Meta-Analysis, the Election, and 538

It’s made even worse this year by the non-response rate to polls, hovering near 90 percent. That means for every ten calls a pollster makes, they get one response. So much for the “random sample” assumption. Continue Reading →

Twitter a Polling Alternative?

This is typical media stupidity. Tweets are public unless you work very hard to keep them private. Most people on Twitter do not reveal much about their personal lives. There are many fake personas, too. Our cat has a Twitter feed (made up mostly of other household pets and other animals). People routinely lie. People will also lie to a telephone pollster, but at least they don’t have the incentive of their response being visible to the entire world. Continue Reading →

How to Pay for the Federal Government

“So let’s all sit down together as an American family with a calendar and make a yearly budget. First, let’s lock in the $3.7 trillion of critical family spending priorities; now let’s get to work on collecting the pay-as-we-go $10 billion daily cash flow we need.” Continue Reading →