The 2020 election should not be a mess except that what seems to be obvious will be ignored. Angry stupid people could vote en masse.
In our polls from last month, here's the completion percentage by vote history. Voted 2016 and 2018: 2.3% Voted 2016 not 2018: 1.3% Didn't vote 2016, voted 2018: 2.3% Didn't vote 2018 or 2016: 1.1%
Dr. Charles Franklin, director of the @MULawPoll, said he worried that the shy Trump effect had played a role in skewing the poll’s results away from Mr. Trump in 2016 https://t.co/nOxTVPyuWp via @nytimes
Election forecasters do not mean to convey absolute certainty. Just before Election Day, The New York Times’ Upshot forecast gave Trump a 15% chance of winning, and FiveThirtyEight’s model put his chances at 29%, indicating that a Republican win was not out of the question.
‘Shy Trump’ voters
A pre-election study by Morning Consult warned that wealthier, more educated Republicans appeared slightly more reluctant to tell phone interviewers that they supported Trump, compared with similar voters who responded to online polls.
Pollsters refer to this phenomenon as the “shy Trump” effect, or — in academic parlance — a form of “social-desirability bias.” Studies have affirmed that in races where a candidate or cause is perceived as controversial or otherwise undesirable, voters can be wary of voicing their support, especially to a live interviewer.
Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin voters, said he worried that the shy Trump effect had played a role in skewing the poll’s results away from Trump in 2016.
But the Princeton Election Consortium, which had predicted the 2012 results with striking accuracy, was more certain of a Clinton win, giving her a 99% chance in the days leading up to the election.
Sam Wang, a neuroscientist who runs the Princeton model, said in an email that in 2016 he had not factored in enough potential “systematic error” — a catchall variable that accounts for imperfections in individual polls. In 2016, he never set that variable higher than 1.1 percentage points, but in 2020 he plans to set it at two points.
“That will increase the uncertainty much more,” he said, “which will set expectations appropriately in case the election is close.”
