What I Learned From 2016

Recently I have been working on a chapter of my dissertation about polling accuracy and modeling polling error. I’ve done a big analysis on state-level Presidential polls from 2008-2016 and I will talk about that in a later post. Looking at the data from 2016 has been a chance to really dive into the data I collected over the years and reflect on what happened.

In 2016, I was a college sophomore. I was in my first mathematically based statistics class. Now I’m a third year Statistics PhD student with most of my classes completed. I’ve grown a lot as a statistician over these past four years, and I think I still have a little more growing to do. But I’ve compiled three things I’ve learned.

1. Don’t forget that the general public aren’t experts
2. Embrace Uncertainty
3. Reflect on the Mistakes of the Past to Prevent Them in the Future

Don’t Forget that the General Public Aren’t Experts

I’ve always viewed election modeling as a pathway to public engagement and education about statistics. Still, you have to remember that not everyone knows what margin of error means or understands how to interpret a probability. Formal statistical training often focuses on the limitations of statistical modeling and how it will always have uncertainty. But people often equate statistics with mathematics as something that provides the same solution with every attempt and that it won’t be wrong. If you are going to put a model out to the public there, you need to explain it in a way that can both be understood by a non-expert, but still provide the information experts need to evaluate your model

Embrace Uncertainty

Polling and polling averages are limited in their precision. If you have an election within a point, polls will not be able to predict the winner. Models have more precision, but there are many examples of cases where they, too, are uncertain. Polling data can be limited, and elections happen once. Sometimes we can’t know who will win. Additionally, it’s hard to evaluate probability predictions because there is only one 2020 presidential election. It is important to be open about the uncertainty in your model and the potential for error.

Reflect on the Mistakes of the Past to Prevent them in the Future

The polling and election modeling world has spent a lot of time reflecting on the 2016 Presidential election. The errors in 2016 were a mixture of insufficient data, some bad methodological choices, and bad luck. Some of the methodological mistakes are easy to fix, but some of the important ones are difficult. A big issue in 2016 was weighting the data for education because non-college-educated individuals are less likely to respond. But it’s not clear how to weight the data well when the composition of the electorate is constantly changing and turnout is hard to predict. But pollsters and modelers know what the challenges and know how polls have performed in the past which can help us access the likely accuracy of polls. We can learn from 2016 so that our models and polls can be the best they can be.

I hope that I’m not writing a piece like this in 2024. I hope that the public will listen to the experts on what typical polling accuracy is and not blindly assume that margin of error covers everything. I hope that the polls and models do well and that polling will be something that the public values and trusts. But now all we can really do is wait and see.