Posted on 09/21/2012 11:35:02 AM PDT by Signalman
Republicans are getting depressed under an avalanche of polling suggesting that an Obama victory is in the offing. They, in fact, suggest no such thing! Here’s why:
1. All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.
In English, this means that when you do a poll you ask people if they are likely to vote. But any telephone survey always has too few blacks, Latinos, and young people and too many elderly in its sample. That’s because some don’t have landlines or are rarely at home or don’t speak English well enough to be interviewed or don’t have time to talk. Elderly are overstated because they tend to be home and to have time. So you need to increase the weight given to interviews with young people, blacks and Latinos and count those with seniors a bit less.
Normally, this task is not difficult. Over the years, the black, Latino, young, and elderly proportion of the electorate has been fairly constant from election to election, except for a gradual increase in the Hispanic vote. You just need to look back at the last election to weight your polling numbers for this one.
But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for example, usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up 14% of the vote. Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and college kids almost doubled their vote share. Almost all pollsters are using the 2008 turnout models in weighting their samples. Rasmussen, more accurately, uses a mixture of 2008 and 2004 turnouts in determining his sample. That’s why his data usually is better for Romney.
But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm among Obama’s core demographic support due to high unemployment, disappointment with his policies and performance, and the lack of novelty in voting for a black candidate now that he has already served as president.
If you adjust virtually any of the published polls to reflect the 2004 vote, not the 2008 vote, they show the race either tied or Romney ahead, a view much closer to reality.
2. Almost all of the published polls show Obama getting less than 50% of the vote and less than 50% job approval. A majority of the voters either support Romney or are undecided in almost every poll.
But the fact is that the undecided vote always goes against the incumbent. In 1980 (the last time an incumbent Democrat was beaten), for example, the Gallup Poll of October 27th had Carter ahead by 45-39. Their survey on November 2nd showed Reagan catching up and leading by three points. In the actual voting, the Republican won by nine. The undecided vote broke sharply — and unanimously — for the challenger.
An undecided voter has really decided not to back the incumbent. He just won’t focus on the race until later in the game.
So, when the published poll shows Obama ahead by, say, 48-45, he’s really probably losing by 52-48!
Add these two factors together and the polls that are out there are all misleading. Any professional pollster (those consultants hired by candidates not by media outlets) would publish two findings for each poll — one using 2004 turnout modeling and the other using 2008 modeling. This would indicate just how dependent on an unusually high turnout of his base the Obama camp really is.
I’d like to believe him but I remember all the reasons posted for not believing the polls in 2008, and McCain lost.
So I hope he’s right, but I’m not counting my chickens before they’re hatched.
I don’t pay much attention to polls.
They are used by press organizations for a couple of reasons. First, they displace real news. Instead of reporting news, you report what people think about the news.
Second, by the way you set up the polls and report them, you influence the way people think about the news that you aren’t really reporting.
And then its third reason, for a propagandist, the polling tells you how well you’re doing in terms of shaping public perceptions, if your propaganda and PR are working, and if you need to refocus your efforts and how.
Every time I see the same old MSM polls, I’m reminded of a quote by Dr. Richard Kimball in the Fugitive: “You switched the samples!”
At this stage of the game it really looks like pure MSM psyops: demoralize GOP turnout by making a Obama victory look “inevitable.”
We can’t either despair or get overconfident. My best guess is that Romney is up by about 4 or 5, but we have to push hard to the finish and not let them get us off our game.
I would think that the 2010 election turnout has a lot of relevance. More than 2008 or 2004.
I know I’m pi$$ed enough to vote for a RINO like Romney to keep the incompetent socialist out of office.
Romney even has a shot at taking Connecticut, so the toe-sucker is making some sense here.
In 08 the polls were based on the 04 results, and so understated the vote for Obama, for exactly the reasons Dick explains in this article.
Polls created for media consumption are not designed to be accurate. They’re designed to attract attention. The polls that we never see belong to the respective parties and are considered proprietary information. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for this data, and I guarantee you they’re not going to share that info. Watching a campaign is a bit like watching a Texas Hold’em tournament on ESPN. You never know what cards they’re holding until the final call. The only clues come from how they’re betting.
Except the polls were pretty darn accurate in 2008 and that is what has some of us more than a little jittery this time around.
People are lying to the polls?
Morris was one of the few analysts that predicted the 2010 landslide though.
I never though McCain was going to win
I knew the Palin Vote would improve his chances- he would have lost in a landslide without her.
But I never expected him to win. Not with The Media Whorenalists cheerleading for Obambi the way they were.
There was not a lot of reason NOT TO vote for Obambi last time- no one (except us) knew anything about him... so there was a strong factor of “lets take a chance”- that is GONE GONE GONE
The polls were accurate because they saw a massive groundswell of Obamamania and gave him a +8 advantage with polling, which was correct. To still be giving him such an advantage today is borderline ridiculous.
and you can't raise money if the press says you're way behind
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I’m not discounting what your are saying and in no way do I feel that turnout for the shithead will be anywhere close to 2008 but once burned by the idea of ‘bad polls’ it’s hard to completely discount them this time around.... I’m trying but it’s not easy.
You are quite right.
This election is pretty scary. And as of right now, Romney is close, but he hasn’t closed the deal. Not yet. I did see a poll with him up in FL today, and that’s good. But still, about a three point bump nationally would be good, and then OH, VA and FL need to fall into line.
...and in this election cycle that is a very dangerous play on the part of the MSM. There is another side to that coin.
SOME polls were accurate.
The polls by professional polling houses (Gallup, Rasmussen, ARG, SurveyUSA, etc.) showed a steady Obama lead for a month leading into the election. They were largely correct. MSM polls showed Obama with unsupportably huge leads (10-15%, when he actually only won by 7. These usually overstated Obama's support, and for much the same reason as they are today - messed up internal demographics and unrealistic partisan ID breakdowns.
My house ONLY has cell phones, no land line. Both of us will be in line first day of early voting. My grown 3 children only have cell phones, the 5 of them will be voting for Romney. We don’t get polled!!!
One thing, though, that we SHOULD all remember. The 2004 day of election exist polls were absolutely, unquestionably falsified in order to give the impression of a Kerry victory...with the hopes of propelling Kerry to victory.
So we do in fact know that polls (in this case exist polls) are SOMETIMES falsified and deliberately distorted. Problem is, though, that in 2008...as you correctly note...the polls were correct on the outcome and the good ones were correct on teh margin (ie, Rasmussen).
A final point: most of the polls did in fact underestimate what McCain finally got. So, some of the pre-election day analysis that said McCain’s vote was underreported turned out to be correct...just not correct enough.
So what’s the action item? I suppose my take away, personally, is simply to watch Rasmussen, which I do.
And by Rasmussen, Romney has NOT won as of today.
Hopefully next week will bring positive movement.
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