The high turnout in this race makes the results harder to predict. Make no assumptions based on the polls.

79,409 votes on Saturday is great for the first day of early voting but also, what a small number for a city of eight million!

Your vote will matter.

EARLY VOTING STARTS: Massive turnout across the city as New Yorkers cast ballots in 2025 NYC Mayor’s Race | amNewYork

New Yorkers flooded the polls on Saturday, turning out in record numbers for the first day of early voting.

amNewYork (www.amny.com)

@futurebird

Memdani has already won with early voting. It will be the same as the PA race with Fetterman, where everyone early voted before seeing him die onstage at the debate.

Memdani as Mayor will be the fuel that burns what remains of progressive politics.

@magicalthinking

What would a Cuomo victory do?

@futurebird

Nothing.
Nothing would change because he needs the city council.

@magicalthinking

Needs the city council for what?

@futurebird

To pass laws and make a budget?

It doesn't matter because Memdani has already won. City run grocery stores are coming!

@magicalthinking

I'm still confused why you think Cuomo couldn't work with the city council.

@futurebird

They endorsed Memdani.
They're 'Democratic Socialists,' and a product of the Biden/Harris era.

@futurebird

They endorsed Memdani.
They're 'Democratic Socialists,' and a product of the Biden/Harris era.

@futurebird

Memdani has already won with early voting. It will be the same as the PA race with Fetterman, where everyone early voted before seeing him die onstage at the debate.

Memdani as Mayor will be the fuel that burns what remains of progressive politics.

@magicalthinking

"has already won with early voting."

This is false. There is practically a whole week of voting to go and most votes will be cast on election day.

I do not think pollsters can predict a race like this where the voting population has changed so drastically.

It could go *any* way.

If the polls are correct... that it is a blow out they will regain a fraction of my trust. If they are off by more than four I will continue to ignore them.

@futurebird @magicalthinking Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

@Wyatt_H_Knott @magicalthinking

Am I just not remembering... but were poll much more reliable in the 90s and 10s?

Now they just seem like ... feelings. And, knowing someone in the "industry" it's very... let's just say they want to be right but they are doing a lot of weighting and overthinking.

It's just hard to get a good sample.

@futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott @magicalthinking@noauthority.social it used to be possible to dial a random number and get a fairly representative sample of households in some particular geographic area. Now 1) nobody uses a land line at home, so the geographic factor is out the window 2) nobody younger than a boomer picks up the phone anymore because 99% of calls are scams or spam, so your sample will be super biased.

Now if you want a representative sample you have to go to a lot more trouble and you're still going to miss out on populations that you just don't reach with your recruiting ads.

@futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott @magicalthinking@noauthority.social it used to be possible to dial a random number and get a fairly representative sample of households in some particular geographic area. Now 1) nobody uses a land line at home, so the geographic factor is out the window 2) nobody younger than a boomer picks up the phone anymore because 99% of calls are scams or spam, so your sample will be super biased.

Now if you want a representative sample you have to go to a lot more trouble and you're still going to miss out on populations that you just don't reach with your recruiting ads.

@adrake @Wyatt_H_Knott

They are doing texting polls with correlation with voter rolls in NYC it seems. But they get uneven responses so the results must be weighted by expected turnout... which you can base on the last election or primary or both by a wide range of voter "types"

The races you choose and the categories can totally change the poll outcomes.

@futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott I can't even imagine how you'd usefully adjust text responses without massive unknowable error. Like for starters, a huge portion of people are never going to see your text because it went straight to spam. A bunch of the remaining ones will send it to spam themselves as soon as they see it's political, because a ton of fundraising spam poses as a survey and then is like "<candidate> agrees that's a critical issue, give us money!" You're left with people who voluntarily choose to engage with spam for no personal benefit. How do you infer anything about the general population from that?

@futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott I can't even imagine how you'd usefully adjust text responses without massive unknowable error. Like for starters, a huge portion of people are never going to see your text because it went straight to spam. A bunch of the remaining ones will send it to spam themselves as soon as they see it's political, because a ton of fundraising spam poses as a survey and then is like "<candidate> agrees that's a critical issue, give us money!" You're left with people who voluntarily choose to engage with spam for no personal benefit. How do you infer anything about the general population from that?

@adrake @Wyatt_H_Knott

Because the phone numbers are paired with voter records (and you ask demographic questions in the poll) you can be somewhat certain of who you might be talking to.

But will they tell you who they really support? (Historically mostly yes... however)

But things like how old they are, how often they vote, where they live etc. you can know that and use it for weighting.

@futurebird @Wyatt_H_Knott sure, you can adjust for demographics like that. But there's an axis that is something like "spam susceptibility", it probably has some correlations with age, income, etc., and you will get most of your responses for people high on that scale and effectively zero from people low on that scale.

Suppose it turns out that 1 in 10 people will just never, under any circumstances, answer a SMS survey (probably an under-estimate). You could assume they'll vote the same way as their age/location/income/etc peers, but that implicitly assumes that this difference has no impact on their vote. If instead it turns out to be something like "that's the most online 10% of the population" then it might be a big source of error.

Probably (hopefully?) people have studied this, but I don't know the results. It's just something I keep in mind when I read survey results nominally covering me that used a methodology that I am 100% sure could never have included me in the sample.