Posted on 11/07/2014 9:00:37 AM PST by Kaslin
I've been called a lot of things over the years, but "biased for the Democrats" has generally not been one of them.
But that's what I and other pollsters were labeled following Tuesday's elections by statistical gurus such as Nate Silver of ESPN.
What's that? You've never heard of Nate Silver? Well, don't worry; neither has 99 percent of America. The other 1 percent probably relied on his lousy statistical forecast and bet that Brazil would win the World Cup earlier this year. (They got routed.)
But Nate is right. Pollsters, in general, got 2014 wrong. My firm, InsiderAdvantage, polled only Georgia. Our final poll had the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, David Perdue, leading the race 48 percent to 45 percent over the Democrat, with the rest either undecided or going to the Libertarian candidate. But darn it, we just couldn't force the undecided voters to tell us how they would vote!
Of course, we nailed it on who was in the lead. And our polls showed the Democrat fading fast. But if we had just put the screws to the undecideds we polled, we might have been able to extract enough data to realize the magnitude of what was about to happen.
That meant on Election Day, when Michelle Nunn, daughter of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, lost to Perdue by a 53-percent-to-45-percent margin, our firm, along with all other pollsters, were forced to walk the political plank and atone for our sin of not nailing the race down to the very percentage point.
Silver is indeed right. Most pollsters polled with a Democratic "bias" this year. But his argument is slightly less sinister than one might imagine. He doesn't accuse us of being partisan or "cooking" our numbers. What he is really saying is that, for whatever reason, the voter turnout models that we used to weight our polls were too favorable to groups that would tend to support Democrats. Not to mention his belief that some of us are incompetent.
But I sort of want to thank Nate. He and the gaggle of liberal journalists who are sniping at pollsters have helped take away the final vestige of suspicion with regard to our firm's and other pollsters' ability to be objective. With me having been a Republican elected official who chaired state and national campaigns for the likes of Newt Gingrich, it seemed like it would take a lifetime for some in the media to stop treating me as an escaped GOP convict turned pollster/analyst.
So in answer to those who wonder why companies like mine were only close to being right, instead of being dead on, here is my answer.
The American people cannot stand Barack Obama. They dislike his policies. They dislike his "above it all" demeanor. And they rose out of their chairs and off their couches and came out in droves to defeat anyone who they thought was even remotely supportive of him or his administration.
Yep, I was one of those dumb pollster/analysts who thought that no president in a midterm election could possibly be as big of a drag on candidates as was Obama. But I was wrong. He wasn't just a drag; he was his own voter turnout machine for Republicans.
The fact is that too many Americans wanted to vote to make it clear that the emperor has no clothes. And they did so. After all, the polls had shown that they are unhappy about Obamacare, Ebola, the IRS, ISIS -- you name it. And it wasn't a matter of frustration with "all politicians," as some in the media tried to spin it. It was the president and his policies. Period.
And so they raced to the polls in mass numbers and decided that they would do whatever they could to rescue their nation before it was regulated and red-taped to death.
As for the technicalities of polling and all of its problems, that's for the next generation to figure out. As I wing my way back to my home in Florida, polling is hardly a concern of mine. Like my friend and colleague Brad Coker of the polling firm Mason-Dixon put it, we have other lives, and besides, we care more about college football right now.
I'll even take Mr. Silver's predictions into account when it comes to the NCAA football championship playoffs.
See, Nate? I'm not as biased or as stupid as you think!
Don’t forget also how he dealt with critical situation by golfing 210 times and an accumulation of half a billion dollars in trips that his nasty evil looking witch of a wife took with all her family forced upon the taxpayers! All of this along with his hatred for Israel and his love for the Muslim terrorists community did not go unnoticed by the American people!!
Most people I know are fairly oblivious about politics. They only take notice under extraordinary circumstances, the rest of the time they are working, wrangling kids through homework, dealing with relatives, or doing hobbies that may be also second incomes. Time is money and it takes a whole lot of stupid on the part of politicians to cut through that.
I’ll never forget but how many others will? How many do not link this evils sob to the demorat party? They chose him, they backed him, they voted with him, the media covered up for him, the courts helped him at every turn. I’ll never forget but how many will or never made the linkages and never will?
The deomrats brought this thugocracy. No mercy.
White liberal guilt, he is 100% affirmative action. That got him elected and reelected.
There is no guilt at all; the same people who supposedly suffer from this guilt are overseeing the extermination of blacks via abortion (and replacing them with more pliant, productive Hispanics). The election and re-election were engineered by those with such goals, and he was a great candidate because it was easy to paint his opponents as racist.
Unfortunately these polls helped the GOPe most of all.
For example how many people voted for Mitch over Matt Bevin because they believed only Mitch could beat Grimes, when in reality the Democrat was going to get blown out no matter who she faced and Bevin would have just as easily won.
And it didn't hurt that she looks like a cross dresser.
Kaslin, I got the impression from those races that might have been closed but the polsters were expecting last minute vote fraud by the Democrats so the posters for hedging your bets and their numbers.
Swype is not my friend.
Polling: The art of discerning if the people were fooled by your last poll.
This should be a lesson for us all not to make decisions based on polls, whether it be donating to your favorite candidate, or staying home.
We’re letting polls determine the outcome of elections. Very sad.
<><> Some say Republicans have a 100 year majority.
<><> Mega-star Sen-elect Joni Ernst ran a campaign ad: “Give Me a Shot,” where she pledged that when she gets ObamaCare in her sights, “she’s going to unload.”
<><> Democrats vaunted "War on Women" hit its most visible target---Hillary Clinton. Only one of the eight Democrat women she campaigned for won.
<><> Also shell-shocked is Obama Senior Deputy Advisor--- Valerie Jarrett---who Heads the WH Commision on Women and Girls.
<><> One sap-happy NARAL campaign ad seemed to link Republican-driven "condom shortages" to global warming.
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Political analyst Chris Stirewalt nailed it on The Kelly File---said Obama (and apparently all the loser Dems) still don't know what happened to them on Tuesday---and that their misspent lives as Democrats are going to change dramatically.
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