Vanity: Question about internal campaign polls vs. public polls

[Maceman]

OK. I hear that the campaigns actually have "real polls" that are highly proprietary and closely guarded, and much more accurate than the public polls like Gallup and Rasmussen.

My question is: What makes them so much more accurate? I realize that there is some funny stuff with the public polls in terms of weighting.

But what is the difference in methodology that makes them (reportedly) so much more accurate?

[Pollster1]

Scott Rasmussen has been asking exactly the same question, using the same polling methods for almost four years. His public polls give us a good yardstick to observe trends in public opinion. From reading his site, we don't know if he overstates or understates support for Obama, but we know how that support has changed in relative terms over time. That is the best of the public polls in existence.

Some private polls are generated to be leaked, and they are pure spin (garbage), of course. The high quality private polls do a better job on improving response rate and on modeling turnout than any of the public polls, but the details are proprietary.

[Rockingham]

At election time, polling must compete with what is now an extraordinary level of campaign calls that tests the patience of anyone with a landline. A couple of weeks ago, my brother inadvertently answered what proved to be a computerized poll call. He answered the opinion and partisanship parts correctly — solid Romney Republican — but then input the demographics as being that he was a single Black female of Haitian descent with children.

[adorno]

My guess is that, each campaign involved has to be doing more accurate polling, in order to insure that, they are not deluding themselves.

They’ll use any external polls that favor them to arouse the base and voters in general, but, it would be a lot more prudent to be truthful to themselves, therefore, they need to be more accurate in their polling. They can’t afford to not look at the true picture with the electorate’s feelings and intentions.

[outofsalt]

"They wanted youngest 18 or older female in household. Nobody in my cell phone matched that profile."
There should be an app for that!

[GEC]

FWIW, she sounded cute.

Made me think about the grad student effect that they found with female exit poll takers.

It never would have occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense.

[Numbers Guy]

Internal polls are more accurate because campaigns use them to decide where they are going to spend their money. If you can’t get accurate polling you might be wasting money where it could be better spent elsewhere.

Bingo. When you're spending a few hundred million dollars, you're going to spend millions on polling to make sure you're not wasting the hundreds of millions. That's a lot more than the "regular" polling firms spend because there's so much at stake for the candidates.

You can tell what's up with the internals by where the candidates are appearing and where they're buying ads.