not worked out for us in the past.

[Mechanicos]

Are you kidding?  Trump spent the entire primary season citing polls.  In fact, just this past week, Trump said "There was never any interest in polls until I came along.  Now, all of a sudden, polls matter."

Amazing that he's no longer citing polls, since they're all against him.  ALL OF THEM. 

Trump has no pollsters, except a discredited dude named John McLaughlin that he hired to poll, of all places, New York where he stands no chance.

So the public polls are all he has to rely on.

Because I know about polls business models I know they are for the most part nothing more then marketing efforts by professional social scientists to shape public opinion. Saying that I will use them against people gullible enough to believe in them. Which are less and less people every day...

[Mesaclone]

Politicians...being politicians...are always going to cite polls that support them and denigrate polls that show them performing poorly. Just the nature of the beast.

However, that ever present fact does not say anything about the actual validity...or non-validity...of particular polling methodologies. If a poll is poorly weighted, demonstrably so, than it is quite rational to question the impartiality and the predictive value of the poll in question. Sometimes a trend develops amongst pollsters that shows a pervasive bias that is present in common methodologies. When that happens, and again it must be shown as it has been in the above analysis, it would be foolish to ignore. This particular electoral cycle is showing extreme volatility as well....add to the mix that we are in a pre-convention time frame...and that 3rd party candidates are performing unusually well (a factor that nearly always fades as November approaches...and you are getting polls that are very poor indicators of the actual voting intentions of the electorate.

There's not going to be any especially predictive polling value until at least August, and even then its going to involve a lot of assumptions about the electorate that may simply be wrong given the unique nature of this cycle. This would be true with Trump leading, as much as its true with him being behind by 5% or so nationally (RCP average). So the first requirement here is patience...waiting for the post convention polling in Aug/Sep. The 2nd requirement should be skepticism.

There are no polling conspiracies at work here, we just happen to be at one of those points in time at which polling methodologies are being forced into a lot of guessing as to the makeup of the actual voting electorate. One thing that IS important to watch are polls that gauge how enthused/determined voters across the spectrum are to vote...measures of voter enthusiasm along partisan lines tend to be more predictive at this point because they don't have to guess as much regarding the makeup of the partisan electorate.

The bottom line at this point is that anyone getting fired up...for either candidate...based on polling at this point, is genuflecting to what is very non-predictive measure. Polls do matter, and "trends" in polls should be watched as they...if the methodology is consistent...do indicate relative performance in the campaign. It will be interesting to see how polls taken entirely after the Orlando event reflect change...or if they are unaffected.

To the point about "ignoring" polls. Of course they should not be ignored, but neither should they be seen pre-convention as predictive of the electoral outcome. The time when we should really start to value the "predictive" strength of polls is in September and October...so yes, ignoring them then would be foolish. The kind of foolishness we saw from the Romney and McCain camps in '08 and '12...but for today, June 17th, the danger is in over-valuing polls rather than in ignoring them.

[SirLinksALot]

RE: 9 in 10 Americans Don't believe in Polls

Not sure what the above has to do with anything. If the Polls correspond to facts, and in the case of 2008 and 2012, they did, it does not matter how many Americans believe them.

It doesn't take 1000 scientists to tell me I'm wrong, just one fact will do.

-- Albert Einstein