Updated: November 5, 2020 7:25:08 am
In this Nov.3, 2020 file photo, two women, wearing protective masks due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, cast their votes at a polling station in Windham, NH High School. (AP)
Opinion polls had predicted a clear victory for Biden, but the result is still in balance. Why were they wrong?
While prognostic polls have become more sophisticated, using state-of-the-art modeling techniques, they appear to have failed to accurately predict the results of the US presidential election, particularly in terms of the number of Electoral College seats. At best, they provide a general idea of the trend, requiring not only statistical models, but also good political instincts and intuition. Whether in Bihar or the United States, you should be able to feel the hawa talking to voters, whether it’s at the neighborhood deli or the Chaurasia Pan House. In these Covid times, this, of course, is easier said than done!
Take the most popular and best-thought American pollster, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight. Silver, a training statistician, gained fame by developing PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) to compare the performance of baseball players. He subsequently made some staggeringly accurate predictions in state and national elections prior to 2016, where, like many others, he failed to predict a Hillary Clinton victory.
This time, FiveThirtyEight said it had improved its model through a three-step process: first collect, analyze and adjust the surveys; then, supplementing the surveys with “fundamentals” such as demographic and economic data; and finally, “account for the uncertainty and simulate the election thousands of times.” But look what happened!
Silver gave Trump a 10 percent chance of winning. They were “roughly as likely to rain in downtown Los Angeles,” he said. “And it rains there. (Downtown Los Angeles has about 36 rainy days per year, or about 1 in 10 on a rainy day) ”. But those clearly weren’t the odds we were faced with, and while you may not be able to replace LA with Cherrapunji, the chances that Trump will win appear to be clearly over 10 percent.
Silver was not alone; all polls considered independent and non-partisan performed very poorly. The only ones who seemed to have predicted that Trump would do well were Rasmussen Reports and Trafalgar Group, both with a marked Republican bias.
I began conducting surveys on India’s foreign policy and nuclear weapons about 25 years ago (India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options, David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo (eds), University of Notre Dame Press, 1996). And the fundamental limitations of all surveys remain the same.
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First, there is the mystery of the fake respondent, euphemistically called the “shy” voter. We know this happens even in family situations, like some teens who never admit to smoking. Social norms and the fear of provoking social disapproval often discourage people from publicly identifying with certain people and causes. The classic example from India is where few Brahmans would publicly admit to believing in the hierarchy of the caste system. There is a belief that a significant number of Trump voters, given the Manichean responses the president triggers, do not want to tell pollsters that they would vote Republican.
The second is the enigma of the main question. Take an example from my own surveys:
On nuclear weapons and India, in 1995, if you asked respondents: “Did you know that atomic weapons destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including large sections of the civilian population? Would you still want India to acquire nuclear weapons? ”, Only a third of those surveyed answered affirmatively. But if you asked the question differently: “Do you know that India faces threats from nuclear China and nuclear Pakistan? Shouldn’t India acquire nuclear weapons under these circumstances? “- nearly 75 percent said India should go nuclear.
In the United States, many pollsters have become much more nuanced to ensure that an obvious bias is not reflected in the wording of the question. But most pollsters now add surveys conducted by other agencies, the quality and integrity of which can be questionable.
Finally, of course, there is the survey sample, which may be different from participation. While these sampling errors are generally fixed, Democrats can participate in the polls, but Biden and Kamala Harris may not mobilize them strongly enough to vote. This “apathy” has often been seen (by democracy theorists such as Robert Dahl) as a stronger indicator of the resilience of the democratic system, but it can show episodically the dangerous consequences for democracy itself.
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A closed election could result in litigation over voting and counting procedures in battle states.
Some say the result could be delayed for days or even weeks. How will this affect the current administration and the transition, if Biden finally wins?
Much will depend, of course, on how soon the election is granted, or whether it is clear who has the support of 270 or more members of the Electoral College. If Trump ultimately emerges as the victor, the transition to a second term should be formally seamless, but the incumbent’s triumphalism and volatile personality could spark some civil unrest.
If the election remains in dispute or if Biden wins, the transition period will be fraught with consequences.
Scholar Rebecca Lissner wrote in The Atlantic: “[A] The president’s blatant refusal to leave office is certainly a nightmare scenario. But even if President Donald Trump were to lose and accept the results on or shortly after November 3, he could cause significant damage during the period between the election and Joe Biden’s inauguration, putting the incoming administration in jeopardy, in the future. at best, and actively sabotaging. in the worst case “.
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In 1933, the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution moved the transition from the previous date from March 4 to January 20. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 sets out a detailed procedure, which should normally facilitate a smooth transition of power. But these are not normal times, and Trump often sets and plays by his own rules. Consider this: President Trump will remain the commander-in-chief of the US military and will maintain control of US nuclear weapons until at least January 20. During this period, given the size and scale of American power, the US and the rest of the world will live with great uncertainty, and state and non-state actors, including in the Indian neighborhood, may be tempted to act. in an adventurous way.
Historically, of course, transitions have often meant communication breaks, especially between opposing Democratic and Republican regimes. An often-given example is the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, the CIA-led attempt to topple Fidel Castro in Cuba, which could have been prevented if there had been better communication between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations (incoming ). Again, there is evidence to suggest that President Jimmy Carter’s team did not inform Ronald Reagan of Israel’s decision to attack the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.
A superb Brookings Institution study by James Steinburg and Kurt Campbell has provided a number of examples of how difficult transitions can be, including Bill Clinton’s “struggle to manage the deployment to Somalia” and the EP-3 crises that “They occurred at the beginning of George W. Bush’s first term when an American plane may have entered Chinese airspace and collided with a Chinese fighter plane.”
Even as many Americans seek a New Deal that could add a new, more socially and economically inclusive chapter in American history, such as the one witnessed after the Great Depression under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a “hostile Trump “And unpredictable, if he lost, it could be even more dangerous for America and the world, at least in the short term.
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What if the Supreme Court is involved in resolving an electoral dispute over late votes or postal ballots, as Trump has threatened?
In 57 presidential elections, the Supreme Court has been directly involved only in the 2000 contest between George W Bush and Al Gore. Bush led Gore by a narrow margin in Florida when votes were first counted. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of “different vote counting standards within Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and that a vote count could not be completed before the December 12 deadline.” . 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram
Aside from this, there is the solitary instance of the Supreme Court justices sitting in a commission along with the congressmen in 1876 to decide on the contest between Rutherford B Hayes and Samuel Tilden.
With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court has a clear majority of conservative justices. Until the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there were four Liberal magistrates and four Conservative magistrates, with Chief Justice John Roberts a moderately conservative magistrate who agreed with the Liberal magistrate bloc on certain decisions. This has now changed. While this does not necessarily imply that the court will “take sides,” Trump’s allegations of voter fraud can receive a comprehensive hearing.
(Research aid: Pooja Arora)
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