Posted on 09/21/2012 6:31:56 AM PDT by TonyInOhio
I reached out to Republican pollster John McLaughlin for yesterday’s piece on how undecided voters are likely to break, and he made some separate comments about polls, their impact on motivation for each side, and how the campaigns want to use skewed poll numbers to depress the opposition.
How he’s defining likely voters right now: “For the most part we’re polling likely voters. It’s a loose screen. We keep people who say they’re only somewhat likely to vote. But the vast majority say that they are definitely or very likely to vote. They’re voting.”
How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”
On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51-48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been President. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”
What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are “not enthusiastic” to vote or non voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this. Then there’s the debate between calling off a random digit dial of phone exchanges vs a known sample of actual registered voters. Most polls favoring Obama are random and not off the actual voter list. That’s too expensive” for some pollsters.
This thread does not show anything like that - It just shows the spin from the guy whose job is to spin numbers, not to look at them.
The polls averages were correct in 2008, correct in all the Senate races in 2010 (if anything, they were a little too optimistic for the GOP), and they are likely correct now.
I disagree. Gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Well, Romney is worse than McCain.
__________________________________________________________
My dad once told me that opinions are like @$$ holes. Everybody has one and most of them stink.
My opinion is vastly different than yours. I can’t imagine a worse candidate than McCain.
Romney is organized. Romney is intelligent. Romney wants it. He has worked for the last 6 years for this. He has spent a fortune to obtain the nomination and will not waste his investment.
Obama is a Communist, Romney knows this even if he doesn’t say the words he says enough that if you read between the lines you realize he know it.
I’m liking Romney more the more I hear him. He picked a good man for vice president and to me that says a lot about the man who picked him.
I’m thinking we have a much better than even chance to win.
Yep, and they were correct in 1980, 1984, 1994 etc., right? The undecideds will break hard for Romney towards the close of the campaign.
>>”Romney is worse than McCain”
> I disagree. Gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
The test will come in November. McCain lost by 7.5% in the middle of the greatest financial meltdown in 70 years. Romney is running as a challenger in much more favorable conditions for him. If he can keep it within, say 3%, I will take my words back.
And to give a summary of this thread - Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Of course, today isn’t Election Day. What do you gather from the polls as they are right now and what do you think they will be reporting near Election Day?
Polls are historically since Dewey rather accurate
However, the sampling in this round does seem to always except with Rassmussen be using 2008 as representative for their samplings per party.
hence it is a possibility that if the samplings are weighted too high for Democrats this time around in most polls I've seen that they could actually be wrong
aside from Rassmussen and some of the less known outfits I've seen none that are not oversampling Democrats by at least 4-6 points and also with a huge ambiguous self identified Independent bloc
if this were true it would indicate polling propaganda on the scale of the 2004 exit polls purposeful subterfuge
this time around obviously all gloves are off for the media and their polling arms no question
but...given how abysmal Obama is, our numbers should be creaming him...
trending demographics are killing us number one
second, he and his team are lackluster and playing it too safe with all that cash unless they plan something huge towards the end
i think most have already made up their minds
The polls will only move 2-3% at most between now and the election day.
In 2004, Kerry was down by 5% at this point in the campaign, he made it closer and won by 2.5%.
In 2008, Obama went up by 6% in the RCP average in late September (after the financial meltdown), and won by 7.5%.
Right now, looking at the state polls (and ignoring robopolls), Romney is down by about 5%. I hope he can replicate Kerry and come back a little, but would not bet on it. After all, the media will always declare Obama the debate winner - and Romney cannot count on any debate bounce, which helped Kerry in 2004.
On practical level, there are Senate seats in AZ, NV, MT, IN which can and must be help (or flipped, in MT case), but will be very close. I will donate to some of those, and encourage everybody to do so.
>>I had got so sick of the liberal MSM trying to coronate Obama and dispirit Republican’s with their cooked polls, that I’ve given up listening to the news....So far, I’ve been doing it for one week, at it’s amazing how much better I feel...even my blood pressure is back in the normal range.<<
The take-away line in the article was this one: “The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this.”
And the reason we’ll see a lot more is that it works, as evidenced by your blood pressure comment, as well as a personal observation of my own bp.
But we’re both going to vote regardless. The real impact is on those less-politically-involved people who would vote for Romney, but don’t want to wake up Weds. morning and find out they lost. It’s not about Romney losing; it’s about them losing.
So, the current push by the MSM is to build momentum to achieve a 2008 rerun, where Obama is viewed as unbeatable. If they succeed, Romney voters will stay home, partly because they see no point, and partly because they don’t want to wake up having voted for the guy who lost.
This strategy, however, only works if that momentum actually builds, but in the current environment, that’s not likely to happen. And if we go into election day with the numbers close, well, people love a horse race, and they’ll go to the polls. This could be especially true of the previous Obama voters who have changed their minds and intend to vote for Romney, if they vote at all. If it’s not viewed as close, they’re likely to stay home rather than wake up a loser; if it’s a horserace, they might show up and try to pick another winner.
>> However, the sampling in this round does seem to always except with Rassmussen be using 2008 as representative for their samplings per party.
Rasmussen is not calling cellphones - that’s why his poll is cr@p. He skips about 25-30% percent of the households, and those which he misses have a definite Dem tilt (younger, more urban etc...)
I will be surprised if the exit polls this year match Dem +8 result from 2008, but D +5 electorate is quite possible this time.
2014 is another matter, the midterm electorate is always much smaller and older than in presidential years. But 2014 is still far away.
The media polls are polling 5-11 points higher then current party registration and 4 points over 2008 Democrat turn out
You REALLY think Obama is going to turn out more voters in 2012 then he did in 2008?
The Media pollsters are basing their samples on that assumption.
Of course now we discover per the link in post 49 that you’re on FR and this thread doing just what this article is all about.
Glad you have feelings. Do you have any data to back up your opinions?
Oh yeah, I was planted on FR in 2004 to undermine Romney’s candidacy.
No, what calling cell phones does is massively tilt the sample to young voters. That demographic is massively pro Obama. So when you add cell phones you increase the Obama biase 5-7 point out of sync with actual voting blocks
They are forgetting...
* The @$$ whoopin' they got in 2010'
* Chick-A-Fil Support Day.
We have not gone away, neither has our passion and our anger.
They are discounting the lack of support and changes around the Margins for Obama:
* The Youth Vote that Obama had the last time that are living in the basement, who will vote for Romney or not at all.
* Jews who will vote for Romeny and numbers not seen since Reagan in 1980.
* Blacks who will just stay home, since the trill is gone...
To copy a phrase from a Freeper the other night..
Broken Glass Baby, Broken Glass...
Hi John
I would not waste your time. This is a emotion driven, not rational, poster. Anyone who says the below is so out of touch with political reality as to be disillusional
Era of Voting for RINOs is Declared Over
Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:33:48 PM · 107 of 200
ubaldus to CharlotteVRWC
America survived 3 years of Obama, and will survive another 5 just fine. Obama is a lousy manager and a mediocre politician, with GOP in control of the House nothing will pass anyway, and in 2014 the usual midterm electorate will increase the GOP majority, even if the economy grows (and it probably will grow at 3%, 3.5% at best). In any case, Romney will not do anything materially different from Obama, and since the real fiscal crisis is about 10-12 years away, the deadlock is the best we should expect in the next presidential cycle or two.
I see no point in voting for Romney, given the choices the second term for Obama may be preferable, and perhaps in 2016 we can have some decent candidates.
Roughly 90 million people eligible to vote in 2008 didn’t show up at the polls...where are they, and what will they do in 2012?
Rassmussen argues that cell phones over weigh to idealistic youth and that you can't tell if you are getting that voting household as easily as if you call the home and that folks are not yet used to solicitions on cell phones like they are on their home phones so he considers them less reliable
but really that is all sort of an unknown science just yet about cell phones so you could be correct or not...it's hard to say
polls samplings being what they are I think Dems cannot turnout anymore than 2-3 points more than GOP for GOP to win with their own bloc and Independents..in today's electorate
the vote that matters is the white vote...I am ignorant of poll samplings based on race to be honest
but the consensus seems to be that 58-61% of whites need to vote for GOP if they turnout in normal numbers..i think it was 55% in 2008 and 62% in 2010
in 1980 we only needed 51-53% of white vote to win
the order is much taller...and will become unattainable at some point though in my home state where they are surrounded by the evidence of our future (and our worst past ironically), whites vote 88-90% GOP
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