There is a history of polls being off, and we are always on the down side. I will ignore Dick Morris. His history is mixed, but he navigated Clinton for years successfully with poll data. I’ll ignore Rove’s prediction, too, as he also missed 2006 in a big way. When I heard Michael Barone say Romney big, that was significant. I think many felt the polls underestimated GOP turnout, either due to polling inaccuracy or to purposefully drive public opinion. It didn’t... the polls pegged that there was a significant number of base voters who weren’t going to show up.
A lot of polls hit this election dead-on, just not the ones that Drudge was pushing every day.
“When I heard Michael Barone say Romney big, that was significant.”
did he have any numbers or analysis to back it up? I think we bought into anecdotes and assumptions, such as rally sizes and candidate demeanor.
From what I can tell it looks like our side and our pundits made two big mistakes.
A) We all went under the mantra of it’s the economy stupid and figured that much of America would see Obama as worse than Carter. And many of us had that 1980 election imprinted on our brains. Hence we also figured that some portion of unemployed blacks would be frustrated and sit this one out.
But we underestimated the fact that the Dems with early voting in all these states now have in some cases the entire month of October to cart every black voter with an Obamaphone to the polls. Before early voting, they couldn’t get all these people there on election day.
B) By the end of the campaign, I and many other white suburbanites had fallen in love with Romney. He won us over as a decent and hardworking guy who was prepared.
But rural white America apparently didn’t show up at the polls this week. For whatever the reasons (Mitt’s name or wealth or Mormonism) these folks couldn’t relate to Romney so they stayed home.
I would never have predicted this based on the enthusiasm Mitt was getting in the big city suburban areas. But it happened. Maybe Bush got those voters in 2004 because so many in the military are from rural areas and the families and relatives of our military personnel wanted to support our then CIC during wartime.