They are the real losers in the US presidential election.

Many survey companies see their political predictions as a success that will earn them a reputation and then they will get greasy trade orders based on that. This year’s presidential elections in the United States brought a chaotic end as the institutions predicted a certain victory for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden against Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, so one thing is for sure: the biggest losers in the vote were polls, writes the Finacial Times.

Both Republican and Democratic commentators sent institutions to hell after the presidential elections. For example, Tucker Carlson, a Fox News TV person who is sympathetic to conservative thinking, said on election night that pollsters should switch to something more useful, like painting and decorating rooms, rather than trying over and over again without Successfully predict the outcome of different elections.

What is the explanation

There is some explanation for the giant dollar series, one of which stands out alongside this year’s election is the 2016 presidential election, which uniformly predicted the success of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. First, the US survey industry is highly fragmented and consists primarily of private and university-owned companies, few of which are considered big-name companies. At the same time, inexhaustible consumer hunger has led to predictions that they have inundated the media with their predictions for the past decade. Today, they play a crucial role in shaping electoral expectations in the United States.

Scott Rasmussen, founder of the Internet portal to probe his name and co-founder of the sports television network ESPN, sees the 2008 presidential election as a turning point. When you were early in your career in the 1980s and 1990s, policy polls were much rarer and much more general. Even in the 2004 presidential election, few pollsters updated their forecast daily.

Numerology

Then, in 2008, a number of new companies entered this business, and with the expansion of the Internet, there was a growing demand for real-time data. Meanwhile, numerologists, experts in “numerology close to astrology” such as Nate Silver, appeared on the scene, probing survey predictions, that is, predictions that used other predictions as raw material to make new “summaries of the results of surveys. predictions by mathematical methods “. .

Silver, by the way, made a name for himself by accurately predicting Barack Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, but Trump, who is undoubtedly a political star with unprecedented influence in American public life today, even if many consider him a rogue. It gave Biden an 89 percent chance of success before the vote.

More explanations

Industry leaders complain that surveys are much more difficult these days, simply because phones identify the caller and people, especially the younger ones, if they look for them from an unknown number they just don’t respond to the call. Meanwhile, research, although recently reduced in cost, is expensive. A telephone survey of 1,000 people costs $ 50,000 (more than 15 million guilders), mainly from the salaries of the interviewers.

Therefore, policy surveys by institutes are loss-making, with the goal of presenting their methods to potential business clients and demonstrating that they can make accurate forecasts. This method was invented more than 70 years ago by George Gallup, the founder of the polling institute that bears his name, at the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency during the 1936 presidential elections. Subsequently, various advertising companies and other profiles they requested forecasts. Gallup abandoned its prediction of political “horse racing” in 2015 after making a series of mistakes (for example, pulling Romney out as the winner against Obama).

Less would have been more

An interesting story is that of the British survey company YouGov. The London company relies on online panels in its forecasts and, like other companies, believes that its political work helps to improve its image with business clients. The closest forecast was given for the unexpected result of the 2016 referendum in which Brexit was decided, and the company’s chief executive, Stephan Shakespeare, is one of the stars of investor forums and television studios.

YouGov has a market value of £ 1 billion (approximately HUF 400 billion), planned sales of £ 152.4 million for the business year ending July 2012 and has recently started expanding into the US market. . They got the old method out: They wanted to base their reputations on accurate political predictions. To this end, a political polling website has also been launched. However, the grand introduction was a gigantic failure; yes please, whoever miscalculates Donald Trump is burning himself, relying on the company’s well-known MRP election model, predicted that Biden would get 53.2 percent in the proportional vote and 364 sic!) gets electricity .

Rasmussen, the great elder of the survey profession, after all this, says self-critically that survey companies must be plowed up and the sector rebuilt from the ground up. It just doesn’t work, he says. Election week, by the way, he predicted that the outcome of the vote could be anything from a small Trump victory that could be counted on for weeks to a modest Biden success. According to him, “savvy” pollsters should not have provided more details than this.