Trump's election as president of the United States is called the "black swan" incident, and the opinion polls about this election are also surprising. Almost all the polls before the election thought that Hillary would win easily with a big lead, but the results were quite different. It can be said that the American election day on 20 16 became another dark day for the market research industry.
In the US presidential election of 1936, in order to predict which of the two presidential candidates will be elected, the American Literature Digest magazine sent out 100000 survey letters through the address in the telephone book and vehicle registration system. According to these 2 million replies, it was concluded that Langdon would win by 57% to 43%, but the final result was that another candidate, franklin roosevelt, won by 62. The serious mistake in that prediction ruined a famous magazine, but it gave birth to a research company that is still the most famous in the world.
Later, it was analyzed that the mistake made by Literature Digest magazine in that year was firstly that its sampling method brought sample deviation. At that time, people who could use telephones and cars were often wealthy, and those who were willing to reply were mostly people who were willing to express their wishes. So this survey is actually aimed at those who are rich and willing to express their views, while those who are poor or less willing to express their views have not given up their voting rights.
It was in 1936 that statistician George Gallup began a presidential poll with scientific sampling. Gallup's poll has only about 50,000 samples, but in the carefully planned samples, the proportion of blacks and whites, poor and rich is close to the overall proportion of Americans. Finally, Gallup accurately predicted Roosevelt's election and established his position as an authoritative opinion poll.
This classic investigation method lasted for 80 years, and it faced an inflection point again in 20 16. When people analyze the reasons for the general failure of this general election survey, it is increasingly seen that with the development of the Internet, the silent majority has become the dominant factor affecting the survey results. Perhaps, the way of asking is really out of date.
To this day, Gallup and other survey companies still conduct surveys through telephone interviews, each time interviewing about thousands of citizens who are eligible to vote. Telephone is no longer a rarity nowadays. The survey company will randomly select respondents through computer programs to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to be selected. After the interview, they will also make a comparison based on US census data and adjust their weights to eliminate sample bias. This kind of investigation looks very scientific and conforms to the statistical law, but it still failed in reality.
It is said that unlike most mainstream media who are optimistic about Hillary, the artificial intelligence system named MogIA developed by Indian startup Genic.ai has always predicted that Trump will eventually win. Unlike other survey companies that mainly rely on interviews and questionnaires, MogIA's judgment is based on more than 20 million data points collected from websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Although Hillary's campaign funds are five times that of Trump and her investment in paid media is six times that of Trump, she has always been at a comprehensive disadvantage in social media. Although some people think that MogIA can't effectively identify the subtleties of people's comments on these websites, such as satire, satire, brain powder, senior black powder and black powder, this may be MogIA's advantage. Many times, praise, forwarding or even just reading and paying attention are enough to represent the true thoughts of those "silent majority".