“The other big problem with election polling, though not a new one, is that survey respondents overstate their likelihood of voting. It is not uncommon for 60 percent to report that they definitely plan to vote in an election in which only 40 percent will actually turn out. Pollsters have to guess, in effect, who will actually vote, and organizations construct “likely voter” scales from respondents’ answers to maybe half a dozen questions, including how interested they are in the election, how much they care who wins, their past voting history and their reported likelihood of voting in this particular election. Unfortunately, research shows there is no single magic-bullet question or set of questions to correctly predict who will vote, leaving different polling organizations with different models of who will turn out.”
I noticed in one recent poll 80% of respondents said they were registered and 99% of those said they were likely voters LOL!
Now, aome rare polls pay the cost to get voter info and only call people on the voter list. These can make a reasonable estimate of ‘likely voters’.
“because the sample of names is derived from lists of known voters, we know by definition that the person we are seeking is indeed a registered voter. Working off a voter list also provides the pollster with the voter’s actual party registration, as well as his or her frequency of voting in past elections, since this information is contained on the official voting records. This information can also be used to ensure that the sample is aligned properly to the state’s actual party registration and in identifying which voters are most likely to vote.”
Every summer the Rs are polling 6+ points behind their final numbers. Rs have conventions too: so IMO it’s strange. (Obama is different- he had 15% racist climb-over-broken-glass-to-vote-for-him support. Very unusual!
All that is true and yet somehow, a majority of national polling organizations correctly predicted the 2012 presidential election given a plus/minus 3 point margin of error.
2012 Polling Accuracy (Obama won by 3.9%) Actual Result-Obama: 51.1%/Romney-47.2%
Final poll released before the 2012 Election
Politico/GWU/Battleground-(O)47-(R)47
Rasmussen Reports-(R)49%-(O)48
InvestorsBusinessDailyTIPP-(O)50-(R)49
YouGov/Economist-(O)49-(R)47
Gravis Marketing- (R)48-(O)48
JZAnalytics/Newsmax-(O)50-(R)49
UPI/CVoter-(O)49-(R)48
Ipsos/Reuters-(O)48-(R)46
Associated Press/GfK-(R)47-(O)45
Rand-(O)50-(R)46
CNN/Opinion Research-(R)49-(O)49
Gallup-(R)50-(O)49
ABC News/Washington Post-(O)50-(R)47
Monmouth University-(O)48-(R)48
DailyKos/SIEU/PPP-(O)50-(R)48
Democracy Corps-(O)49-(R)45
Angus Reid-(O)51-(R)48
NBC News/Wall Street Journal-(O)48-(R)47
Pew Research-(O)50-(R)47
Quinnipiac U. Polling Institute-(O)49-(R)45
CBS News/New York Times-(O)48-(R)47
National Journal-(O)50-(R)45
Fox News (R)46-(O)46