Posted on 12/10/2004 5:20:24 PM PST by Cableguy
A week before the election, Slate published a consumer's guide in which we disclosed each pollster's methods and how they might affect that survey's numbers relative to the election returns. Now the returns are in, for pollsters as well as the public. Which polls nailed the results, which blew it, and why? Our review suggests three factors were crucial.
1. Party identification. Democrats have consistently outnumbered Republicans in surveys since FDR. Several of the pollsters we examined in October assumed that the turnout in 2004 would be close to the average of the last three presidential elections, which was more Democratic than Republican by several percentage points.
The pollsters who ran the Battleground survey disagreed. They assumed that the electorate would be 42.3 percent Democratic and 42.3 percent Republican. That split, negotiated between the Republican and Democratic companies that conducted the poll, looked to us like an unscientific political compromise. The Pew survey looked even crazier for projecting that Republicans would outnumber Democrats, 37 percent to 35 percent.
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But guess what? On Election Day, exit polls showed Republicans matching Democrats 37 percent to 37 percent. Pollsters who assumed that historical patterns would temper the Republican intensity in this year's surveys got it wrong. Those who bet on the data instead of the historical patterns got it right.
2. Undecided voters. Historically, last-minute undecideds have broken decisively for the presidential challenger. Based on this pattern, Gallup allocated 90 percent of its undecideds to Kerry, lifting him into a tie with Bush at 49 percent. TIPP made a similar bet on the 4.4 percent of voters in its final survey who said they were still "not sure" whom to vote for. TIPP allocated 61 percent of this group to Kerry and only 34 percent to Bush.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
ping
Y'all see this?
Polls, of recent, are simply a sophisticated means of manipulating the unsophisticated.
I've been saying it for months. The typical democrat is no longer the typical democrat. The polling's screw only because they try and normalize the results.
Polling is a very lucrative business in the consumer products market.
For example some polling companies have panels of chronic illness patients who answer polls about medications.
The Pharmaceutical companies pay huge money for that kind of data.
Before the election, we publicly doubted and privately derided Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, which used recorded voices to read their poll questions.
We rolled our eyes when they touted the virtues of uniformity and when they complained that live interviewers "may not know how to read or speak the English language," could "chew gum," or might "just make up the answers to questions." It sounded to us like a rationalization for cutting costs.
Look who's laughing now. Rasmussen and SurveyUSA beat their human competitors in the battleground states, often by large margins.
As I understand it, pollsters make the real money doing consumer polls for corporations - however, election season is when they prove their reliability/accuracy to potential clients.
I hate giving Slate the hit, but I did enjoy the article. I MAY still be gloating, just a little.
Anybody who wastes his time on polls about anything has way too much times on his hands and should have his head examined...
"And the survey says".....
Barn Owl
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