shy clinton factor

[Mr. Morden]

I definitely think shy clinton is far more common than shy trump - for a lot of the same reasons as shy Obama was always more than shy Romney. Demographics are destiny - and Trump sealed his own fate a long time ago - and a lot of voters marked "unlikely" are going to come out in droves to vote for Clinton, especially in the hispanic community. White men think their wives are going to vote for Trump, the reason why they believe there is a shy trump effect, but their wives are really going to vote for Clinton. And of course, there are people at the ballot box, facing their possible decision of voting for Trump, and ending up not going through with it because of WHO HE IS. These are right-leaning independents or even Republicans who are "for" trump but have been fighting with the idea of voting for him because, well, he's Trump.

As I’ve said many times in these threads, a polling error due to the likely voter models being wrong isn’t a “Shy” effect.  It’s the pollsters getting their sample selection wrong.  A “Shy X” effect is when the pollsters are wrong not because they messed up the sample, but because they’re being lied to, because poll respondents don’t want to reveal their true voting intentions.

And again, it’s also not about people “being shy” in public, or not telling their neighbors or even spouses who they’re voting for.  It’s about them not telling pollsters.  I don’t see any way to predict which candidate would be more likely to benefit from that kind of effect.  But I also don’t think it’s going to be that significant.  My hunch is that the more likely source of pollster error will be bad sample selection rather than deception on the part of those being polled.

[Mr. Morden]

Trump underperformed his polls, Clinton generally over-performed (MI being the obvious exception) - outside of the bizarre victim mentality of Trump supporters (the irony of which is sad and adorable), I see NO evidence of a genuine shy Trump effect, there is however, evidence of a shy Clinton effect.

IIRC, Trump basically matched his polling #s in the primaries, while his GOP opponents tended to beat their numbers.  Which I’m assuming is because undecideds broke towards Cruz/Kasich/Rubio/etc.  And that makes sense, as supporters of the other candidates tended to have a negative opinion of Trump.  So there could be lots of voters undecided between Cruz and Rubio or Kasich and Rubio, or some other combination.  But few were undecided between Trump and another candidate.  Thus he would obviously pick up few undecideds.  Whereas in the Dem. race, since it was just a 2-person contest, any undecideds were undecided between Clinton and Sanders.  So Clinton picking up some of those folks is not unexpected.

But that’s not a “Shy” effect either.  Undecideds breaking for one candidate at the end isn’t a “Shy” effect.  As I said, the idea that the main source of polling error is people being reluctant to tell pollsters who they really support is weird to me.  I don’t know why this meme is so popular here.  There are plenty of reasons why polls might underestimate or overestimate a candidate’s support, and I don’t see why people are convinced that voters lying to pollsters would be that significant an effect compared to other reasons.

EDIT: I guess I can see the argument some have made that if there is a real "shy effect" for either candidate (and I'm not convinced there is), then it would be more of a problem for live phone polls than robopolls and internet polls, because people too embarrassed to admit their true voting intentions would be more likely to lie to a person than a machine.  So OK, if robopolls end up being a lot more accurate than live phone polls, then I'll concede that there's at least a little evidence for a shy effect, as opposed to polling error being present for other reasons.  But I'm not counting on that happening.  Live phone polls are (in aggregate) more reliable, and I have no reason to think it'll be different this time.

[Mr. Morden]

I definitely think shy clinton is far more common than shy trump - for a lot of the same reasons as shy Obama was always more than shy Romney. Demographics are destiny - and Trump sealed his own fate a long time ago - and a lot of voters marked "unlikely" are going to come out in droves to vote for Clinton, especially in the hispanic community. White men think their wives are going to vote for Trump, the reason why they believe there is a shy trump effect, but their wives are really going to vote for Clinton. And of course, there are people at the ballot box, facing their possible decision of voting for Trump, and ending up not going through with it because of WHO HE IS. These are right-leaning independents or even Republicans who are "for" trump but have been fighting with the idea of voting for him because, well, he's Trump.

As I’ve said many times in these threads, a polling error due to the likely voter models being wrong isn’t a “Shy” effect.  It’s the pollsters getting their sample selection wrong.  A “Shy X” effect is when the pollsters are wrong not because they messed up the sample, but because they’re being lied to, because poll respondents don’t want to reveal their true voting intentions.

And again, it’s also not about people “being shy” in public, or not telling their neighbors or even spouses who they’re voting for.  It’s about them not telling pollsters.  I don’t see any way to predict which candidate would be more likely to benefit from that kind of effect.  But I also don’t think it’s going to be that significant.  My hunch is that the more likely source of pollster error will be bad sample selection rather than deception on the part of those being polled.

Another thing to take into consideration: ground game operational disparity. Could be potentially exacerbated by Trump underperforming his numbers due to his toxicity, poisoning the well with Republican voters with rhetoric about vote rigging, and doubling down on marginal constituencies with almost no campaign turnout structure to capture them.  

Yes, though you could also put that into the "likely voter model" bucket.  That is, you could break down the reasons for polling errors into three categories:

1) The sample of people included in the poll doesn't match the sample of people who actually end up voting (disparities in the ground game operation would be part of this, but there are plenty of other things feeding into it).

2) Some of the people being polled change their minds or decide on who to vote for at the last minute, after the poll was conducted.

3) People lie about their voting intentions when they talk to pollsters.

The "Shy" effect is #3: People who don't want to tell the pollsters their true voting intentions, for whatever reason.  But my guess is that #1 will end up being the biggest source of polling error.