Posted on 11/11/2006 8:24:50 AM PST by NYC Republican
Take a look at Ras' homepage... Look at the closest races, or if you prefer, all of the races they polled. Pretty darned accurate. http://rasmussenreports.com/
Thanks Freespirited. I would add the "McCain/Rudy can't win to the list"... Not quite as off as people thinking Hillary can't win, but close
Yes, I'm kidding. RCP did a great job, too.
I'll have my crow grilled, please, with a nice side of fava beans and a dry Chianti.
McCain will be the darling of the media from now until/if he wins the primary... THEN the media will turn on, him in a flash, implying he's mentally unstable, too old, not well, too extreme (anti-abortion), etc... Watch, mark my words...
Why would the final poll be a worse indicator of the actual election results than polls 2-3 weeks prior to the election?
You'd have to subscribe to a conspiracy theory, that ALL polling outfits are LYING about the numbers... I'm surprised even Rush moved that BS along... I really have a great deal of respect for him, but his getting involved in the Stem Cell debate, and this, lost some points in my book.
When Ras, under PortraitofAmerica.com, had Bush winning by 8 over Gore, was he biased the other way??? Come on now. Wake up people.
It will be deja vu all over again, because that's exactly what happened the last time out for McCain.
Cherry-picking, no?
Agreed
"Freepers need to really try and develop clarity. It's one of the big deficiencies on FR. Without clarity you will never get sound, meaningful analysis. "
The level of willful ignorance, and the anger and vigor with which it was defended on some of the threads here was shocking.
I don't think I'm being overly optimistic. The legitimacy of the polls has been a front and center issue at FR for the past few months, and the election has clearly demonstrated the utter wrongness of lots of Freeper thinking on the subject. It's rare that an idea is shot down so decisively and so painfully and with so many people paying close attention. The other issues you mentioned haven't had anything close to this kind of treatment. If FR doesn't learn from this, then FR is unteachable, and I don't think that's the case (but we'll see!).
I, for one, will be VERY clear from this point on, when I think that fellow FReepers are being delusional... I LOVE this site, but as I had posted a while ago, on a sep thread I started, these types of denials are just counter-productive.
Actually, here's the thread I started in June, on these same topics http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643972/posts
Hey- you're being pinged onto a non-Savage thread!
Hey, I did my part to counter all of that. See post #73
The 1948 Dewey defeats Truman poll was done in 1948, and since then, sampling techniques have radically improved. The 1948 polls used phone sampling, and many poorer people in 1948 didn't have telephones. Not as bad as the famous Literary Digest poll in the 1930s, but still not good.
Polling has gotten more accurate, but there have been some hiccups. First, in many cases when a Black is running against a white candidate, many people will lie about supporting the black candidate. However, this isn't bad sampling technique, because if you asked everyone in the voting area who'd they'd vote for, you'd probably get an overrepresentation of blacks.
In the early to mid 1990s, there was another problem with phone polling. Up until then, the middle digits of all area codes had been 0 or 1, but the explosive growth in internet, faxes and the like caused new area codes to be introduced. Several national pollsters omitted these area codes, either because they had on file the old numbers with the old area codes or their automated equipment couldn't dial the new area codes. This of course eliminated suburban and exurban areas, as inner cities kept the old area codes and rural areas didn't get new area codes either. But this has long since been corrected, and was probably only a problem around the 1992-1996 cycles.
Awesome post
I don't buy the line that everyone wants to be a winner, so a GOPer will vote for a Dem in that scenario? BS
bump for later
"Hey, I did my part to counter all of that. See post #73"
Sorry if you misunderstood, I liked your posts, and I was strongly agreeing with all of you.
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