Posted on 09/21/2012 6:31:56 AM PDT by TonyInOhio
I reached out to Republican pollster John McLaughlin for yesterday’s piece on how undecided voters are likely to break, and he made some separate comments about polls, their impact on motivation for each side, and how the campaigns want to use skewed poll numbers to depress the opposition.
How he’s defining likely voters right now: “For the most part we’re polling likely voters. It’s a loose screen. We keep people who say they’re only somewhat likely to vote. But the vast majority say that they are definitely or very likely to vote. They’re voting.”
How campaigns try to sway polling results: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”
On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51-48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been President. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”
What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR (Interactive Voice Response) polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are “not enthusiastic” to vote or non voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this. Then there’s the debate between calling off a random digit dial of phone exchanges vs a known sample of actual registered voters. Most polls favoring Obama are random and not off the actual voter list. That’s too expensive” for some pollsters.
>> Anyone who says the below is so out of touch with political reality as to be disillusional
You mean delusional? I think people who think 4 years of Romney will be different from Obama’s 2nd term are delusional (well, maybe Romney will run $990 bil annuall deficits as opposed to Obama’s $1 trillion), but then election time is always a silly season, so we are all entitled to our delusions.
In any case, my January post was a bit too optimistic - I was sure the House majority will stay intact, but now it looks like Romney can drag it down with him as well.
You know what I think of “voters” that don’t vote for the man they want because they aren’t sure he’s going to win?
20% of the people in this country are like that. They are worthless turds.
I am going to vote for my candidate if I am in the last state and he has already lost the first 49. I am casting my damn vote.
I am sorry but a look at your posting history indicates you are emotion driven.
You habitually ignore all contrary facts to cling to your emotion based opinions. It is impossible to have a rational discussion with a poster who refuses to base his opinions in fact.
Glad you have opinions. Opinions are not facts. Learn the difference
Mitt's nothing to write home about.
However, I believe Obama will lose. I don't know anybody who thinks he's doing a great job - and I know lots of libs. I think the same passion that drove Vietnam Era patriots to the polls to vote against Kerry will drive people to vote against Obama.
I have one Viet Nam veteran neighbor in particular who has only voted twice over the last few decades - once for Ronaldus Magnus (to oust Jimmy Carter) and again to vote against the man who accused him of committing atrocities "in a fah-shun reminiscent of Jen-jis Khan". Once again, he'll be voting this time around, pulling the lever for Mitt, with the motivation of ousting Obama.
Are you kidding? Do you see what's going on in the Middle East? Obama has to go. I agree Mitt stinks, particularly on abortion and gay marriage.
What facts? We are talking about data interpretation, predictions and hypotheticals here.
My predictions in 2006, 2008, 2010 were largely correct, and my statement about (unlikely) Romney presidency is a hypothetical statement.
If you want my prediction for November - here it is:
* Obama wins by 3.5-4%, something like 51.3% - 47.5%
* the GOP gets 46-48 Senate seats, for no net gain
* the House is on the knife edge, but (I hope) the GOP manages to get to 220-225 seats and bare majority.
In 50 days this will be a testable statement. Do you care to make one?
“..I was quite dumbfounded that people would elect someone who could not wear a flag, put his hand over his heart and was basically a Muslim....”
Friend, the majority of the people that elected him probably never, ever even heard any of that.
This is what they saw, courtesy of our Pravda media:
A young, “hip”, “cool” black guy, which they’ve been conditioned to respond positively to, versus an old, cranky white guy who they’ve been conditioned to respond negatively to.
American Idol, versus old, nasty white/racist America.
And that’s what they saw; NOTHING about the Bill Ayers ties, the Jeremiah Wright ties, the communist upbringing, and any of the other subversive crap. All carefully squelched, and re-packaged into Hope and Change with a Pepsodent smile.
The only folks who knew any of this were people who were actually paying attention and doing their own research on the candidates...a job that the media should have been doing.
This time, however, many more folks are paying attention; folks who lost their homes, their life savings, their sense of financial security as well as National identity and security.
That’s one good thing this POS has done - He’s awakened a lot of folks from their comfort zone and made them remember that there are some BIGGER than ourselves; that WE are Americans first - because he himself, by the example of his own actions, is so radically NOT, and what he has done to us all is decidedly not in the interests of the future continuation of the country.
Cautious optimism is the watchword for me.
Hey, I have a secret bunker not far from that very spot.
What he's saying is that numbers can be spinned, and in fact are spinned, for any number of reasons. Thus you should take every poll with a grain of salt and consider the totality of the poll (e.g., who's publishing it, when is it being published, what's the methodology behind it, etc., etc.) when you consider poll results at all.
Also, he's talking about polls meant to be released for public consumption, not necessarily a candidate's internal polls, which one would assume to be the most highly accurate of all. So another thing you have to consider as a news consumer is that internal polls are telling each campaign what story they need to feed to the public.
Ah I see. Another Nate Silver bot. You are merely regurgitating the Leftist propaganda he is putting out.
Nate Silver is a Obama donor and Leftist blogger at the NY Times. He bases his analysis on polls oversampling Democrats anywhere from 4-11 points. It is a classic case of garbage in garbage out analysis.
Basing all your opinions on Silver’s analysis is the equivalent of turning into Radio Berlin in 1942 to find out how the Allied War effort is going
THIS for sure.
In 2010 Silver’s analysis was quite good, he predicted 232 House seats (a bit too low), and 48 Senate seats (1 too high) for the GOP.
Yes, he is a lefty - but I see little wrong with his poll aggregation. But of course, if you believe that all the polling firms are part of a vast left-wing conspiracy, you will probably keep believing it even after the polls are validated in November.
Yay! Another foot stomping, chicken little, Obama ally and useless American.
On November 6th you and your ilk will be as responsible as the Dems for any destruction that comes our way.
In other words enjoy your higher tax rate and don’t dare b**** about it.
I see don't bother you with the inconvenient facts, you have your emotional bubble world dogma and you are clinginging to it. Very well, I present the data, you ignore it. Clinging to your emotion based disillusions then
Read the whole quote again.
The pollsters are keeping the "only somewhat likely to vote" over the "very likely/definitely to vote" to skew the polls for democrats.
"only somewhat likely to vote" = barely cross over the likely voter threshold and most likely won't vote.
The poll is more of a "registered voter poll" than a "likely voter poll" and "registered voter" polls are useless, skew democratic and are used for propaganda purposes.
I like to look at the numbers behind the numbers. Right now the polls are using turnout models in the D+9 to D+13 range, when the historic 2008 election generated a D+7 turnout.
So the question I have for you is this: what justification exists to support the notion that there will be a Dem turnout advantage 2-6 points higher than in 2008? Or is that not a valid measure to use here (and if so, why not?)?
“this time around obviously all gloves are off for the media and their polling arms no question
but...given how abysmal Obama is, our numbers should be creaming him...
trending demographics are killing us number one
second, he and his team are lackluster and playing it too safe with all that cash unless they plan something huge towards the end
i think most have already made up their minds”
I, too, would enjoy a big victory for Romney, but I don’t think it’s a-comin’...
Lots and lots of “pannin’ the pollsters” in this forum, but there remain a few of them who seem to value credibility over credos. So it becomes a task of separating the wheat from the chaff, insofar as the polls go.
This election will be won in three states:
- Ohio
- Florida
- Virginia
Chances are, without these three, Romney cannot win. And his numbers in OH and VA just aren’t looking that favorable right now. That may change, but at least in Virginia, Obama is already scratchin’ at the 50% line. Not good.
Of late there have been some interesting rumblings out of Colorado (9 electoral votes) and New Hampshire (4), and perhaps Iowa (6).
If ... just if.... Romney can win CO, NH and IA, he can then afford to lose either OH (18) or VA (13), and still win the presidency.
If Romney loses both OH and VA, he cannot win.
If Romney loses FL, he cannot win.
There’s a lot of Pubbie’s whistlin’ past the graveyard right now.
But in the end, the election boils down to cold, hard numbers in a very few states.
Republican “enthusiasm” will count for nothing in November, if we don’t win Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.
I hope I’m proven completely wrong on election day.
But that’s how I see it....
Follow up to my previous question. There’s a new poll (ACP? See dedicated thread) showing O beating R 49-47. So a 2pt difference. The poll is D+6, Indies breaking for Romney by 7%,
Is that poll accurate? If not, then what “real” results can be interpreted from it?
My Dad once told me some people who have opinions are @$$holes. I think this is one right here.
Anyone walking the streets and talking to people can tell you the polling is crap. At least some of it. When you look at the internals you see facts that are undeiable, but the overall results are pure nonsense.
The enthusiasm for Obama is GONE folks, wilted away like a picked dandilion flower... Its just gone. Yes the hard core leftists are solid for him, but the rest of the population (yes that includes black americans) is not there.. those who admit to vote for him are either rabid about it (small loud minority) or at best tepid in their admitance, there is no fire in the belly, no passion.
At least 10-20 of democrats I talk to, life long, union, blue dog dems are openly stating they will vote for Romney. Independents/swing voters are roughly 2 to 1 for Romney (against Obama).
Obama isn’t going to get over 42-43% of the popular vote, hes not going to carry a single state he didn’t get at LEAST 55% of the popular vote in 2008.
This isn’t a horse race folks, this isn’t a race at all. Yes team obama is out there, going through the motions, but I firmly believe this is all just bread and circuses. I place far more belief in the reports than the Obama’s have already picked out the home in Hawaii they intend to move into in January, than I do any news story claiming this is neck and neck.
Now, as I have said, WORK LIKE ITS NECK AND NECK! Drag yourself over broken glass to vote.. but don’t think for one minute this thing is close... Its just not. Fight like it is, but its not.. show up, make sure everyone you know shows up, don’t let the psyops attempts to depress you take root, this is all nonsense.
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