Barone said that every pollster that he knows is scared to death that America cannot be polled correctly today. Some fear for their future. Americans are not bound to land lines and so they poll cell phones also but then some of that data is not available. Out of all of the clls that pollsters make... only 9% of the calls that they make are even answered. Of those that do answer, less than seven percent will take the time to answer any polling questions.
He said the polling is missing something that is going on in every place he looks. He said he must rely on all that he has learned over the years and what he knows to be true. He then said he has been in most precincts and counties in the US that set trends and he has met and talked with the people at the local levels in both parties. He has studied their ground games and watched both operations. He extrapolates that up through county and then State and national. He looks at the momentum... where the candidates are campaigning and to who they are campaigning and what they are saying. He says when he does that he comes to a confident conclusion of at least 52-47 300+ EV for Romney.
When pressed for an example of trends not being caught, he pointed to Eastern Ohio and the huge increase in Evangelical and Catholic voters moving firmly to Romney. “They are not looking at them anywhere... they are not polling for them and they are not catching them”.
LLS
I’ve said this the last few days...
Ras and every other pollster has GIGO data - it all rests on a big assumption.
If that assumption is wrong - so is the result! No one can call the election this year because no one really knows if the model is a good fit to the data.
And I think they’re looking for data that validates their model. All the polls, including Ras are way off!