Nate Silver slams robopolling

[Perky]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/robopolls-significantly-more-favorable-to-republicans-than-traditional-surveys/

‘Robopolls’ Significantly More Favorable to Republicans Than Traditional Surveys
By NATE SILVER
I mentioned in passing in last night’s post that surveys that use automated scripts rather than live interviewers — what are sometimes called ‘robopolls’ — have shown more Republican-leaning results this year. Given how sensitive forecasts can be to fairly minor variations in the polling, it is worth going into more detail on this.

One of the various adjustments that our models make is to identify and correct for “house effects” — that is, persistent differences in the partisan lean of polls issued by a particular research firm. If, for instance, a particular company’s polls are, on average, 4 points more favorable to Democrats than the consensus of pollsters in the states that they’ve surveyed, we’ll pull most (although not all) of those 4 points back out of their survey in calculating our polling average.

[Imajika]

1. He didn't slam robopolling...

Does everything have to be SLAMMED, or DESTROYED, or BREAKING HARD, etc, etc.

Nate does a great analysis here about robopolling and the House effect. It is definitely worth reading.

This seems to be the conlusion:

"On average, the robopoll firms have a 2-point Republican-leaning house effect, whereas the live interviewer polls have a 0.7-point Democratic-leaning house effect. The difference between the two, then, is 2.7 points."

And Nate accounts for it in his models.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. I'm Too Tired To Read The Article

What does Nate attribute the difference to beside the fact robocallers don't include cell phone only users.

[BootinUp]

3. He can't say yet whether the live polling or the robopolling

is correct.

[Imajika]

5. He just says the robocalls favor Republicans slightly...

The pro GOP bias seems to be 2 points, but he doesn't even say whether it is right or wrong, only that's what he is observing.

His conclusion is a bit heartening considering what most pundits (including himself) are saying:

"Overall, this is another reason why people who are giving you overly confident answers about exactly how next Tuesday’s election is going to turn out ought to consider applying more caution."

[depakid]

4. Some of us have been discussing Nate's take home message for years on DU

If the robopolls turn out to be wrong, it will probably because of some combination of response bias (for instance, the robopolls are only getting the most enthusiastic respondents — who are almost certainly Republican this year — and are essentially overcompensating for the ‘enthusiasm gap’), and the failure of most automated polling firms to include cellphones in their samples.

Overall, this is another reason why people who are giving you overly confident answers about exactly how next Tuesday’s election is going to turn out ought to consider applying more caution.