Back on August 12, in my article "Nuts and Bolts in California," I not only successfully predicted all the results of the California recall election, I also predicted the incompetent struggle to understand what happened, after the polls were proven grossly inaccurate. (In all fairness, I missed exactly one prediction. I wrote that there would be one extra Republican candidate whose vote totals would not effect the outcome of the election. But I thought that hoeless Republican would be Bill Simon, rather than Tom McClintock.) I am curious about the methodology of RealClearPolitics. The only three polls that were close to the final pattern of this election across the board were conducted by Stanford University. For some reason, the source claims they did only one. They did three. And the reason they were closer than all the others to the final result is that THEY USED THE ACTUAL CALIFORNIA BALLOT rather than phone questions, to gauge the intentions of the potential voters.
The Editors of RealClearPolitics are usually pretty sharp cookies. But on this unique election, with the evidence in their hands, they are still missing the boat. Big time.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "Three People who Have it Coming," discussion thread. IF YOU WANT A FREEPER IN CONGRESS, CLICK HERE.
Hello, "Congressman." I followed your posts on the recall threads, and you most definitely did predict the outcome correctly. I also did, but on gut political instinct based on many years of involvement in grass-roots Republican politics here in the Los Angeles area.
RealClearPolitics.com did not do this case study, I did. I used the list of polls on their site. They only listed one for Stanford. Please use the links provided to see for yourself. I took those 20 polls as a CASE and tested their accuracy.
I'm just a member of the general public who has no pretensions, but does have a desire to evaluate the quality of the product pollsters sell. After all, many politicians make vital policy decisions only after checking the latest polls.