Zero Hedge loses whatever credibility it once had

In recent years, Zero Hedge has become a source of ideological comfort food for conservatives, largely because it's run by a bunch of anonymous economic bears, who have spent eight years talking down the economy -- even as the economy recovered and started adding millions of jobs.

This cycle they've gone full Trump, and started "analyzing" polls in the race, claiming to find all sorts of statistical bias.

What they mostly reveal, however, is that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Yesterday, in trying to argue that many polls in this cycle contain the opinions of too many Democrat-leaning voters, they laughably misunderstood a hacked Podesta email from 2008:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...em-playbook-rigging-polls-through-oversamples

Here's why their "analysis" is completely ridiculous:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-donald-trumps-new-excuse-for-why-hes-losing/

They look at an email talking about "oversampling" Hispanics and Native Americans in internal Democratic polls, and claim that that shows bias in the polling design.

But that's not what "oversampling" means. As even a cursory bit of research would have revealed.

Basically, you oversample a group when that group is such a small part of the population that if you only sampled their proportionate share of the population, you would get so few responses that the error bars would be huge.

Let's say you plan to sample 500 people in a population where Native Americans make up 3% of the population. That means you would include 15 Native Americans in the sample.

But polling just 15 people makes for HUGE margins of error for that subgroup. You typically need to poll about 400 people to be sure you're getting a reasonably representative sample of a population.

That's where oversampling comes in. Rather than ask 15 Native Americans what they think, you "oversample" and ask 400.

For the final poll results, you weight those responses back down to their share of the population. So those 400 Native Americans have a collective weight in the poll of just 15 people. But those 15 people show an opinion split that accurately reflects the larger Native American sample -- so if 2/3 of Native Americans said they supported Clinton, then the final weighted poll would show 10 Native Americans for Clinton and 5 for someone else.

For anyone claiming to write knowledgably about polls, this is basic stuff. It's Polling 101. The fact that the Zero Hedge folks didn't understand this -- and obviously couldn't be bothered to do any research about it -- SHOULD destroy any credibility they have on the subject. Just as their continued cherry-picking of economic data has failed to predict anything useful about the economy. As I said above, they are nothing but ideological comfort food -- people who claim to be knowledgeable, telling the partisan masses what they want to hear.

I wonder when the partisan masses will get tired of having their information sources lie to them?

 

so basically, you don't like them anymore, because they stopped agreeing with you... check... why not just say that?

 

Never. Not ever, Won't happen. Because they aren't lying, YOU"RE the lying one, according to them.

And with the above they'll just pull out the cracker barrel and start whittling a cucumber or something. "wal, I'm just an ol' country boy so I don't know all this fancy stuff yer goin' on about but back in my day we didn't.".....etc etc etc

 

Er, what?

 

"Whatever credibility they had" is an exceedingly low bar for Zero Hedge.

 

FAIL.

Your "source" is the Washington Post, one of the propaganda media outlets of the Hilary campaign.

And there are numerous reports, including from groups like Pew, making the same claim as Zero Hedge. The nonpartisal polls have a very, very close race, the propaganda outlets like NBC have a Hilary landslide.

Did I mention you FAIL.

 

And this is the intellectual level of responses from Trump supporters. Jeebus.

One post that doesn't address the substance of the OP, preferring an unsubstantiated attack on the poster;

A second post cheering on the first post;

And a third post that ALSO doesn't address the substance of the OP. Instead, it calls the Washington Post a "propaganda media outlet", and rebuts a strawman argument that wasn't present in the OP.

How depressing.

 

we were attempting to summarize your tirade into a simple sentence... it seems the one person nailed it on the head, and you're now spinning into a new tirade he did...

 

Exactly.

How could they "lose credibility" where none existed?

A low bar indeed.

 

And continuing the depressing non-responsive responses....

It's sad that there are no Trump supporters capable of either acknowledging obvious errors in their information sources, or mounting a logical, coherent, evidence-based response.

 

You destroyed his entire post in this one liner.

Nice work!

 

I know things are moving quickly and you are having trouble keeping up, but wikileaks and others have already exposed the Washington Post as colluding with the Hilary campaign.

 

well since I don't consume that information source, but it appears YOU consume that information source... so I don't know how to help you... sorry, maybe stop consuming it? I was told liberals are supposed to be the intelligent ones, but if you need me to tell you to stop consuming it, I guess we now now that stereotype about smart liberals is false hey? do you need a hug too for your emotional stability? I'm not sure what you're seeking here... you seem to be screaming this is a bogus news source, and then here you are creating a thread about it and citing things in it, and telling others they are stupid for citing it, but you're so far the only one consuming that information...

- - - Updated - - -

I didn't mean to, now he's going to expect a hug or something from me, I have a strict no touch policy from internet people...

 

Come now.. Zerohedge has a couple of new conspiracy theories a week.

 

Where is the Pew report?

 

Please link to the email(s) you think show collusion.

 

Darkbane "destroyed" nothing except his own credibility since Dark offered no proof and only farted in the internet wind.

 

You never make sense, ever. You talk like an alien and mispell every other word.

It is YOU with no credibility.

 

Uhhh... you forgot to mention that "the email" was from John Podesta explaining how to skew the polls in order to engage the opposition in psych/ops, creating the impression that your candidate was running away with it.

 

Uh, no it wasn't. Read the non-Zero Hedge article again. And try to understand it this time.

 

Uhh, try re-reading your own post again, paying special attention to this part: "Podesta email from 2008"

And try to understand it this time.

 

Yes, it was a Podesta e-mail.

No, it wasn't talking about how to skew polls.

My OP explains clearly what "oversampling" means. If that's not clear enough for you, read the WaPo link I provided.

 

Yes, using the WashPo, to negate a conservative site is not trying to wash dog poop off your shoes, with dog poop.

The only purpose of this rag is to keep confirmation bias in place amongst the dead heads, and to serve as a propaganda mouth piece for the corrupt status quo, to keep it alive and well.

Journalism in these big corporate owned news outlets is dead. The Press no longer exist in the form that speaks truth to power. It is a joke.

There is a reason there is a difference between polls with one of the MSM name on it and other polls. These people are just trying to manufacture consent in Hillary's favor, and suppress trump voters from voting. Why anyone would trust any poll with MSM's name on it is absurd given what wilkileaks has revealed and the fact it is obvious they are in the tank for Hillary. When a so called journalist tells you they are having to forget about journalism integrity and principles in order to keep trump from damaging America, they mean what they say. And still Hillary supporters stick their fingers in their ears and holler, NA NA NA NA so nothing gets through to them. If you put 3 together in a room, you would get 3 monkeys, see nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing when it comes to this most corrupt politician America has ever seen. But her supporters cannot see it, for they have both hand over their eyes. While I support stein and not trump, at least his supporters have enough intellect to see how corrupt her kind of gov't has become, and that even her supporters, unless they are elites are not getting any representation in DC. Trump supporters are smart enough to see this, while hers apparently are the real low information voters in this cycle.

 

No (*)(*)(*)(*), Sherlock.

From the Scummy Clinton Hack Podesta:
~
Podesta conveniently spells out, in detail, exactly how to "manufacture" the desired data. The email starts out with a request for recommendations on "oversamples for polling" in order to "maximize what we get out of our media polling."
~
I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.

Scummy Piece Of Crap Podesta poll-rigging recommendations. In Arizona, oversampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:
~
Research, microtargeting & polling projects
- Over-sample Hispanics
- Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
- Over-sample the Native American population

~Scummy piece of dog crap Clinton Hack, Podesta

For Florida, this Hack Turd recommends "consistently monitoring" samples, especially for "independent" voters in Tampa and Orlando as they are known to be more dem friendly so this Piece Of Clinton Hack Barf suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.

National polls should over-sample "key districts / regions" and "ethnic" groups "as needed."

- General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over-samples in key districts/regions
- Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over-samples as needed
- Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over-samples as needed
- On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better than north or south Florida, if there are budget questions or over-samples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.

Why a poll is just like baking a cake! Use the right ingredients and you get the flavor you want!