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/
I learned one lesson from this and that is don't believe internals you get from some folks because they were painting too rosy a picture.
We had no message and were too laid back with getting out there with telling the American people when there was good news. Our leaders in D.C. sat back until it was too late to make a difference while the Democrats got conservative Dems (?) still not convinced they are that conservative and got the independent vote.
Also in close races, Acord may have come into play as they registered people from cemetaries and then cast absentee ballots for those dead people. Last count it was over 300,000 ballots they submitted that were suspect.
That is also a Republican problem of our Congress for not demanding along with the President that voter registration laws be changed to require proof of citizenship to vote and ID to vote in federal elections. They cannot tell a state what to do except when it is a federal election.
But the main reason we got beat is that our candidates had no clear message and grew government, the budget, and didn't pass a comprehensive immigration bill. We didn't give voters in close races a reason to vote Republican IMHO. We played prevent defense instead of offense and got burned just like they do in football games.
My two cents!
Oh no, I got that. Thanks
the puzzle is why Rove acted like he had "68 polls" that disagreed with the "public polls" and then had no apparent strategy to cope with the shots below the water line ,like Foley.
the most recent extensive experience prior to 11/7/06 was the '04 exit polling which was skewed, distorted and politicized. Skepticism was warranted.
the Corker- Ford results (see post #9) vs the poll numbers say you're wrong, but I've heard many lefties make this point while making a case for crypto-racism.It's one of those lies everybody believes.
The GOP should have known something like that would come up, but didn't respond. What a disgrace
I don't think it's a case of take it or leave it. Each poll has to be examined carefully. The exit polls, for example, on election day oversampled Dems by 7 percent. That's why Fox News quit using them to declare races and started followin the tabulated returns. And don't forget the claims of gains of 40 and 50 seats the House by some very prominent pollsters. It was nowhere near there. And the Senate shifted on the vapors of a handful of votes.
I wonder whether the Haggard thing had more effect than anyone could imagine in blunting the R recovery that Pew, et al, had picked up.
{The GOP GOTV acually delivered extra votes to the rats}
How?!
secret ballot
By itself, nope, but coupled with Foley, Abramson, etc, surely
That's what so many otherwise-intelligent fellow FReepers fail to understand... Even if the pollsters over-sample Dems by 7%, that ONLY results in an additional 2% for their side!!! Not 7%...
How?
Not all of the voters contacted by the GOP GOTV efforts actually ended up voting for the GOP.
But we today have some final turnout numbers, and the numbers showed that unlike 2002 and 2004, the Dems turned out in higher percentages, and that in some states (including OH) our turnout was a little down.
That suggests that Rs, rather than voting for Ds, stayed home a little, and extra Ds came out over 2002. Given that, my model for predicting turnout, hence, poll error, was correct as far as it went. No one---certainly not pollsters---can anticipate "extra" turnout. Anyway, we were tracking turnout at 1:00 and it was really good, leading us to think that it would be a re-play of 2004. But all our people who were going to vote, voted early. So after 1:00, we got just 20% more of our voters, whereas in 2004, we got about 40% more.
If you want to get technical, I'm still 2 for 3 (2002 and 2004). But next time I will take the polls much more seriously and assume they are accurate until proven differently.
That's exactly my point, they shouldn't and, in fact, I'd expect them to be much closer. But the polls weeks and months ahead of time, which one would expect to be far less predictive, are what people spend months and weeks talking about.
Of course they can, simply compare then to the final result.
You'd have to subscribe to a conspiracy theory, that ALL polling outfits are LYING about the numbers
No I wouldn't. I'd simply have to point out that a lot can happen, and did happen, in the last months and weeks of this election.
Now, for the record, I looked at the individual Ras Senate polls and they did cover a wide variety of times. My interpretation of "final" was faulty - they were the last polls but weren't necessarily recent. Five were in the week before the election, thirteen between one and four weeks before and six more than a month before. The oldest poll was three months before the election. I analyzed the data and the polls are not obviously unfair but there is a definite deterioration of predictiveness with age.
Thank pal
That's ridiculous. You know it's a snapshot in time. So much can change in two weeks, and so much did.
Good strategy LS.
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