Hillary Clinton appears to be doing much better in polls conducted with live interviews

“Shy Trump” supporters – possibly?

Above is the national WH2016 polling for the past ten days. Clinton’s ahead in all but notice the big difference between those surveys which were conducted by live interviewers over the phone and those which used the internet or automated phone calls to get responses.

The trend is clear. Hillary does much better when those sampled are talking to a real person. When that’s not how the poll was conducted we see a different picture.

Given the massive negative media coverage that Trump is getting at the moment I wonder whether his supporters are a little bit less likely to volunteer their view to a live person rather than the anonymity of a computer based system.

In broad terms we saw a similar picture in the BREXIT polling. LEAVE was invariably doing better in online surveys, REMAIN with phone interviews.

It has long been argued that the interviewer effect can play a part. People might be less likely to reveal their real views to a real person.

Mike Smithson

Follow @MSmithsonPB



Tweet