Royal Institute for Traditional Arts launches training on Al-Qatt Al-Asiri art    Nearly 2 million worshippers prayed in Rawdah at Prophet's Mosque during Hajj 1446    Saudi Arabia expands tech talent schools to five regions for 2025    Aubameyang exits Al Qadsiah as club turns to youth with Retegui signing    France withdraws troops from Senegal, ending military presence in West Africa    Germany's Merz and UK's Starmer sign 'first of its kind' defense and migration treaty    Norway leads Europe's best airports list    Syrian forces leave Sweida after ceasefire with Druze militias goes into effect    Main stage at Belgium's Tomorrowland music festival completely destroyed by fire    Sports vehicles can have now short number plates    Saudi Arabia draw Iraq and Indonesia in 2026 World Cup Asian play-off group    Saudi conjoined twins Yara and Lara successfully separated in 12.5-hour surgery    Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of hereditary disease    'Art of the Kingdom' exhibition to open in Beijing's National Museum on July 30    Saudi minister holds strategic AI and tech talks with French institutions in Paris    ASICS and Saudi Sports for All launch startup pitch to boost sports innovation in Saudi Arabia    Youth-led Saudi businesses exceed 474K    Scientists recover proteins from a 24 million-year-old rhino fossil    Jorge Jesus returns to Saudi Arabia as Al Nassr head coach on one-year deal    Jannik Sinner beats Carlos Alcaraz to win his maiden Wimbledon title    Sholay: Bollywood epic roars back to big screen after 50 years with new ending    Ministry launches online booking for slaughterhouses on eve of Eid Al-Adha    Shah Rukh Khan makes Met Gala debut in Sabyasachi    Pakistani star's Bollywood return excites fans and riles far right    Exotic Taif Roses Simulation Performed at Taif Rose Festival    Asian shares mixed Tuesday    Weather Forecast for Tuesday    Saudi Tourism Authority Participates in Arabian Travel Market Exhibition in Dubai    Minister of Industry Announces 50 Investment Opportunities Worth over SAR 96 Billion in Machinery, Equipment Sector    HRH Crown Prince Offers Condolences to Crown Prince of Kuwait on Death of Sheikh Fawaz Salman Abdullah Al-Ali Al-Malek Al-Sabah    HRH Crown Prince Congratulates Santiago Peña on Winning Presidential Election in Paraguay    SDAIA Launches 1st Phase of 'Elevate Program' to Train 1,000 Women on Data, AI    41 Saudi Citizens and 171 Others from Brotherly and Friendly Countries Arrive in Saudi Arabia from Sudan    Saudi Arabia Hosts 1st Meeting of Arab Authorities Controlling Medicines    General Directorate of Narcotics Control Foils Attempt to Smuggle over 5 Million Amphetamine Pills    NAVI Javelins Crowned as Champions of Women's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Competitions    Saudi Karate Team Wins Four Medals in World Youth League Championship    Third Edition of FIFA Forward Program Kicks off in Riyadh    Evacuated from Sudan, 187 Nationals from Several Countries Arrive in Jeddah    SPA Documents Thajjud Prayer at Prophet's Mosque in Madinah    SFDA Recommends to Test Blood Sugar at Home Two or Three Hours after Meals    SFDA Offers Various Recommendations for Safe Food Frying    SFDA Provides Five Tips for Using Home Blood Pressure Monitor    SFDA: Instant Soup Contains Large Amounts of Salt    Mawani: New shipping service to connect Jubail Commercial Port to 11 global ports    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Delivers Speech to Pilgrims, Citizens, Residents and Muslims around the World    Sheikh Al-Issa in Arafah's Sermon: Allaah Blessed You by Making It Easy for You to Carry out This Obligation. Thus, Ensure Following the Guidance of Your Prophet    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques addresses citizens and all Muslims on the occasion of the Holy month of Ramadan    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



Hillary Clinton holds the lead, but conducting opinion polls is harder
Published in The Saudi Gazette on 29 - 10 - 2016

MANY opinion polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton leading Republican Donald Trump in a tight race for the Nov. 8 US presidential election, but any one of four factors may make the outcome harder to predict.
Among the challenges for pollsters: The historic unpopularity of both candidates, the potential Election Day voter response to the polls themselves, the growing abandonment of landlines for cellphones, and the rise of online polling.
Some high-profile stumbles worldwide - including opinion polls that missed Colombia's Oct. 2 rejection of a peace deal - underscore how technological, social and cultural shifts have made polling more difficult than ever.
An average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.com shows former Secretary of State Clinton beating Trump, a businessman, by 5.4 percentage points. Highlighting the difficulties, the range varies from plus-13 for Clinton to a straight tie.
Trump has said the election is rigged against him and this week, in a Reuters interview, he accused media organizations of tilting the polls deliberately, but he has yet to offer any widely accepted evidence to back up these claims.
Voter turnout in the last few presidential elections has been about 60 percent. But given both candidates' low overall popularity, turnout this year may fall to as low as 52 percent, said Cliff Zukin, a professor emeritus of political science at New Jersey's Rutgers University and a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
That makes it hard to guess who might stay home."It's always been difficult to simulate a likely electorate and I think that's harder to do in 2016," Zukin said.
A second pitfall is the effect of the polling itself on voters. Sociologists believe polls can weaken projected winners by making their supporters more confident of the outcome and, therefore, less likely to vote.
The percentage of Trump supporters who expect him to win has dropped to 49 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from Oct. 20-24, down from 74 percent from Sept. 16-20. Clinton supporters' confidence rose at the same time. If that leads to a higher turnout of Trump supporters than of Clinton supporters, it might affect the election outcome.
Pollsters caution, however, that the effect of polls on the electorate can only go so far.
"If it were showing Clinton up by 2 points, then it's certainly possible that it would be within the margin of error that Trump might win," said Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
"But if you're finding that all of these high-quality polls are showing Clinton consistently ahead, then I think you can trust them," he said.
One of the biggest factors in polling today is the prevalence of cellphones. About half of Americans have only a cellphone and no landline, according to Federal Communications Commission data, more than double the number who were wireless-only in 2010. This makes it harder and more expensive for pollsters to gather a truly random sample of opinions because US law prohibits computerized auto-dialing (also known as robocalls) to cellphones and there is no central directory for cellphones.
Online surveys
Others, such as Reuters/Ipsos, conduct surveys online. This allows them to reach large numbers of people at lower cost. But because participants are volunteers in many cases, rather than selected at random, segments of the electorate may be left out.
The lower or skewed response in both cellphone and online polls can pose a challenge with pollsters having to adjust results to match the real world. To accomplish this, they weight more heavily the opinions of types of voters under-represented in their surveys.
Pollsters use population statistics, experience and intuition to do this. For instance, if the proportion of men who respond to a survey is lower than their proportion of the overall population, the pollster will adjust the finding to try to even that out.
"Then you've built in an assumption that the males that didn't respond are like the males that responded. And that's an unknowable fact," said Robert Groves, provost of Georgetown University, a social statistician and author of seven books on polling who served as director of the US Census Bureau from 2009 through 2012.
But such modeling can work well in some cases. A study by Columbia University statisticians, published in 2014 in the International Journal of Forecasting, showed that a poll of users of Microsoft Corp's Xbox gaming system could be used to accurately predict the election's outcome.
The gamers were far younger, whiter and more male than the US electorate and predicted a sweeping victory for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012. But when the results were weighted according to voters who turned out in 2008, they predicted Barack Obama's 2012 re-election. — Reuters


Clic here to read the story from its source.