{"id":304,"date":"2008-01-10T16:27:01","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T20:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/01\/10\/every-poll-is-a-push-poll\/"},"modified":"2011-06-18T23:31:52","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T03:31:52","slug":"every-poll-is-a-push-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/01\/every-poll-is-a-push-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Every poll is a push poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists understand that observation can change the thing being studied. Perhaps <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Observer_effect\">observer effect<\/a> partially explains the pollsters&#8217; poor predictions (&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/new_hampshire\/articles\/2008\/01\/10\/stunned_by_nh_pollsters_regroup_to_seek_answers\/\">Stunned by N.H., pollsters regroup to seek answers<\/a>,&#8221; Jan 10). Maybe the very act of publishing the polls changed the vote. If voters were truly undecided to the last minute, as many appeared to be, they&#8217;d want to prolong the race by voting for the underdog &#8212; which, according to the polls, was Obama in Iowa and Clinton in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, cognitive scientists also believe that humans have a natural bias to see patterns where none exist &#8212; which, in the case of pollsters, pundits, and journalists, leads to the need to find a story to &#8220;explain&#8221; statistics, whether polls or vote results. We&#8217;re also biased towards dramatic, human stories: it&#8217;s a lot more interesting to attribute Clinton&#8217;s victory to the &#8220;choked up&#8221; episode than a complex mix of more prosaic factors like operational effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>But then, with the exception of Mitt Romney, well-oiled machines are rarely photogenic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/editorial_opinion\/letters\/articles\/2008\/01\/12\/perils_of_polls_and_punditry\/\">Published in the Boston Globe on 12 Jan 2008.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists understand that observation can change the thing being studied. Perhaps observer effect partially explains the pollsters&#8217; poor predictions (&#8220;Stunned by N.H., pollsters regroup to seek answers,&#8221; Jan 10). Maybe the very act of publishing the polls changed the vote. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/01\/every-poll-is-a-push-poll\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44935,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-massachusetts-boston-cambridge","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}