Crazy bad polls in Canadian politics (how to spot them)
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this video, I talk about bad polls and how to spot them, and why you should be worried about them. I also talk about how to identify a bad poll, and what to do if you see them multiple times in a single day.
Transcript
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Hey guys, it's Wyatt here with another video about polling, but unlike my last video where
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I went over the political dynamics currently taking place in British Columbia, I just want
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to talk about bad polls. And what does a bad poll look like? Because I see people on the left and
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the right, but mostly the left, sharing bad polls and pretending that they are noticing or that
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they are on to some real political trend going on. This has happened multiple times in British
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Columbia. It's been happening in Saskatchewan. It's happening federally. It's happening in New
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Brunswick. You will see a polling trend. Like, let's just take a second here and just say,
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how do you identify a bad poll? I'm not talking about like a fake poll. You know,
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fake polls happen where people put out some numbers that are obviously not backed up by a
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real sample. It's a cooked sample to try and get a result. I'm not even talking about those. I'm
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talking about like a poll where even if they were genuinely trying to make something accurate,
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obviously they should have just pulled the plug and started over again because whatever they came
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up with was not good. So in British Columbia, we just saw two polls come out that put the
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Conservatives ahead by one point and three points. Now, if you released a poll saying the BC Conservatives
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and NDP were tied, I'd believe that. If you released a poll saying that the NDP was ahead by one or two
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points or three points even, I would believe that too. But there's a poll that just came out from
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Council that literally had the BC NDP for some reason ahead by eight points. Yes, eight points.
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As the trend has been going the other way, as the Conservatives keep gaining, or at least the NDP's
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lead keeps sort of shrinking and becoming more sort of, I guess, tightened around the Vancouver and
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Victoria areas that suddenly they're ahead by eight points. That's not a real poll. If you think that
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this is a plus eight election in British Columbia, I don't feel like you are following the political
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dynamics of that election very closely. Same thing in Saskatchewan. If you think that's a race where the
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NDP is ever going to go ahead by like seven points, I don't feel like you're following what's going on very
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well. Same thing with New Brunswick. If you think that the New Brunswick PC party, even if Blaine Higgs
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is not popular, they're not going to be down by seven or eight points, which you see every once in
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a while in a poll. Federally speaking, we saw ECOS from Frank Graves come out the other day. I believe
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it's Frank Graves that runs ECOS. Frank Graves comes out with a poll that's showing that the Liberals are
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catching a bit of momentum and maybe Justin Trudeau will be able to hold on. Because from his last poll,
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he showed that the Liberals were behind the Conservatives by 20 points. And in this most
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recent poll, they're only down by 14 points. No. Yes, 14 points is still a big lead. But no,
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every other pollster is showing them around 20 points ahead, the Conservatives ahead of the Liberals,
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18 points, 19 points, 21 points. If you come up with a 14 and there's no significant event that's
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happened that would actually justify it going up or down like that, then you have to look at your
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numbers and how you're getting them. It really is that if the poll doesn't match the mood, there's
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something probably wrong. I don't want you to just then take this and say, oh, if I think that the
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Conservatives in BC should be ahead by 10 points, well, any poll that doesn't say that is wrong.
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Obviously, that's silly. It is a tight race. And generally speaking, that means the polls should be
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tight. Maybe in two months, something big happens. And that justifies the NDP being ahead by eight,
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or the Conservatives being ahead by eight, maybe. But out of nowhere, you don't just get the Liberals
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federally gaining eight points in a poll or gaining six points in a poll, or you don't have the BC NDP
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having like a 10 point swing back towards them in British Columbia. If you know enough on the ground
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and you're kind of feeling things out, you can usually tell what should be realistic. I can
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basically predict numbers ahead of time on what I think the mood of the province is. It's not because
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I'm some marvel at politics. It's because I'm just, I just talk to people, I do door knocking,
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I look online, and don't look fully online because online stuff can be super hyperbolic, but I know what
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generally looks like a good realistic poll. Anyways, but that should be it for me today. As you can
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see, I'm still in Japan walking around the streets because I couldn't find a good place to sit down
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because I didn't want to annoy people and like, sit in front of their house or their apartment
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building and then have people going by. And even here, it's kind of difficult in Osaka since it's a
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pretty busy city and we're in the downtown core right now. But I'll see you guys hopefully in my home
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studio within the next week or so, or at least finding better places to film while I'm out here.
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But I just want to talk about that whole issue of bad polls. In general, races do not swing by 10
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points. Kamala Harris didn't go from being extremely unpopular to extremely popular. There is a sampling
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bias, there is a response bias, and this takes place in every election. Doesn't mean the pollsters
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are lying, it means they're not doing their work properly. Anyways, see you guys.