pollofpolls

The goal of pollofpolls is to make it easy to make a poll of polls.

This package is open sourced and all contributions are welcome. I have made some methodological choices in this implementation that you are more than welcome to challenge.

Please do so by raising issues here on github and / or by creating new functions and doing a pull request.

In the code of each function I have tried to document my choices as good as possible. Please raise an issue if you feel something is wrong or missing.

Several poll of polls methods

There are now two methods available for calculating poll of polls:

The FiveThirtyEight Way

The methodology used is based on these two articles:

https://greenbookblog.org/2018/01/16/the-prediction-how-nate-silver-does-it/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right/

This is the way used in example one and two

The Altinget Way

The methodology there is based on hear say. It is pretty intuitive - read the documentation for the function: pp_poll_of_poll_summariser()

This is the way used in example three.

Installation

You can install pollofpolls from github with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("mikkelkrogsholm/pollofpolls")

Example one: Driverless poll of polls

This is hands free driverless poll of polls calculation.

library(pollofpolls)

pollofpoll <- suppressMessages(pp_auto_poll_of_poll()) 

# Round the digits so it looks pretty
pollofpoll[, 1:2] <- purrr::map(pollofpoll[, 1:2], round, 2)

# Make a better looking table
knitr::kable(pollofpoll)

pred	error	party
25.67	0.76	a
5.29	0.56	aa
5.82	0.51	b
3.88	0.31	c
2.46	0.43	d
5.25	0.50	f
5.16	0.52	i
0.79	0.11	k
17.94	0.89	o
8.95	0.13	oe
18.79	0.59	v

Example two: Run down of each function

This is basically a run through of each part of the driverless poll of polls.

library(pollofpolls)

# Download the raw polls
raw_polls <- pp_get_raw_polls()

# Do a check on the polls
checked_polls <- pp_check_raw_polls(raw_polls = raw_polls, silent = TRUE)

# Calculate the pollster rating
pollster_rating <- pp_calc_pollster_rating()

# Add weights to the polls
polls_with_wt <- pp_add_weights(checked_polls = checked_polls, 
                                pollster_rating = pollster_rating)

# Calculate the final pole
final_poll <- pp_calc_poll(polls_with_wt = polls_with_wt)

# Round the digits so it looks pretty
final_poll[, 1:2] <- purrr::map(final_poll[, 1:2], round, 2)

# Make a better looking table
knitr::kable(final_poll)

pred	error	party
25.67	0.76	a
5.29	0.56	aa
5.82	0.51	b
3.88	0.31	c
2.46	0.43	d
5.25	0.50	f
5.16	0.52	i
0.79	0.11	k
17.94	0.89	o
8.95	0.13	oe
18.79	0.59	v

Example three: Poll of Polls by summarisation

This is the way I hear they do it at altinget.

library(pollofpolls)

polls <- pp_get_raw_polls()

my_pp <- pp_poll_of_poll_summariser(polls)

# Round the digits so it looks pretty
my_pp[, 1:2] <- purrr::map(my_pp[, 1:2], round, 2)

# Make a better looking table
knitr::kable(my_pp)

pred	error	party
25.70	1.23	a
4.99	0.61	aa
6.26	0.68	b
4.18	0.56	c
2.60	0.45	d
5.46	0.64	f
4.76	0.60	i
0.65	0.23	k
17.66	1.07	o
9.02	0.81	oe
18.71	1.10	v

Comparing methods

The two methods are very alike when it comes to predicting the results

library(tidyverse)
#> ── Attaching packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse 1.2.1 ──
#> ✔ ggplot2 3.0.0.9000     ✔ purrr   0.2.5     
#> ✔ tibble  1.4.2          ✔ dplyr   0.7.6     
#> ✔ tidyr   0.8.1          ✔ stringr 1.3.1.9000
#> ✔ readr   1.1.1          ✔ forcats 0.3.0
#> ── Conflicts ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
#> ✖ dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
#> ✖ dplyr::lag()    masks stats::lag()

plotdata <- inner_join(pollofpoll, my_pp, by = "party")

ggplot(plotdata) + 
  geom_point(aes(pred.x, pred.y)) + 
  theme_minimal() + 
  labs(y = "Altinget",
       x = "FiveThirtyEight") + 
  expand_limits(x = c(0, max(plotdata$pred.y)), 
                y = c(0, max(plotdata$pred.x))) +
  geom_abline(intercept = 0, slope = 1, linetype = "dashed", color = "gray") +
  coord_equal()

... but very different when it comes to estimating the error. One uses a formula based error and the other a more empirically derived one. And it shows.

ggplot(plotdata) + 
  geom_point(aes(error.x, error.y)) + 
  theme_minimal() + 
  labs(y = "Altinget",
       x = "FiveThirtyEight") + 
  expand_limits(x = c(0, max(plotdata$error.y)), 
                y = c(0, max(plotdata$error.x))) +
  geom_abline(intercept = 0, slope = 1, linetype = "dashed", color = "gray") +
  coord_equal()