Posted on 10/21/2012 11:37:40 AM PDT by dila813
Per Frank, Party affiliation follows the way a person is currently inclined to vote and party affiliation doesn't drive how someone votes.
We only ask the person after we have polled them who they currently self-identify with at the end of the poll for informational purposes.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
i think it is a mistake not to try to weight by party affiliation. It’s a guess, but so is the screen for likely voter. It also makes sense to reweight by gender and race, if voting behavior varies a lot by gender and racial lines.
The exit polls don’t have any issue with identifying “likely voters”, gender and race, but still can get it wrong due to high rates of non-response by specific voter groups, usually republicans. Reweighting by party as well as the other factors can control partly for that.
Hope and change! :-}
Gallup’s final presidential polls since 1960 have generally hit the GOP number or slightly underestimated it. The last two elections Gallup was low by about 2 pts for the GOP candidate. The only one they were really high for the GOP candidate was in 1988 when they predicted 56-44 for Bush, and it ended up being 53-46.1. Conversely, in 1980, they estimated Reagan at 47-44 (8 for Anderson), and that election ended up being 50.8-41-6.6.
If there is an error, the error would be in the average as well.
For whatever reason, the polls seem to get much more accurate right before the election.
With the early voting and vote by mail, I suspect when you get close enough to the election, you are almost already getting an exit poll.
This is despite the fact that twice as many Americans self identify as conservative compared to liberal.
He did say they preselect by gender and race.
If Romney is up outside the moe in their polls at the end of the month then it’s pretty damn certain that he will not only win he will also carry Ohio, Va, Fl, Co, Ia and maybe even Pa. If he’s inside the MOE then maybe we get a Bush/Gore replay. Wouldn’t that be fun? :-}
If you get all the other demographics profile correct then you don’t really need to weigh party affiliation, because that is something that can change with every political season.
The key here is getting all the known demographics profile correct.
I don’t think it will be close.
Popular vote breakdown - 54% R, 45% D and 1% Other.
I give Romney +2 and that means a landslide win in the Electoral College. He’ll get north of 300 EV and that hasn’t happened since 1988 for a GOP presidential candidate.
The perfect storm is shaping up in 2012!
I know many in my extended family consider themselves born democrats, they hate republicans so much and it seems to be ingrained within the family culture.
Yet, some of these people in my extended family are some of the most conservative people you are likely to run in to.
But they don’t follow the news, they don’t know what their party is doing, they really don’t know anything other than the are Democrats. It is really sad, they vote blindly for Democrats without knowing they are the antithesis of what they believe in.
I doubt it,
I could almost agree with you if they polled by geographical area, work status, and religion.
Thanks, I hadn’t looked at Gallup’s historical in many years. They’re uncannily accurate. You can see the ebb and flow during the conventions and debates. The swings can be very dramatic.
That’s what I thought I was saying; but I can see that I should have been clearer about it. Let me try again.
If Republicans are systematically less likely to talk to pollsters — then there is selection bias (a major source of sample error)in the results. There are two common ways to help prevent selection bias from skewing results in a poll:
1. Asking for affiliation (or sex, or whatever other categories matter) first. If (say) the proportion of Republicans was less than expected (based on the known proportion of registered Republicans in the population), then registered Democrats would be skipped, and only Republicans interviewed, until the sample proportions matched the known proportions in the population. This would help make the sample more representative of the population.
This technique is commonly used, where the sex of the respondent is the important variable. Surveyors will follow some rule (e.g. interview a male, then a female, etc.). If the rule says they need to interview a female next, the interviewer will skip all male respondents, until a female is interviewed. That works well, because you expect a roughly 50/50 division between the sexes. In the case of political polling, things are probably too complicated (too many party affiliations, different percentages, etc.) That leaves the second method.
2. Ask for affiliation after all other questions, and use that information in the analysis of the survey. If (say) the proportion of registered Republicans sampled was smaller than the proportion in the population — then the samples would be weighted mathematically in the analysis.
Both of the above techniques are common in survey research. Newport said that Gallup doesn’t use the first method. Fair enough — but, they should then be using the second method. Otherwise, their results could suffer from selection bias. If Republicans are systematically less likely to talk to pollsters — then there is selection bias in the results.
:-} I’m from New York City originally. Live in Ct now. My Dad was a union guy, a steamfitter. My Uncles were all union guys, steamfitters,iron workers etc. All WW2 vets, all democrats. All loved Kennedy, especially my Mom and my Aunts. I have never voted for a democrat in my life. My wife and I are conservatives in the pro life, pro gun, pro security sense. My sisters changed their democrat registration a few years ago but vote republican for longer than that. My brother is even more to the right than I am. My daughters, like me, have never voted for a democrat in a national election but have voted for local democrats they know personally. I won’t do that. I think democrats have so screwed up the American urban family that voting for even decent ones is not something I should do. Even my granddaughters stand up for Romney in middle school against the hordes of children begot by Ozombies.
My cousins are a mixed bag. On my Mom’s side they all vote republican and like us a lot of them are veterans. On my Dads side, they;re committed socialists for the most part with the exception of Timmy who is a long haired blues guitarist who loves Ronald Reagan and hates liberals. Timmy is my favorite cousin. LOL
I am pretty sure they do, at least any reputable polling firm would. (Age, Sex, Income, Race, Education, Region, and city/suburban/rural).
The problem with weighting by party affiliation is that it is the primary things you’re trying to measure: namely people’s political preference. When you weight it by a predetermined amount then you’re basically diluting the data with your predetermined outcome.
The reason a lot of pollster do it is because they are not confident in their demographic sampling being good enough, so they weigh it by certain factors so they can stay in line with other pollsters.
Gallup must feel confident enough in their sampling that they feel whatever party affiliation that comes out of their sample actually captures the true party preference of the population and therefore additional weighting is not necessary.
It’s hard to argue with that kind of historical record. With the exception of Dewey/Truman their record is, like you said, uncannily accurate once they hit the likely voter screen. I just don’t think you can argue with their methodolgy regarding party id. The key is the likely voter screen and they seem to be amazingly accurate with it. It’ can not be coincidence that their October/November polls are so predictive. They don’t just ask “ar you a likely voter?” and accept that at face value. They ask questions like, “Where is your voting precinct?” to screen out bs artists.
He said they are using no method, no weighting what so ever.
I agree. Also, there are fewer undecideds right before election day, which can increase the accuracy a bit.
sounds like your family has progressed, my family is from the mid-west in the deep country.
Many of them haven’t ever used the Internet.
They do admit to weighting polls by race though, and they are undersampling whites by about 10 percent.
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