The shock poll media don't want you to see?

[jimnyc]

I've posted aggregate polling all year and won't change just because of one poll, but wanted to post this story anyway. It's a slow Sunday story day.

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WASHINGTON – Every day the USC/L.A. Times poll asks a portion of 3,000 U.S. citizens randomly recruited from across all households and demographic groups how they view the presidential race.

The polls began July 4 and will run through the election.

The pollsters must have got a shock this weekend.

Their results show Donald Trump in the lead.

So how did the news team report it?

It didn’t.

You have to look at the poll results for yourself to see the findings and understand them.

In news parlance, it’s called burying the lead – considered a cardinal sin in the business.

But it’s there as plain as day, in answer to the key question, “Who would you vote for?”

https://i.imgur.com/oMsgQtC.jpg

Despite the glee the media have reporting daily for the last few weeks that Hillary Clinton is winning by 8-10 points, this polls shows Trump edging Clinton 44.2 percent to 43.6 percent – a statistical tie within the margin of error. But is that not news?

http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/the-shock-poll-media-dont-want-you-to-see/

[Kathianne]

I heard that on the news last night, so it's being reported, though I agree not vigorously.

Here may be an explanation though of why:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-polling-differences-20160809-snap-story.html


...

Typically, polls ask people which candidate they favor or lean toward. Those who say they don’t know or are undecided don’t get factored into calculations of candidate support.


The Daybreak poll, by contrast, asks voters, using a 0-to-100 scale, to rate their chances of voting for Clinton, for Trump or for some other candidate. As a result, everyone who responds to the survey has some impact on the results. Because that approach gathers information from everyone in the poll sample, it should give a better read on the many voters who remain ambivalent about their choices.

...

Finally, some analysts think (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/upshot/a-favorable-poll-for-donald-trump-has-a-major-problem.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2 Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront) the Daybreak poll is slightly tilted toward the Republican side because of how it accounts for the way people voted in the last election.


All pollsters weight their results somewhat to make sure their samples match known demographics — the right proportions of men and women, for example, or blacks, whites and Latinos.


The Daybreak poll goes a step further and weights the sample to account for how people say they voted in 2012: It’s set so that 25% of the sample are voters who say they cast a ballot for Mitt Romney and 27% for President Obama. The rest are either too young to have voted four years ago or say they didn’t vote.


The potential problem is that people tend to fib about how they voted. Polls have often found that the percentage of people who say after an election that they voted for the winner exceeds the winner’s actual vote.


If that’s the case this year, then weighting for the vote history would result in slightly too many Republican voters in the sample, which would probably boost Trump’s standing by a point or two.


Unfortunately, there’s no way to know for sure until we can compare the final vote to the poll’s final forecast. Given how long it takes to count all the votes, that answer won’t be available until at least a week after election day.