
The Poll Aggregators of the Future Are Reproducible and Open Source - espeed
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/11/the_polls_of_the_future_will_be_reproducible_and_open_source.html
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nl
I had some trouble finding the code[1] and the paper[2]. The Stan code itself
is [3]

I think this is quite a strong model - if I was looking to work on it I'd like
to see it incorporate some economic data (and probably previous election poll
trends) as a way of attempting to improve the early-election-cycle forecasts.

[1] [https://github.com/pkremp/polls](https://github.com/pkremp/polls)

[2] [http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-
JASA1...](http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA13.pdf)

[3]
[https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20na...](https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20national%20polls.stan)

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teleclimber
Totally misleading title. "Polls" is one thing, poll aggregators are a whole
other thing.

I was really excited to read about actual polls that are somehow open source
(not sure how that would work though).

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jbondeson
The hardest part of an open source poll would be anonymization. Demographic
information in some areas could be enough to come pretty close to uniquely
identifying an individual.

The rest of it: Likely Voter Models, Demographic Weighting, etc would be
pretty easy to have open source and reproducible once you've solved the
issues.

~~~
teleclimber
Yes anonymization is the problem I was thinking of.

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cyborgx7
>There’s lots of concern about media bias from all directions, and open source
is the best way to address skepticism about particular assessments.

This is a really good and important point, I think. Let's argue about method,
not outcome.

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imjustsaying
If that's true, then the polling companies of the future have new customers.

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espeed
ptrs: Ben Adida worked on a cryptography-based open-audit voting system called
HELIOS in 2008 -- could be used as part of anonymous yet auditable open-source
polling / voting system:

[http://ben.adida.net/research/](http://ben.adida.net/research/)

