Timothy Nelson5 said:Well, I suppose the sample sizes are relatively small. But if we're looking at a gap like 53% versus 47%, that's a 6% difference. That feels like way too much for a serious poll, especially if people are only choosing between two candidates.
What I was trying to get at is how these kinds of polls can swing voters both ways. If a candidate takes the lead in a poll right before an election, it might make their supporters feel like they don't even need to show up, while simultaneously giving the other side that extra push to actually head to the polls.
It’s not exactly a harmless phenomenon, I guess.
There wasn't any fraud. Irregularities didn't sway the outcome. Besides, Hofer's supporters in the polling stations were just as involved in those irregularities. There are plenty of pages covering that earlier in this thread.
From what I understand, the final results were flipped by the mail-in ballots, which seemed to lean disproportionately toward Bellen. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that.
Not even close.
I already said I’m not touching the general poll topic. I’ve dropped over 500 comments on that specific thread already—and that was spread out over five years, so it’s not like I’m spamming them every damn day. 😛 But hey, here it is anyway. 😵
Math doesn't lie. You can find the numbers online if you actually bother to look.
Need a quick way to crunch some numbers? Just grab a population confidence interval calculator online. It’s basically like guessing how many people will show up to a Friday night tailgate in Chicago—you take your sample, add a little wiggle room for error, and boom, you've got your range. Simple as that.Check out those confidence intervals for the 90%, 95%, and 99% levels.
You gotta wrap your head around these terms and equations, otherwise...
You're missing the mark on this one.Man, you just threw that out there like some amateur guess.
You can't just add those two deviations together. It’s basic math—if one side is up by 3%, the other’s automatically down by 3%. They aren't separate things.
Independent. Size matters. Just look at the scale of this mess.
So, you poll 1,000 people and 500 say they're voting for Candidate X? That basically means, with 95% certainty, the actual support in the real world was sitting somewhere between 46.9% and 53.1% when the poll went down. It’s just standard bell curve math. In reality, though, the numbers usually lean a bit higher.
Same deal went down last time during the runoff in Austria. The final polls had Hofer leading, but he ended up trailing by about 3% compared to what everyone was predicting.
Look, you gotta remember we're talking about a 95% margin here—meaning one out of every twenty times, things are gonna veer way off track. It’s just like betting on a heavy favorite at a sportsbook. Even when the odds look like a lock, the underdog still pulls an upset sometimes. That's just how the game works. 😁
Pollsters might be totally tripping because so many people just refuse to talk to them. That crowd usually ends up showing up at the polls, and they probably lean way harder toward one side than the data suggests. It’s that classic "Moderate Republican" factor. Some polling firms actually bake that into their numbers before they even release them—they just won't show their work because of "proprietary math." Typical.
The issue is that this variable is totally unpredictable. It shows up one minute and vanishes the next. Usually, you see right-wing voters dodging polls, but sometimes it’s the lefties doing the disappearing act. We saw this happen with the Democrats in the US once, and it was massive back in the early 90s with the Democratic Party here—which makes sense, honestly. Nobody wanted to admit they were voting for the old guard, so they’d show up at 3% in the polls only to pull over 5% at the ballot box.
That factor was definitely showing up in the polls before the election, though you gotta remember Clinton actually pulled more of the popular vote—48.0% against 46.1%. You really have to dig into the state-by-state numbers to see what happened, especially since there were about a dozen swing states that decided everything. I called Trump’s win exactly when it happened, even though I was rooting for Clinton (was a Sanders guy originally).
Polls can be total garbage sometimes. You gotta keep that margin of error in mind if you’re actually trying to make sense of the numbers.
Look, we gotta get a real grip on how things actually stand right now, you know?
Predicting election results? Good luck with that. It's basically like trying to guess which way a coin lands when someone's already rigged the toss.
Polls aren't garbage, but they aren't gospel either. People swing between trusting them way too much and then ditching them entirely when they miss the mark. You gotta know where the limits are.
So, it’s a tiny leap from saying "everyone messes up" to claiming "everyone is lying." In the US, it’s hard to buy the idea that dozens—maybe even a hundred—different polling agencies all conspired to cook the books for Clinton. Like Trump wasn't even the Republican nominee or some total outsider. ☕
Plus, there's this whole uncertainty thing where you try to predict the future based on a single snapshot in time.
You always get that crowd in every poll who says they’ll show up but haven't picked a side yet. Then you've got the wildcards who decide right there in the voting booth. Usually, you'd assume those votes split roughly like the decided ones, but hey, life isn't a math equation.
And then there are the flakes—people who say they'll vote and just don't. That likely cost Hillary Clinton a chunk of votes (just like how it hits the Democrats during local elections here in the States), and vice versa. A few big events in the final stretch can totally flip the script for white voters.
What I mean is, those polls can swing voters both ways. Seeing a candidate jump into the lead right before the election might make their supporters lazy and stay home, while simultaneously lighting a fire under the other side's fans. It's definitely not harmless.
Not really. That's why publishing polls right before an election is banned in several countries (though doing the actual polling is fine, obviously).
Still, all the academic stuff I've read suggests there isn't a clear net effect in either direction—the "bandwagon effect" vs. the "underdog effect." Even if those two things aren't exactly innocent, they usually just cancel each other out. From what I've seen in the literature, research never shows a definitive tilt one way or the other.
And looking back at the situation in Austria, it's the same deal: voters on both sides are pumped to show up. That's why turnout in the second round was actually higher than the first. It happens in America too—sometimes a simple "this vs. that" choice just gets people moving. Maybe we'll see even more turnout next time—though maybe some people are just fed up.
From what I know, the final result was flipped by mail-in ballots, which went disproportionately toward von der Leyen. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Yep. Some of our news outlets were already reporting on Monday that Hofer won. But I'd already posted overnight (can't drop links, apparently, since I'm not supposed to "advertise," though I can mention it...) that things were still up in the air.
History shows that mail-in votes tend to lean heavily toward the left-wing parties or candidates. Same thing in the US with all those votes still being tallied—official results aren't fully out yet (even if it doesn't change the Electoral College). In Australia, though, at the last parliamentary elections, those mail-in votes leaned more toward the center-right.
Nothing about it was controversial—like we said, nobody was questioning whether it was Hofer or the FPÖ.
Last time, I called it for von der Leyen, betting her supporters (or at least everyone who couldn't stand Hofer) would mobilize like crazy. This time? I'm keeping my mouth shut. Whether it's 53% for Hofer or 53% for von der Leyen, it wouldn't shock me. Though it'll probably be a razor-thin margin.
It’s a mess whenever a country gets this split, especially when a handful of votes decides everything. In a real democracy, you'd hope for actual compromise instead of just some rotten deal. 🍿
Look at what happened recently in Sweden—that minority coalition almost went belly up back in 2014 because they couldn't pass the budget. They had to play ball with the opposition and make concessions just to dodge a snap election.
Or take Portugal. They've hit their one-year mark with a government led by those "radical" leftists (it's funny how people call groups like Syriza radical now, even if they aren't actually trying to overthrow capitalism or whatever). Things are running smoothly enough, and they're pushing different strategies than the old guard. Hard to say if it'll last, but the public seems okay with it for now.
If Hofer pulls this off, it’s a huge symbolic win, even if he doesn't have much real power. He could try to force new elections to give his party a bigger shot, but that’s a gamble. People might get pissed if they feel like elections are being rigged just to suit him. Plus, the other parties might gang up on them, leaving nothing but a coalition of Democrats and Republicans—maybe even the Greens—to pick up the pieces.
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