Recent Polls Outside The Historical Norm For Party ID.

The Corner (National Review?) ^ | 17 October 2006 | Rich Lowry (?)

[Matchett-PI]

""The media, I think, want Kerry to win….That's going to be worth maybe 15 points." -- Evan Thomas, "Inside Politics," July 11, 2004"

Thanks so much! I could not think of his name for the life of me. I'm gonna bookmark that this time! :)

[PJ-Comix]

Conservatives either got rid of their home phones in favor of cell phones or they use caller ID to not answer calls coming from pollsters since they HAVE A LIFE. This skews the polling results quite a bit. People with NOTHING to do are happy to talk to pollsters...or any stranger.

[Arizona Carolyn]

When, if ever, was the last time you were called for a poll? In my case never. Yet, the GOP manages to call me often leading up to an election, so I know my number is out there, we get called polling for the local elections... so why never for the national level?

BTW, not just me or my husband, none of our GOP friends locally have ever been called, I've asked.

[xeno]

I sourced it from DiscoverTheNetwork.org: Evan Thomas

[billhilly]

We were convinced during the past presidential election that the Republicans were doomed, because the talking heads told us to be. How did that turn out?

[logician2u]

BTW, not just me or my husband, none of our GOP friends locally have ever been called, I've asked.

Yours is a common complaint, and one that discredits opinion polls in the minds of some people.

Of course, any one person's chances on being called in a national poll are just the same as any other person's. But not the same as all other persons' - who total only in the hundreds, even though thousands may be in the "pool" to be called. Many aren't home, don't answer or are in the middle of watching a movie or changing a diaper and can't take the time.

It's all in the sampling method, and the trade-off that has to be made between polling accuracy and the cost of interviewing 2x, 4x or 8x as many people to get more accurate results.

Take solace, if you can, from the remarks of Pauline Kael after Nixon won re-election in 1972: "I don't know a single person who voted for him."

Lucky for her, she was a movie reviewer and not a poll-taker.

[CyberAnt]

And .. the poll recently which said that 53% were more likely to vote democrat - it was OVERWEIGHTED BY 16% dems.

This is why we cannot stay home and we MUST VOTE for every repub!! Hold your nose if you have to - but don't be ignorant of the continued PRESS BIAS - WHICH WE ALL KNOW EXISTS.

They want you and me to be so offended by Foley .. that we'll stay home - AND ALLOW THEM TO WIN!! Don't fall for it.

[srmorton]

I think that this new emphasis on "intensity" is ridiculous. I am no more or less intense about voting this year than I am in any other year. If it is election day, I go vote. It is as simple as that. I believe that there are more people like me who vote Republican than there are that vote Democrat. I have no scientific evidence to support my hypothesis - it's just a gut feeling.

As Rush said on his show today, Dems always have these huge voter registration drives which gives them a lot of names of basically unmotivated voters since they did not care enough about voting to register on their own. On the other hand, Republicans offer their voters issues that motivate them to go and register to vote. Their GOTV efforts have a solid foundation of voters who will go to the polls even if they have to "walk barefoot over broken glass". Many Dem voters will not make it to the polls because it's raining, they had to get a manicure, they had to catch up on their beauty sleep, etc.

I will never forget the first time I voted. I loved President Ford because I thought that he had made the best of a bad situation by issuing a pardon to Richard Nixon. He was being vilified for that while at the same time Jimmuh Carter was promising the moon to persuade people to vote for him. I figured he knew that he could never do all the things he was promising which basically made him a liar in my eyes. We were living in Greensboro, NC, then and I remember standing in line for two hours to cast my vote for President Ford. I was crushed when NC narrowly went for Carter - the last time that NC "went blue" in a Presidential election. If NC had not gone for Carter, he would never have been POTUS and we would have been spared all the grief his disastrous term caused us as well as his sanctimonious pronouncements on every foreign policy decision made by GWB. On the other hand, his failed presidency helped to bring on eight years of RWR, the greatest POTUS of the twentieth century, which is a good thing.

[Arizona Carolyn]

Good post. My first vote was for Nixon's second term. I've never missed an election since -- all elections.

[SmoothTalker]

"We were convinced during the past presidential election that the Republicans were doomed, because the talking heads told us to be. How did that turn out?"

Were we? Here is the data on likely voter polls. Bush was winning almost all of them.


http://pollingreport2.com/wh2004a.htm

[WOSG]

Someone is wrong big time!"

Either a) the polls are lying or b) some number of people are giving up on calling themselves Republican.

We cannot discount the latter possibility.

[Intolerant in NJ]

They claim: "In the past 4 weeks, the composition of likely voters in NM1 has changed from a 5-point Democrat advantage to a 16-point Democrat advantage." - reputable pollsters use factors such as patterns of past voting behavior to determine "likely voters", and these are established and not given to change dramatically over four weeks - one or both of these samples were either nonrepresentative or they relied on questionable methods to determine who was "likely" to vote, like verbal reports which are unreliable...even now I feel that I am reluctant to go vote for Kean in our Senatorial race, but since I haven't missed an election - general, primary or schoolboard - in six years, I know I'll be out bright and early on November 7 to push the button.....

[LS]

Outpacing how? Registration? In 2004, Jay Cost showed clearly that the "new" Dem registrations were merely replacing union members who had left their communities, and there was no net gain. Ground game? Be serious. That's not even close. Money? No way.

So Ras, as in 2000, is delusional.

[LS]

Well, thank you. On this one, I'm either going to be Elijah the Prophet, or the biggest flop since Air America.

[ReaganRevolution]

He was saying that now more people are identifying themselves as democrat, over 5% more. He tried to say it was tied in VA, 39% dems and republican id. Hewitt said on it's face that is ridiculous. Rass thought that the only way DeWine can win Ohio is to go totally negative, that even if every republican who voted in 04, voted again he'd still lose. I'm not buying it.

[LS]

I don't either. It doesn't matter how they explain it, if 5% more people "identify themselves" as Dems, yet the voter registration rolls don't change (still GOP advantage in OH), then "where's the beef?" It still comes down to an oversampling of Dems by 5%, i.e., a DeWine victory.

[My2Cents]

Yeah, it was that doofus from Newsweek. He later backtracked on his boast, one, because it realized how stupid it was to admit they were trying to manipulate the electorate, and two, because they couldn't deliver on the 15%. I do suspect, however, that had the MSM even been somewhat fair and balanced, Bush would have won by 5-10% two years ago.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[Morgan in Denver]

Has this troubling information been troubling, or could it be media/Democrat hype to influence voters?

From past experience in 2002 and 2004, let alone before that, that is no question the media has polled left when voting results have gone right.

Rule of thumb is to add 5% points to the Republican in any poll and I predict you'll be closer than what is being touted by the press/media.

[hoyaloya]

Aren't most polls taken via phone?

More and more people these days have caller ID. I don't know about the rest of you, but if we don't recognize the number calling us, we don't answer.

Common sense says busier people (i.e., people with more demanding jobs, kids to ferry around, whatever), would be less likely to take calls from people we don't know than others.

In that environment, would it really be strange to have polls keep getting things wrong? I can honestly say I don't personally know a single person who considered themselves a Republican 2 years ago that has since changed their mind. On the other hand, I know one of my brothers has become an adamant Republican in that same time period (previously categorized as a "communist" no less).