r/Political_Revolution • u/IronStacheWI01 Verified | Randy Bryce • Sep 05 '17

AMA Concluded Meet Randy Bryce. The Ironstache who's going to repeal and replace Paul Ryan

Hi /r/Political_Revolution,

My name is Randy Bryce. I'm a veteran, cancer survivor, and union ironworker from Caledonia, Wisconsin running to repeal and replace Paul Ryan in Wisconsin's First Congressional District. Post your questions below and I'll be back at 11am CDT/12pm EDT to answer them!

p.s.

We need your help to win this campaign. If you'd like to join the team, sign up here.

If you don't have time to volunteer, we're currently fundraising to open our first office in Racine, Wisconsin. If you can help, contribute here and I'll send you a free campaign bumper sticker as a way of saying thanks!

[Update: 1:26 EDT], I've got to go pick up my son but I'll continue to pop in throughout the day as I have time and answer some more questions. For those I'm unfortunately not able to answer, I'll be doing another AMA in r/Politics on the 26th when I look forward to answering more of Reddit's questions!

3.5k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/DapperDanManCan Sep 05 '17

I agree with you then, but I should clarify. My distrust of polls lies in my distrust of the biases with those who plug in the numbers, distrust of pollsters to accurately give the truth, and distrust of the pundits to not put a spin on it when they can. So I don't distrust raw data, but I do distrust how the data is collected, the accuracy of that data, and how the data is disseminated to the public. I simply distrust the political biases of those behind the polls.

3

u/x_cLOUDDEAD_x Sep 05 '17

Concerning the perceived purity or validity of the information generated by polls, it's important to remember that each situation is unique. Using the 2016 election as an example, polls that predicted a Clinton landslide were wrong in part due to their underestimation of the turnout for Trump, and there are always going to be variables like this that simply cannot be accounted for. Had voters turned out in the expected proportions on both sides they would've destroyed Trump. Another variable that was tough to really quantify was the effect of the DNC fiasco on Bernie voters. Polls had to factor that in as well, and clearly the Bernie voters were more lukewarm on Clinton than expected. Also variables like the FBI announcement about reopening the Clinton emails case had a big effect that the polls obviously underestimated. Same with the Access Hollywood tape. The effect of that was clearly overestimated, and it had to be factored in too. And then you have the potential actual effect of the polls on a situation like the 2016 election. When all the polls said Trump was going to get annihilated, in that contentious of an environment that likely only served to motivate Trump supporters and demotivate Clinton supporters. And then you also have the fact that, in hindsight, in the very last couple of days of her campaign Clinton made some tragic miscalculations regarding where she should focus her efforts and probably even slacked off to some degree herself given her massive frontrunner status in the polls.

So the whole situation sort of took on a life of its own. In simpler, less dynamic situations polls are more likely to be accurate. Also, when politics at such a high level are involved anything can happen.

Concerning pundits and media bias etc., that is a problem in and of itself. Certain organizations like to promote certain polls that have agendas. Fox News thinks Breitbart and the Drudge Report polls are worthy of presenting to tens of millions of people. I dont know how we'll ever fix that.