I love how Morris tries to dump some of his error on Chris Christie. If you look at the polls before Hurricane Sandy, the results were already baked in. But you have to look at all the polls OTHER than Rasmussen and Gallup who made the same damn mistake that Morris did.
Which brings me to the larger point. Morris is the obvious screw-up here but Gallup and Rasmussen did the EXACT same thing Morris did: made the wrong assumptions.
Gallup and Rasmussen should have known better and not tinkered with their party ID results. If you survey 1000 people and 30% identify as Republican and 40% identify as Democrats THEN THERE IS A +10 DEM ADVANTAGE AND YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS MESSING WITH THAT!
If you survey 1000 people a month later and 35% identify as Republican and 35% identify as Democrats THEN THERE IS NO PARTY ADVANTAGE AND YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS MESSING WITH THAT!
ABC/WashPo said there was a +6 advantage in their final poll and did not weight a damn thing. Exit polls come out election day, +6 dem advantage.
Please let this election be the end of “skewed” talk....it always was and always will be BS.
Your analysis is spot on, but this electoral debacle wasn’t caused by Morris’s failure to foresee it. The problem was caused by the strategic delusion that if both parties ran liberals, the public would prefer the Republican liberal.
If given the opportunity, guys like Rove will do it again in 2016.