There would seem to be an incentive for a pollster to trust divergent weights and look like a genius (as the lone correct caller of an upset), but in practice small subsamples (e.g. a NH poll with ~100 Republicans) make divergent results look like noise that gets discounted, which is why having 30 polls all wrong in New Hampshire was an extraordinary wake-up call.

causalpending

Speaker

Doug Rivers

Evidence Quote

the numbers seemed out of whack and with what everyone else was reporting and it was like well it's you know it's just too small a sample let's ignore it

Source

Doug Rivers on polling 7/21/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:54 AM

My Notes

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