The pollsters are employed mainly by the media. It is in the media’s best interest to keep excitement in the Presidential race going to the very end, to maximize the advertising dollars both campaigns are spending.
It’s not about taking the public pulse, anymore, it’s about enriching the media’s purse.
Neither in 2006 nor in 2004 we had a +10% (min) Democrat national voter turnout compared to Republicans. Also in state polls, i.e. Virginia weighting 7-10% more Dem is ridiculous. Voter turnout for Republicans will be extremely high this time, because of Palin rallying the base and the anti-Obama vote.
A pollster would get a friendly “go away” from me.
But but but I thought all these polls were accurate, and John McCain was down 14% and had no hope?
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Polling is mostly via telephonic means.
Time of day is important.
Hangups are important, as are all other nonrespondents.
Usually a poll will look at the proportions of dems and repubs and indies registered in a state and then gather data from registered voter lists until a fixed proportion of each is obtained on a fixed sample of RESPONDENTS.
If an analysis of nonrespondents is included, then it becomes more clear whether a selection bias exists. So for example if there are twice as many nonrespondents among repubs as there are dems, it infers that repubs are working. If the percentage of indies that do not respond is far less, then it tells you indies are home and possibly not working. People are not working listen to the news which is usually biased to dems. They will say that they think Obama will win because the television says so. Also people sitting at home may be out of work and upset in general so they default to Obama.
In order to get a better breakdown, the pollster has to separate informed voters from uninformed voters. Other info is important such as whether the voter voted last election and for who. Turnout is the key predictor of a poll.
Turnout is so important that the dems have earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to ACORN. This is what makes ACORN so dangerous.
I think if taxpayer money is going to be used we should get money for scrubbing down the voter rolls because elections offices don’t seem to do it as well as they should. Yet any citizen can access voter roll data and start checking for duplicates, for dead voters, for voters registered in other states and so forth.
I think the RNC should be sending each member a list of voters to check over and challenge sheets with pre-paid FEDEX envelopes to be sent to respective election offices to investigate and invalidate those challenged on the rolls. For example why are there 30,000 or more convicted felons registered to vote in Florida? Who is challenging their registrations?
And I think the RNC should pay $5 for each successful challenge.
There is an exceptional amount of abuse going on in polling this year.
I am surprised to see even Rasmussen getting into the game with his 5-6% preference for Democrats.
I infer that the best justifications for this are the high dem turnouts in the primaries leading pollsters to say they are reflecting voter participation rates for the spring. I think there are several important rebuttals to his view that should be considered by pollsters and conservatives who are too ready to wet their pants on this one:
1. Operation chaos transferred voters from the Republican and indpendent base into the democratic base. The purpose was to confuse the democrats and insure their eventual defeat in the general election. Pollsters are not clueless about this and ought to be willing to forego the conclusion that these people really have changed sides.
2. Even if Obama has increased registrations— which is not clear especially with the bizarre acorn activities— Democrats more than ever have an incentive to bolt from Obama. Gallup’s most recent Oct 5 breakdowns even suggest that more dems are breaking for McCain than vice versa. Obamabots have violated the civil rights of Hillary Clinton supporters in multiple states. The conduct was egregious, outrageous and most importantly unforgettable. It is easy to envision where 20-35% of the democratic base will either refuse to vote or vote for McCain.
3. There is zero empirical evidence to support the new innovative models for participation being used by Gallup, Rasmussen and others. Gallup projects near 70% voter turnout in the current election. That is absurd. Crossing 50% turnout is a big deal. To believe that we will have 70% turnout is to be actively involved in the false hype of the Obama campaign. This gives license to voter fraud and lays the ground work for uncivil actions after the election results.
I really hope that conservatives are not falling for this pscyhological warfare being conducted by the media and other epistemological entities. This is raw deception and should be both ignored and resisted.
I've had several calls during the day that appear to have been from pollsters.
THEY DON'T CALL AT NIGHT.
Hmmmmm ....
Maybe the polls can be neutralized? How? Well, since the bias is toward Dems, especially for Senator Obama, lets play along. When a pollster calls, pretend you’re a Dem and go along with all the Obama positions. Pretty soon, they’ll start seeing 60% or even 70% for Obama. Obviously, incorrect, but they’ll have no way to correct them, no way to show the real picture. Suddenly, they really will be useless results. Same is true for exit polls, landslide for Obama, yeah right.
Maybe. But the if the weighting is made possible on the back of registration increases - increases made possible by A.C.O.R.N. registering phantoms and pets, then the may be improperly weighted.