I'm not sure the Locals crowd needs this to be said, but I'm going to repost here what I wrote on X about this topic, with a bit more detail.
It started when Sean Trende on RCP attempted to warn people about modeling the independent vote solely using polling data. His points, particularly his main point, is very true. Here's what he said:
"If you're trying to model "Independent" voting, polls are of limited use. Remember that depending on question wording, context, and pure randomness, "Independent" can mean (among other things): Registration, how people think of themselves, or voting tendencies."
Original Post URL: https://x.com/SeanTrende/status/1852718833548620274
More to his point, how someone refers to themselves by party when speaking to a pollster or an exit pollster can be entirely different than their actual voter registration record.
It's how Trump, for instance, can win Hyde County, North Carolina, when it was majority Democratic in registration. The same is true for most of the 31 counties that voted for Obama, then Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, as well as cause of sharp swings in Appalachian Western Pennsylvania and Northeastern Pennsylvania counties.
If you polled a registered Democrat in Hyde County, NC, who supports Trump, they're very likely to tell you they're an independent, rather than identify with their actual registration. Voter registration is more static and lags, changing over time to follow more consistent and fluid trends in party identification.
It's very tricky to use polling data ONLY to model "indies" if the pollster didn't data append to the voter file, as we almost always do, so they know party registration.
Here, let me show you how this can be observed in a real situation.
The following is from a poll that we conducted in Utah and it was appended, otherwise known as matched or deduped, to the voter file.
The first image is the self-identification question, the one you're all familiar with from any poll you see on Real Clear Politics (RCP).
The second image is the result of the data append, or again, matching to the voter file.
As you can see, when polled 43.2% of the sample self-described as Republican, 31.3% as Independent, 18.0% Democratic and 7.4% as Something Else.
But the data append showed that the registration record by party for the very same sample was actually 50.9% Republican, 17.1% Democrat, 14.9% Independent American, and only 12.2% Unaffiliated, etc.
When people talk about polls, they always assume Independent means Unaffiliated, and visa versa. That is not really the case. Sometimes we get lucky, but often we do not. It's yet another reason why I stress "sampling errors for subgroups are higher" as much as I do.
But the bottom line, a lot of these micro "models" floating around attempting to project the margins using polling data by independent vote ALONE are not really better than a good guess.
In reality, it's far more complicated than that, unfortunately for me. Other demographics tell us about who these people are and how they're likely to vote regardless of having no two-party registration, such as age, race, sex, etc.
I feel like tearing off my clothes and dancing in the rain (snow on Tuesday). Ofc I'm entirely too old to do that. But...
We were SO right.
Here's Snoop, who rapped "F--K Donald Trump" in 2017, now performing at a Trump supporting inauguration party.
Watch Live 3:00 PM EST — Robert Barnes and Rich Baris discuss in detail bombshell results within the Public Polling Project for Early Spring 2021, and more civil unrest amid the trial of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd.
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Kennedy's out there doing gods work.
Crushing hospital incentives to mandate doctors/nurses get covid vaxxed.
RFK Jr whole HHS team💪
BTFOs whole med superstructure🤣
Rest of the admin👎
https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1951372406968164599?t=giU1xvoiHjQnvmgMHzrS3g&s=19
I wonder sometimes if Trump likes getting his ass kicked nationally and worldwide🤔
He COULD have this success too!!
I worked as a bouncer when I was young (I was 6'1" and 250lbs so avg large but nothing special) and big guys are used to being big and so they get a certain amount of prestige without ever having to prove themselves a threat. I found that if I gave big guys a chance to back down without losing face the vast majority would see the wisdom in that path.
The whole reason Russia has been slow rolling the Ukraine war has been to give Trump an easy out and the stupid arrogant ass cannot see it. I will bet any amount of money that Trump has never in his life been in a real fist fight and yet he is trying to intimidate a man who even though he is half Trump's size he would physically level Trump in a actual fight. And then back that up with Russia having More missiles that are newer technology than the USA.
Like in the movie "WARGAMES" the only way to win is to NOT play the game.
Pray that someone with sense can talk it into Trump...
*I would put money on Putin kicking my ass too, but I ...
TROUBLE IN UTAH: AAG Dhillon DEMANDS VOTER REGISTRATION FILES FROM LT. GOV. DEIDRE
Buhaha. Let the games begin.
Follow this thread: https://x.com/AndrewPiskadlo/status/1951451189746475310
I walk through exactly what DOJ is alleging—and what Utah’s been hiding.
Deidre Henderson has until July 29 to cough up:
Full statewide voter file
Duplicate & invalid registrants
Breakdown of non-citizen, felony, and incompetency flags
Data Utah falsely reported to the feds (263.7% removal discrepancy)
📄 DOJ letter:
All attached
📊 Removal data (EAVS):
Utah’s voter roll removals = 0.8% of total voters
Yet Utah reported removing 45,342 via confirmation notice → actual number: 17,196
(Find them attached)
📜 State law:
Ineligible voters = non-citizens, felons (without rights restored), and institutionalized persons.
Utah reported no categorized data for most counties.
🎭 Memes aside, this is serious:
Utah may be in noncompliance with NVRA, with evidence of systemic reporting fraud to federal agencies.
If DOJ ...
Watching people attempt to "unskew" polls conducted by all walks of this industry—ranging from Nate Cohn at The New York Times to Spencer Kimball at Emerson College to Tim Malloy at Quinnipiac—all to deny Donald Trump's gains against Joe Biden with various voting blocs, is more than a little sad.
The slew of recent polls over two weeks—to include no less than four today alone—have simply confirmed prior findings published from other pollsters who have previously been "unskewed". That includes your's truly and our work at BIG DATA POLL, Mark Penn at Harvard University, Patrick Ruffini at Echelon Insights, and many others.
I'm temped to equate this with an Occam's razor-like situation. But this debate is more about likelihood than simplicity.
Here's the Presidential Vote Preference Trend for Biden v. Trump going back to August 2020. The Public Polling Project did not begin asking the Rematch Question for 2024 until September 2021. However, we can still make some pretty important and interesting observations.