‘"The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense." (Why the Polls are skewed)

New York Magazine ^ | September 30, 2012 | Jason Zengerle

[PJ-Comix]

On the Friday after the Democratic convention, Tom Jensen tried to reach out and touch 10,000 Ohioans. He wanted to ask them, among other questions, whom they planned to vote for in November: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? This sort of thing is easier—and harder—than you might think. As the director of Public Policy Polling, Jensen has at his disposal 1,008 phone lines hooked up to IVR (interactive voice response) software that enables PPP to make 400,000 automated calls a day. All Jensen needs to do is feed the 10,000 phone numbers into a computer, record the series of questions he wants to ask, press a few buttons, and voilà: He has a poll in the field. That’s the easy part. The hard part starts with getting people to answer the phone. Beginning that Friday night around six and then five more times over the course of the next two days—in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings—PPP called those 10,000 Ohioans; by Sunday night at eight, only 1,072 of them had been reached. Still, for Jensen’s purposes, that was sufficient, and he got to work assembling his poll.

[PJ-Comix]

Jensen does his best to feed those anxieties. Like a record-company executive who leaks his best band’s new single, he begins dropping hints about PPP’s poll results as soon as the data starts coming in. “Things definitely looking good for Obama in the polls we started tonight,” he tweeted that Friday, a few hours after he sent the Ohio and four other polls into the field (or rather through the computer system). By Saturday morning, he was telling PPP’s more than 40,000 Twitter followers that those polls were “looking like … 2008.” And on Sunday night, a few hours before he posted the Ohio results, he tweeted this tidbit: “[L]ooks like Obama leads there by more than 2008 margin of victory.” So when Jensen revealed that PPP found Obama leading Romney 50 to 45 in Ohio—0.4 percent better than Obama had performed against John McCain in 2008 and, more important, two points more than Obama had led Romney in a PPP poll of Ohio in August—it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Riiiight... Because Recession Obama is going to do so much better now than he did in 2008. New York Magazine is a liberal outfit but even they are skeptical of the RIDICULOUS polling results we are getting.

[PJ-Comix]

. Polling involved employing live operators to call potential respondents, ask them questions, and record their responses. This was incredibly expensive. But in 1990, Leve, a former newspaper reporter who’d gone to work for Citibank on improving its ATMs and home-banking operations, had a brainstorm: What if the same IVR technology banks used to let people manage their accounts from home was used to collect public opinion? Instead of punching No. 1 to make a withdrawal or punching No. 2 to make a deposit, the person would punch No. 1 to indicate a preference for Candidate A or punch No. 2 to indicate a preference for Candidate B. For one thing, it would mean you could conduct a political poll with IVR for about a tenth of what one with a live operator cost.

Robocalling. You know what I do when I receive a robocall for ANY reason? I immediately hang up. I have better things to do with my life. So basically our polling results are being determined by folks who have nothing better to do in their lives than wasting it with robocall pollsters. Think that doesn't drastically skew the results?

[duckman]

Try www.unskewedpolls.com supposedly non partisan.

[when the time is right]

Also, how many people are on the “do not call” list. How many people have caller ID so do not answer their phone unless they recognize the number? And the big one....how many people only have cell phones which he cannot reach?

This election may just prove that with all the new technology polls are now a thing of the past.

[Jim Noble]

When they call and ask to speak to the registered voter, I tell them that all the registered voters are out buying more ammo, and hang up.

I wonder if they count that as votes for Romney?

[PJ-Comix]

And the big one....how many people only have cell phones which he cannot reach?

BINGO! From the article:

Even as recently as four years ago, it was estimated that only 18 percent of adults owned a cell phone but no landline, and Pew found in a postelection study that the difference between surveys that were based only on landline interviews versus those that included cell-phone respondents was “smaller than the margin of sampling error in most polls.”

Today, some demographers think that perhaps a majority of households either don’t have or don’t answer a landline. In other words, ignoring cell phones risks ignoring more than half of America. “I don’t know how you can in good conscience release polls in this day and age without that group factored in,” says Leve...

[ryan71]

The dims want the polls tight because when Romney wins by a large margin they are going to contest the election.

[LS]

Great answer LOL,

[LS]

Exactly right, and barring that, the left will use the polls to already de-legitimize a Romney presidency by saying, “How can this be?! Obama was sooo far ahead in the polls!”

[norwaypinesavage]

“If the whole world was releasing unweighted polls,” he says, “Mitt Romney would be heading to an easy election.”

Therein lies the lie. If you randomly call 10,000 people, Romney wins. ALL of the polls telling otherwise, are "adjusted" to make Obama the winner.

The answer is simple: Don't believe the polls.

[Sooth2222]

They called 10,000 people.

89.28% refused to answer or didn't answer the telephone. 5.36% support Obama. 4.82% support Romney.

10.72% of an Ohio sample were willing to give personal information to a perfect stranger over the telephone.

And they are basing conclusions on that poll sampling technique? Is this about the same kind of polling technique that GM used to show that people would buy Chevy Volts?

How is the margin of error not greater than 100%?

[Kenton]

In large part, I’d say it’s call screening. I rarely answer calls that don’t have a name that I recognize from the caller. I’ve blown off hundreds of robo-calls in the past few months.

[Roccus]

I wonder if they count that as votes for Romney?

They prolly report you to Homeland Security.

[Grampa Dave]

The link below is a time machine going back to October 2004 when the maggot infected mediots and their knee pad pollsters were declaring Kerry would be president:

http://search.comcast.net/?cat=web&con=betac&form_submit=1&q=Kerry+ahead+of+Bush+in+polls&top_SearchSubmit=

They were wrong then and now!

[Grampa Dave]

i>THIS JUST IN: Obama's winning campaign slogan:

"The world owes you a living...no matter how lazy, dumb, slovenly, drunk, drug-addicted...no matter how many convictions for distribution/possesion, armed robbery, domestic violence, rape/sexual assualts, murder and mayhem, no matter how many screwups, jobs lost, kids abandoned. Illegals and aliens from other worlds are welcome to our free buffet!"

"The world owes you a living and Obama's gonna make sure US taxpayers pay for it."

““The modern bread line in America is over 48 million people long now, it’s called “Food Stamps”.

---

To: All

Help End The Obama Era In 2012
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Your Monthly and Quarterly Donations
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[Grampa Dave]

i>THIS JUST IN: Obama's winning campaign slogan:

"The world owes you a living...no matter how lazy, dumb, slovenly, drunk, drug-addicted...no matter how many convictions for distribution/possesion, armed robbery, domestic violence, rape/sexual assualts, murder and mayhem, no matter how many screwups, jobs lost, kids abandoned. Illegals and aliens from other worlds are welcome to our free buffet!"

"The world owes you a living and Obama's gonna make sure US taxpayers pay for it."

““The modern bread line in America is over 48 million people long now, it’s called “Food Stamps”.

---

To: All

Help End The Obama Era In 2012
Your Monthly and Quarterly Donations
Help Keep FR In the Battle!

Help End The Obama Era In 2012
Your Monthly and Quarterly Donations
Help Keep FR In the Battle!

[Grampa Dave]

“In large part, I’d say it’s call screening. I rarely answer calls that don’t have a name that I recognize from the caller. I’ve blown off hundreds of robo-calls in the past few months.”

Many if not most tv service providers with phone bundling show who is calling on the tv screen.

Our grandkids, nephews and nieces learned by the time they could count to never answer any 800 call.

Then, they learned to never answer “unidentified caller”.

So that reality is there with us still with land lines.

A large % of our younger relatives have cell phones and usually can’t be reached as their #’s are unlisted. So how is any legit polling service getting hold of them. If a robo call does get through, their caller id warns them of unwanted calls.

I’ve posted before, my wife has noticed that many of her single women friends over age 60 don’t have land lines and use cell phone service. Only close friends and relatives get their cell #.

[Arrowhead1952]

I wonder how many of the calls are going to 0 bummer phones.

[CommerceComet]

From the article:

Today, some demographers think that perhaps a majority of households either don’t have or don’t answer a landline. In other words, ignoring cell phones risks ignoring more than half of America. “I don’t know how you can in good conscience release polls in this day and age without that group factored in,” says Leve

That is why I believe that much of this criticism about skewed samples is misguided. Oversampling of Democrats is being done to partially compensate for the for those who don't have land lines and are predominately Democrat in voting tendencies. Professional pollsters are not trying to skew the data to mislead anyone but to try to provide more accurate results.

The article did refer to this adjustment as "guesswork." A better term would have been educated guesswork. These adjustments are based on massive amounts of data, so it is not wild guesswork on their part. There is a reason that all the major polling organizations (including Rasmussen's recent polls) have over-sampled Democrats. If only one of the organizations did it, I would conclude that they are out to lunch but if all of them are doing it, I assume it is because they know something that most newspaper columnists and political junkies don't.

I think that it is proper to conclude that Romney is trailing at this moment but that he is within striking distance.

I don't buy the idea that all the polls are wrong. When was the last time that the polls were seriously wrong in a Presidential election? Dewey-Truman? The 1980 election doesn't really qualify because although the last round of polls showed a close election, all of them showed a substantial movement toward Reagan over the last weekend. Presidential polling has a pretty good track record over the years.

[no-s]

When they call and ask to speak to the registered voter, I tell them that all the registered voters are out buying more ammo, and hang up.

I wonder if they count that as votes for Romney?

hehheheheheheh...ha. ROTFL.