Are you getting tired of all the polls? Interesting though, I’ve never been called. I guess roughly 2 million households with phones in our state, let’s say go back 4 elections, 10 major polls, 10 months per election, 4 weeks per month, making 3000 calls to get 1000 answers, registered (only 50% of population) … i should have a 3 in 1 chance of getting called. NEVER! Makes you wonder who they call? Who actually pick up?
18 year old on cell phone? Nope
Text message 20 year old at college about home election? Nope
Gather door to door input from 25 year old single woman who works two jobs? Nope
How about young family with caller ID who put kids down at 8:30 p.m.? Nope
I got it, retiree visiting grandkids during summer, then snowboarding after Thanksgiving? Nope
Employee at work? Nope
Who do the pollsters actually talk to? More eerie, do the polls tell people how to vote, because we’re such followers we tend to vote for the “winner” so we look cool?
(Read more after the leap)
Well … here’s the latest. After we find out last week that Mitch Daniels had clinched the election and was running 21 points ahead, capped property taxes, ran a budget surplus, and Jill Long Thompson was all out of money … we were also told that Obama had a lead in Indiana.
What’s that you say? How can that be? Who would vote for Obama and Mitch? Who indeed.
Released Yesterday:
The latest Zogby battleground poll shows GOP presidential nominee John McCain has regained the lead in Indiana, turning what pundits called a purple state to red.
By a 53 percent to 42 percent margin.
Right … 13 percent of Hoosiers changed their minds this week right?
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Look. If I don’t recognize the number on Caller ID, it goes to the answering machine. It’s my phone, I pay for it, and if you want me to answer a rigged poll designed to make your guy look good, the rate is $100/hr. Do you have your credit card ready?
Different pollsters are going to get different results because they use different methodologies.
In previous elections, senior citizens were highly likely to vote, kids under 30 were not very likely to vote. Obama supporters say they are highly enthused, while McCain voters seem to be much less so. So should young supporters of Obama be weighted heavily, and senior citizen supporters of McCain be weighted lightly, or just the opposite?
Some pollsters figure 6% of all voters tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate, but they end up voting for the white guy instead; it’s the “Bradley effect”. That didn’t happen in the Democratic primaries this year. Should pollsters take it into account, or not?
Something like 10% of the population has no land line; they’ve got cell phones, and pollsters don’t call those numbers. Most of these people are under 30. How do you adjust the numbers to account for this?
Most polls have a limited number of respondents, and that’s especially true of state polls. The smaller the sample, the greater the odds that you have a non-representative sample.
Politicians, especially those who are behind in the polls, tend to claim that the only poll they believe in is the one that counts: the general election. This year, though, the pollsters have serious doubts about the numbers they are generating. They’ll argue that you can see trends, and that’s probably true, but it’s not really clear what the numbers are going to be.
This could be a bigger rout than Johnson-Goldwater in 1964, or it could be that it’s a fairly close election. Everybody seems to agree that McCain’s chances of winning are extremely slim. The RNC is pulling money from the presidential race to back several legislative candidates where they might make a difference, and I suspect that’s a smart move, but anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen is a liar or a fool. Even if their guess turns out to be right, it’s still only a guess.
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