[Lunatic Fringe]

Polls are always wrong- never trust them. The polls were wrong in order to energize voters. Unless the polls show a 20 point lead for a candidate, I always assume it's a dead heat.

[Tennessean4Bush]

bttt mice elf

[AdamSelene235]

Same thing that happened across the entire nation, it became clear the Dems have no answers for America.

About half the Libertarian vote defected since the Senate was at stake but this was not key.

Additionally the leftists are disgusted and voted Green, and the Republicans probably came out in greater numbers to seize the prize.

Thats my impression.

[Asclepius]

Anyone have a link to a good analysis of why all the polls seemed to be so badly wrong?

I heard a Democrat pollster on PBS saying the same thing: the polls in the South were horribly off--Republicans won, and they won in the double digits, when the best polls taken only hours before suggested that in the best possible scenarios they were all in a dead heat or even slightly behind.

Apparently Republicans in the South do not talk to pollsters.

[NorCoGOP]

All of Allard's internal polls had him winning by the actual vote margin...they were dead on.

Strickland blew it by only really campaigning hard in Denver and Boulder counties (liberal strongholds).

Allard CREAMED Strickland in El Paso and Weld counties by OVERWHELMING numbers (Weld is his home county, El Paso has 10+ military bases). Allard won I believe ALL BUT FOUR or FIVE counties, and those he lost were not by the overwhelming margin that Zogby et al predicted....the liberal media compounded this by going national with the giddy news Strickland would win by 9+....then there was a 15 point shift TO Allard in the final vote....

I love this state!

[dirtboy]

This snippet was in the Rocky Mountain News:

Gov. Bill Owens said Allard's win could be attributed in part to the GOP's aggressive final 96-hour vote turnout effort.

"I think the program of putting 2,100 people on the streets really worked," said Owens.

I've seen this tactic mentioned in several states. Looks like the GOP saw how they were deficient in GOTV activities in 2000 and more than corrected for it.

[LS]

Among other things, it appears that he good a large boost from the Hispanic vote, according to the Wash. Times.

[KellyAdmirer]

Several things:

1. The outcome was exactly the same as in 1996, same guys, same issues, same result;

2. GoTV effort got out the vote

3. Allard's ads were better and more noticeable

4. There was a lot of telephone-bank calling of recorded messages. The Democrats had Strickland calling, the Republicans Barbara Bush. Babs' calls were more impressive to the folks I know

5. Colorado has been getting a ton of new voters fleeing the liberal coasts. Colorado is more, not less, conservative than it used to be, even five years ago.

6. Strickland barely seemed to show his face south of Denver, don't recall seeing him at all in Colorado Springs, which is loaded with military and Focus on the Family.

7. The polls in 2000 at times showed a tossup in Colorado, which also were way off. For whatever reason, the polls do not detect a deep, underlying Republican sympathy here and overestimate the Democrat turnout. Republicans pretty much swept the state this year, as usual. It is very rough for the Democrats here. Some communities, like Leadville, even elect Libertarians.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[truth_seeker]

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.

[No Truce With Kings]

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!

[twigs]

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.

[finnman69]

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

[GoldenBear]

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.