More on polls and the American voter
Bookworm on Jun 20 2008 at 11:22 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, John McCain, Presidential elections
As they do every election year about this time, the polls strongly favor the Democrats, which is very disheartening. Right around now I find it especially worrisome, because I think that Obama, emboldened by media adulation, is being more and more forthright about his political agenda, and it’s one that ordinarily would should have the American people running for the hills: He’s for higher, way higher taxes; gutting the military; embracing the UN as our political guide; and, most significantly, keeping fuel prices up, up, up.
McCain, for all his weaknesses as a conservative, isn’t for any of those things. Indeed, as to the last issue, I think he’s regurgitating the green Kool-Aid he drank, which turned him into a raving environmentalist. Instead, he’s starting to use rising fuel prices as a face-saving way to edge back to common sense. McCain is infinitely more the centrist American candidate and, traditionally, he’s the candidate who should win.
And yet, over and over, poll after poll, Obama has the edge (although sometimes so insignificant that it’s a statistical dead heat). What gets interesting is when one drills into the polls. It turns out that Democrats are consistently oversampled, as are African-Americans. Then, after all that oversampling, some magical jiggery pokery goes on in a back room, and they reveal the oracular numbers — favoring Obama. In other words, the polls don’t seem honest. Rather, to the uninitiated, they seem more along the lines of Twain’s lies, damn lies and statistics.
Given these delicately created polls, Paul Geary makes the interesting argument that, because the polls use a very small sampling and then taint that sampling by selecting disproportionate numbers of respondents likely to choose Obama, an enormous, unscientific AOL poll might actually be more accurate:
For the second consecutive week, Political Machine at AOL is conducting an open straw poll. And for the second consecutive week, John McCain beats Barack Obama about 56-44 with about half a million votes tallied, total. This week Obama leads only in California, Washington, New York, Maryland, and DC.
But this is not a random sample survey, you say?
True. But as Tom Elia has pointed out, recent polls have not been using an accurate cross-section of the American electorate in their surveys. The skew is almost always favorable to Democrats. The proof is in consistent election results that are several points better for the Republicans than polls predicted. (And the requisite delusional whining about vote manipulation.)
Why could a non-scientific poll be more accurate than the “random sample” polls? There are several reasons.
I’m not going to steal Geary’s thunder. Instead, you can read all the reasons he gives here.
As I’ve repeatedly said, I’m not a numbers person, so I cannot approach Geary’s argument with much analytical fire power. What I can say is that it is a very clear argument and that, within it’s parameters, it makes a lot of sense and is hearteningly compelling.
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7 Responses to “More on polls and the American voter”
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I don’t put much confidence in polls, especially polls this early in the campaign. Fact is, neither John McCain not Barack Obama has been nominated yet.
Polls are more and more news organizations inventing the news, rather than any honest attempt to discover what people think. Polls are also used by campaigns (and their co-conspirators, the networks) to create momentum or to impede it.
As predictors of the future, polls rely on two principles - that people will behave in the future as they have in the past and that the sample accurately represents the whole.
Both principles are seriously challenged in this Presidential race. If we get lots of new voters or if reliable voters of the past stay home, both principles are out the window.
Ignore them. Or for more fun, lie to any pollster who calls.
Us political junkies excepted, most people aren’t paying attention to the race yet but instead have opted to lead normal lives.
Normal people will start paying attention after Labor Day. That is when I predict that the Obama campaign will seriously begin to implode.
There’s only one poll that counts - and that’s on Nov.4. I understand why political parties - or teams working for individual candidates - use them, but I really don’t understand the point of pollsters and newspapers doing them.
Thanks Danny that’s the word I want.”Implode” Suek the reason is because it sells more newspapers and tv time and now internet useage (s) and that’s the name of the game.
I don’t put much stock in polls, for several reasons:
1) You can guarantee the outcome you want by how you phrase the questions;
2) Most people talk the progressive talk to their friends, yet when the curtain closes on the voting booth, they tend to vote more conservatively;
3) After voting more conservatively, they exit the voting booth and lie their asses off to exit pollsters (see the skewed exit polls from the Kerry/Bush election that had Kerry winning by a landslide)
I agree with Suek that the only poll that counts is the one on Nov. 4, because it is a straight up yes/no and there is no way to twist it. You choose between one of 2 candidates and the votes are tallied.
Personally, I see a landslide in the offing, but it won’t be Obama riding it, because his narcissism in co-opting the Presidental Seal will turn off all but the most ardent of his supporters, combined with his shady associates and supporters, his racist pastor or his detailed explaination (which hasn’t been forwarded) as to why he spent 20 years as a parishioner of this man if he didn’t believe the message, his outright lie about public funding….all these things are going to add up and only the most partisan dem would be able to pull the lever for Obama.
I have faith that Americans are not dumb enough yet. It’s gonna take another generation or 2.
Mike…
No disagreement from me on the “because it sells” rationale. They have to either gin up the enthusiasm with the “neck and neck” idea, or they have to arouse the ire of whichever is losing in order to stimulate interest so that the race _becomes_ neck and neck…
Just a form of armchair sports…