Posted on 11/05/2008 8:03:53 AM PST by MAD-AS-HELL
I talked to some people today who went to vote, saw the long lines, and figured it was a lost cause anyway.
Self-fulfilling prophesy = polls
As I’ve said before, nothing annoys the Left more than democracy and freedom, because democracy and freedom mean that people can disagree with the Left. Kos will only be happy with one-party rule.
Before this thing so many folks ignored every single poll that didn’t put McCain within a couple points and even then monkeyed with the numbers to make it seem like McCain was wining. “Well if you change that likely voter percentage to this, and change this party weight there, etc, etc... you have McCain up by 28 points. Clearly New York is ours!”
If you so much as suggested “gee this might be a tight race and not a walk in the park for us” some people would attack you as a “troll” for not saying we’d win in a 300+ landslide. I think a lesson is that the polls aren’t, at least once you average all of them together, as bad as we’d have hoped they were. Obama was up something like +7 in the last average and won by six. Individual polls may be well off but average enough of them together and they have been fairly accurate the last few cycles.
I’m sure a lot of pollsters have an agenda and preferences but in the end those in the industry have to get paid. If they mess it up badly (and going from +7 to Obama losing would be massive) then nobody pays attention to them anymore and a new polling firm takes their spot in the marketplace. I think some folks massively overrated how in the tank they were. Or at least when averaged together how in the tank the whole industry was.
“Of course it will — it is how pollsters earn their money. They are fiction writers. Polls can be designed to yeild any result those that are paying for the poll, want to see and hear.
That is why polls should always be ignored and only mildly considered when within about two or three days of actual elections — never even think about poll results from known dupes and accomplices like CNN, etc.”
Fiction is an absurd word to be using today. At least once you average polls. Then they do tend to be a lot more accurate than “fiction.” They did predict what happened pretty accurately. I’m in NC. The poll of polls averages got the national percentage about right, they were spot on that the state was basically 50/50 (and it isn’t called as I type), and they got the senate more or less right. They were very good in places like Va and Fl too. If that isn’t enough to open your eyes to the fact that perhaps these aren’t things to just dismiss then you were not paying attention.
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