Either way, with large electorates, the sampling error will be swamped (by orders of magnitude) by correlated changes across voters. For instance, the swings in voting behavior from economic conditions regularly move results by a number of percentage points.
I meant that that local stochastic things affecting individual voters are not important in the year-to-year variation in election outcomes, compared to systematic effects like the economy.
If you had an exact fraction of voters who would break for which candidate (which polling isn’t accurate enough to give), you still would face uncertainty about turnout.
Either way, with large electorates, the sampling error will be swamped (by orders of magnitude) by correlated changes across voters. For instance, the swings in voting behavior from economic conditions regularly move results by a number of percentage points.
Move relative to what? Last year’s results?
I was imagining getting the probabilities a single voter would vote for candidate X from Gallop.
I meant that that local stochastic things affecting individual voters are not important in the year-to-year variation in election outcomes, compared to systematic effects like the economy.
If you had an exact fraction of voters who would break for which candidate (which polling isn’t accurate enough to give), you still would face uncertainty about turnout.
The standard error of polling is usually pretty small.