What happened in Colorado with Allard? (Vanity)

[Tennessean4Bush]

Can anyone explain what happened in Colorado? I mean, I had written it off and I do not think any poll caught the true lead Allard had. Anyone have a link to a good analysis of why all the polls seemed to be so badly wrong?

[Tennessean4Bush]

How did the governor actually perform against these same polls (I am talking about Denver Post and Rcky Mtn News primarily). I mean, can you see the same shift? Did the governor end up winning by 40% when the papers had him up by only 20%

[dirtboy]

Zogpiss should have trouble getting work now, but probably won't.

Depends upon what his employers want. There are two basic types of polls - those that try to find the truth and those that try to spin the truth. Look at the infamous Dick Morris poll after the Monica allegations broke - as the White House was claiming that the erupting scandal was no big deal, Morris quietly did a poll that discovered, much to Clinton's horror, that an admission then and there would lead to a solid majority of Americans calling for his resignation.

[ambrose]

Don't discount the fact that Strickland has a moustache. People do not elect guys with moustaches to the senate. Period. End of story. Prove me wrong.

Don't bring up John Corzine, because he has a moustache-beard combo, which is a whole different animal.

[Tennessean4Bush]

ROTFLMAO!

I am speechless. I am going to have to think about that one.

[NorCoGOP]

Don't know about the paper polls (don't live in Denver) but the news and radio were fairly accurate in their polling with Owens up by 30+ going into the election.

[ambrose]

Really, there isn't much to be said for Allard. He is probably one of the most obscure members of the senate and makes Gray Davis seem charismatic by comparison... but the idea that a liberal lawyer-lobbyist would win in Colorado is just laughable. With a better GOP candidate, the race would not have even been close. The other race the media kept pumping up as being close was the Texas senate race. Again, that race was never close for the same reasons.

[AndyTheBear]

As I have been saying since before Tuesday, the Republicans were probably undersampled in most polls. Before taking the poll, the pollster has to make assumptions based on historical data about the proportion of Pubs, Rats, Libertarians, Greens, others etc. are in what area. Then when they pre-qualify the people that take the poll to get the correct quota of each type. If they did not do it this way they would have to take a much much larger sample to get accurate results. The problem, as I see it, is that there are now more people who qualify themselves as Pubs, and fewer that qualify themselves as Rats--and nobody was doing the kind of expensive polling neccesary to show this.

I first suspected this when I noticed a higher then normal difference between the 'registered voter' vs 'likely voter' polls. Usually the 'likely voter' polls favor Pubs over Rats compared to the 'registered voter' polls. But this year the difference seemed larger (no objective measure here...they just seemed higher as I followed the polls). The only plausible explination that occured to me was that the rank and file Rats were not as committed then they used to be--indicating that at least some of them were so much less committed that they no longer qualified to be polled as Rats.

[Strider]

Can anyone explain what happened in Colorado?

I conduct polls all over the country, and, at least for the type of marketing research I conduct, it's very hard to get a good responsed rate in Colorado.

Therefore, I have to spend extra time and money to get accurate results. If political pollsters are having the same trouble I am, and not spending the extra money, they are not going to get an accurate picture.

The internal polling of smart candidates is going to be better than the average newspaper poll. Smart candidates will spend the extra money it takes to be accurate.

Maybe Allard's pollsters did a better job than others who surveyed the same market.

[js1138]

Apparently Republicans in the South do not talk to pollsters.

I turned down a pollster. I don't think it was any of the big ones, because they usually identify themselves immediately. They started the call by asking if I had made up my mind about the FL governpr's race, then asked if I'd like to share my decision. I said no.

[PolishProud]

According to a Fox News election day poll regarding the Allard-Strickland race, newly arrived Liberal voters canceled out native or long time Colorado conservative voters, but senior citizens went 53 to 46 for Allard. So much for the Dims' message of fear that Repubs would take away your social security. Contrary to the Dims' premise, Seniors are not stupid.

[dirtboy]

I conduct polls all over the country, and, at least for the type of marketing research I conduct, it's very hard to get a good responsed rate in Colorado.

Colorado is a very active state - lots of folks are at the gym nights and out in the mountains on weekends.

[dirtboy]

The problem, as I see it, is that there are now more people who qualify themselves as Pubs, and fewer that qualify themselves as Rats--and nobody was doing the kind of expensive polling neccesary to show this.

However, Allard's internal polls had no problem discerning the actual numbers, so IMO there could be some deliberate bias introduced as well.

[justanotherfreeper]

There was an article in "RollCall" about six weeks ago talking about pollsters worrying that caller ID was skewing their results. Apparently it is getting harder and harder to get enough people to poll, folks just hang up.

[wireplay]

Here is my take: Boulder, which is hippie-land, has very strong anti-growth measures and therefore is not adding to its leftist base. Meanwhile, the rest of Colorado continues to grow and it is almost all conservative.

I got lots of recorded messages from the republicans and even got one on election day saying "more democrats have voted in your area than republicans. go vote.". The recording was a lie (I don't know if Teller County has more than a couple of democrats) but it sure got my attention.

Good organization and a very conservative state.

IMHO, barring a change by the Democrats nationally, you can write them off as a competitive party in Colorado.

[The Vast Right Wing]

Michael Barone had a very simple answer. 25% of the Colorado electorate has moved their in the past 6 years. Most are Republican refugees from Californistan who didn't know Wayne Allard or vote for him in a previous election. When it came time to vote, these undecideds came home and voted for the man witht the R after his name. It wasn't really even close.

[Nephi]

When pundits were writing off Allard, I posted a couple of times saying I wasn't buying into it.

A few of us Coloradoans remember Allard's first senate run. He polled a few points in back of Tax Strickland, but won by a few points.

While I held my breath, I hoped that the media was doing their liberal best to skew the polls, like last time. Obviously, they were, Allard kicked Strickland's bundinghah.

[Strider]

Colorado is a very active state - lots of folks are at the gym nights and out in the mountains on weekends.

That's a good point. They are not particularly uncooperative. They are just hard to reach.

[Little Bill]

Allard like Bass in NH are always going to loose, good way to pick up walking around money if you are a betting man.

[Alberta's Child]

The polls could not possibly have been correct. Everyone knew that Republican governor Bill Owens would win big, so it was highly unlikely that Allard was really that far behind.

Here's a good illustration:

Suppose you poll 100 voters about the governor's race and find that the Republican is ahead, 60%-40%. Then suppose you poll the same 100 voters about the Senate race and find that the Democrat is ahead, 55%-45%. What this means, then, is that 15 out of the 60 voters (that's 25% of them) who supported the Republican candidate for governor also supported the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. This is a highly unllikely scenario, which means there is something wrong with the polling data.

[Alberta's Child]

Don't bring up John Corzine, because he has a moustache-beard combo, which is a whole different animal.

Don't bring up John Corzine, because he was elected by New Jersey voters -- which are a whole different bunch of animals.