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What happened in Colorado with Allard? (Vanity)

Posted on 11/07/2002 11:14:32 AM PST by 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?


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Colorado
KEYWORDS: allard; colorado; polls; senate
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To: Tennessean4Bush
The polls also did not account for a huge GOP GOTV effort in the key states, project called "STOMP"...
41 posted on 11/07/2002 12:06:22 PM PST by eureka!
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To: Strider
They are not particularly uncooperative. They are just hard to reach.

And even if you have their cell phone number, a lot of times you can't keep a call going for more than a couple of minutes. I tried one time to make a cell call coming down I-70 into Denver. Got cut off four times in five miles - the moutains create a lot of dead zones. I live a little over a mile from I-70 west of Denver, and couldn't make a cell call unless I went to the bottom of my driveway.

42 posted on 11/07/2002 12:07:13 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: Tennessean4Bush
Whatever Allard did, please bottle some of it, and send it to California.

It should be kept on ice, for use by some future, competent Republican candidate for governor.

Or in two year, against Boxer.
43 posted on 11/07/2002 12:07:30 PM PST by truth_seeker
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To: Tennessean4Bush
The polls are off -- ironically for the same reason that caused the pollsters to call it for Dewey in '48 -- telephone surveys.

Pollsters do not call cell phones, and often are ignored by people who have caller id. So their samples have a disproportionate number of people with land-lines and no caller id. Who are they? Typically poorer and less sophisticated -- Democrats. Depending upon the state this could give a 5% to 15% bias in favor of the Democrats in a poll.

Additionally people are less likely to open their doors to door-to-door interviewers, so even that won't work.

Hoo-ah. Bad polls forever!
44 posted on 11/07/2002 12:07:32 PM PST by No Truce With Kings
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To: Strider
Pleased to meet you. I conduct polls all over the country too (director of election polling for SurveyUSA, go to http://www.surveyusa.com to see how well we did Tuesday).

Other pollsters missed Colorado, but WE got it right. In 1996 Allard won 51-46 and our poll had it 51-46. This year, Allard won 51-45 and our poll had it 50-46.

We did well almost everywhere this year, though we got South Carolina wrong.

45 posted on 11/07/2002 12:10:31 PM PST by VeritatisSplendor
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VNS was broke within the first hours of election day...this was the BIG BOY of polling...if IT doesn't work why do we expect pre-election polls to work?
46 posted on 11/07/2002 12:13:25 PM PST by willgetsome
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To: No Truce With Kings
Hoo-ah. Bad polls forever!

I'll admit that it's harder to conduct an accurate poll, but we still get accurate projections to the market.

We have ways to make you talk :-)

Voice your opinion. Be heard. Companies can't give you what you want, if you don't tell them what it is.

The increasing cost of polling, like any other cost, is passed on to consumers.

47 posted on 11/07/2002 12:16:03 PM PST by Strider
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To: Tennessean4Bush
I reside in N. Boulder County (unfortunately one of the few counties in Colorado that went for Strickland). My town is very conservative and I believe there was overwhelming support for Allard here. Unfortunately, the city of Boulder tends to dominate the voting toward any and all rats that run for office and they skew the entire county with their liberal views and make the rest of us look like the nuts they are. Stickland would have been a embarrassment for our state. I am elated that Wayne Allard won a second term!
48 posted on 11/07/2002 12:17:39 PM PST by cybergal
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To: VeritatisSplendor
go to http://www.surveyusa.com to see how well we did Tuesday

I go there religiously. Nice work. It's like I said earlier, if you do it right, you'll get good results.

49 posted on 11/07/2002 12:18:34 PM PST by Strider
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To: dirtboy
However, Allard's internal polls had no problem discerning the actual numbers, so IMO there could be some deliberate bias introduced as well

I suspect bias, but not neccesarily deliberate. I just think that the press in genral, like most of the non-political types are afraid of offending the Rats' sensibilites--a conditioned response to years of the Rats reacting angrily to those who question (or even seek to clairify) their core valeus. Seems to me part of being conservative, is to quit giving the Rats the benefit of every possible doubt and start looking at things more honestly. So I would not be suprised if conservatives tend to take better samples when lacking the empirical evidence then someone in the media.

50 posted on 11/07/2002 12:21:54 PM PST by AndyTheBear
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To: Tennessean4Bush
Any explanations on why it seemed like every pollster and pundit missed Colorado so badly? Did it really break so strongly on election eve? Was there a poll that showed an 8 pt lead for Allard (Wasn't that the final tally)?

While I worried about the race, I personally always felt Allard would win. His re-elect numbers were weak, yet he led in all but one or two polls where he trailed by a point. Allard never really generated much momentum, but neither did Strickland. And Strickland was already fairly well known, so he didn't have as much room to grow as some challengers. Allard had more money than Strickland, and he had already defeated Strickland in 1996. Colorado leans GOP anyways, and there are even more registered Pubbies now than in '96. And Gov. Owens was very popular and up for re-election. And having the President on his side didn't hurt either. I predicted Allard by 4 points (51-47%). Haven't seen the final margin yet.

51 posted on 11/07/2002 12:22:21 PM PST by Coop
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To: dirtboy
We worked the phone lines all weekend and out of over a thousand calls I know I made, I had maybe ten people who were rude or not enthused. One young man (late teens) told me his dad would definitely vote. He explained his dad told him there were 2 kinds of people in the United States, Americans and democrats. People were pumped.

TC

52 posted on 11/07/2002 12:30:07 PM PST by I_be_tc
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To: Strider
"Companies can't give you what you want, if you don't tell them what it is."

The last thing I want is politicians "giving me what I want." I want a 20-hr workweek, fifty babes throwing themselves on me, and unlimited free cheeseburgers. But what I want is not necessarily healthy (especially if my spouse catches me) or good for my long-term well-being. The Clinton years were marked by poll-driven pols that trimmed their sails to the latest survey of "what the voting public wants."

That's not being a leader. Being a leader is determining what people need -- before they themselves realize it -- then spending your efforts to convince them. "W" done that brilliantly with the death tax, tax relief, and yes, even the war on terrorism.

The one thing that bugged me about the Contract with America was that it was so poll-driven. Not that any single point was bad, but that it was the product of focus groups and polls. Then, when the polls started shifting the Reps did too, ceding the initiative to Omamma bin Laidoften for the next five years.

53 posted on 11/07/2002 12:32:36 PM PST by No Truce With Kings
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To: No Truce With Kings
good point.
54 posted on 11/07/2002 12:37:17 PM PST by AndyTheBear
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To: Tennessean4Bush
The Beltway Boys said that 25% of CO was undecided, many of whom had recently moved there; and most of whom were Republicans. They just didn't show up in the polls b/c they were undecided. Also, on one radio show, I heard a caller say that three of the counties, heavily Republican, had voted earlier, and therefore would not show up in the exit polls. Although we did not have exit polls anyway, I wondered if this could have skewed results since they had already voted.
55 posted on 11/07/2002 12:43:48 PM PST by twigs
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To: Tennessean4Bush
The fading accuracy of polling

I am writing this column the afternoon before the election, but one thing I feel comfortable predicting: Several famous pollsters will be wrong. For instance, in Minnesota either Zogby (Mondale by six) or Mason-Dixon (Coleman by six) will be left to explain how the dastardly public undercut them at the last moment. Likewise in Colorado, either Zogby (Strickland by five) or Gallup (Allard by two) will grumble about the public not truly understanding the full range of possibilities inherent within the phrase "a 95 percent chance of accuracy within a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent." Properly understood, of course, that phrase means it could be a landslide either way. But pollsters don't get to drive around in Mercedeses and fly first class by emphasizing that their polls are so ambiguously predictive.

Americans want to know the future and are willing to pay hard cash for that knowledge. But for how long will we continue to pay for only the illusion of future knowledge?

Not that there is anything theoretically wrong with the pollsters' statistical method. The problem arises with the quality of the data input. The changing habits and technologies available to the public are just making it hard for the pollsters to sample a representative group of likely voters.

These emerging problems were reported in Tuesday's New York Times in what had to be the feel-good headline of the season: "Cellphones and Caller ID Are Making It Harder for Pollsters to Pick a Winner." The basic problem for pollsters is that cell phones are unlisted, and the increasing use of caller ID machines permit potential polling respondents to screen out unwanted calls — such as polling inquiries. It would probably not be a problem if it were just pollsters who had mastered the art of calling at the exact moment that the weary commuter has finally changed out of his work clothes and poured a drink, or speared the first morsel of his dinner (but not yet brought it gratifyingly to his mouth). But the infestation of telemarketing has driven John and Jane Q. Public to a keen caution, cunning and watchful prudence in detecting and escaping from unwanted telephone calls. This problem has been building ever since cheap answering machines became available about 10 years ago. But with the mass use of cheap cellphones the problem is crossing over into a crisis for practitioners of the polling arts.

To compound the problem, a federal regulation prohibits pollsters from calling people on their cellphones without permission. The net result of these developments is that pollsters must spend extra time and extra dollars recalling non-responders. Although the percentage of hang-ups or never-answers is a closely guarded (and deeply embarrassing) trade secret, the New York Times quotes an unnamed pollster as estimating it is up from 10 percent to 30 percent in recent years. I have heard dark whispers that the numbers could be even higher. This factor not only raises the cost of polling, but more seriously, it undermines the methodological integrity of the process.

If perhaps up to half of a representative sample self-selects itself out of the sample, the sample may not be representative. If polling continues to devolve from a reliable to an unreliable snapshot of current public opinion, American politics may yet be saved from its current cynical and mechanical state. The proven reliability of polling over the last half-century has tended to drain conviction out of politics. Even naturally honest and principled politicians, when shown the inevitable electoral consequence of their convictions, will tend to find a way to soften or evade such politically suicidal thoughts. As the undecided 20 percent of the electorate has been ever more closely and shrewdly polled by both parties, the messages and positions that both parties target on those soft heads tends to be ever more similar mush. If politicians lose their faith in polling's continued reliability, they will have to fall back on talking to the public, making up their own minds and taking their chances. That will probably result in a somewhat faster turnover of incumbents.

Reasonably smart and reasonably honest politicians should still be able to make a decent career of public service. But the cynical robot politicians will be cruelly winnowed out. Praise the Lord.

(11/6/2002)
- By: Tony Blankley, The Washington Times
56 posted on 11/07/2002 12:44:54 PM PST by finnman69
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To: Tennessean4Bush
I live in Colorado and here is my take. The political "insiders" will tell you that outsiders do not know how to poll Colorado. Internal republican polls had this race at between 6-8 points (Allard had it a 8 pts, the state party had it at 7 pts and the White House had it at 6 points). National polling focuses too much on the metro areas. For instance, Zogby will not poll north of 125th (Denver Metro area). National polling agencies treat all Colorado RATS the same. They think that a Denver RAT and a western slope RAT vote the same and that is their biggest mistake.

The Denver RAT will always vote for a democrat, but a western slope democrat is much more independent. Cong. Scott McInnis wins on the Western Slope with at least 65% of the vote in a district that is evenly split. National polling assumes if Denver RATS are voting in a certain fashion that the western slope will follow suit, and that is simply wrong.
57 posted on 11/07/2002 1:03:36 PM PST by GoldenBear
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To: No Truce With Kings
"Companies can't give you what you want, if you don't tell them what it is."

The last thing I want is politicians "giving me what I want."

I agree with you. Leaders being led by polls is a bad idea. Please note that I said companies.

Nearly all of my polling is done for radio stations these days. We play you song clips and you rate them. That's how many radio stations produce their play lists.

58 posted on 11/07/2002 1:26:15 PM PST by Strider
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To: Strider
I probably wasn't clear. Have no trouble with companies using polling, only pols.
59 posted on 11/07/2002 1:29:42 PM PST by No Truce With Kings
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To: GoldenBear
Excellent analysis. Most West Slope Democrats are old-fashioned populists from the "cross of gold" era, like a lot of Democrats in places like Nebraska. Their ideology is closer to the Republicans than the post-1972 Democratic Party.
60 posted on 11/07/2002 1:31:49 PM PST by colorado tanker
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