Posted on 09/26/2012 12:18:38 PM PDT by smoothsailing
September 26, 2012
Matthew Sheffield
With no manufactured outrage to hammer Mitt Romney at the moment, liberal journalists are now eagerly touting a series of polls which appear to show President Obama pulling away from the GOP nominee in several key states.
Unfortunately, these polls are relying on sample sizes which are skewed tremendously leftward with far more Democrats than Republicans and as such, they are unlikely to be good predictors of actual Election Day turnout. Do the pollsters themselves actually believe in their own sample sizes though? At least one appears not to.
Interviewed last month by conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac polling operation was particularly squeamish about sampling under tough questioning from Hewitt about a poll which Quinnipiac had released showing Democrats with a 9 percentage point advantage in the state of Florida.
In the conversation, Brown defended Quinnipiac’s sampling techniques but admitted that he did not believe that Democrats would outnumber Republicans to that degree in Florida come November. Pressed by Hewitt, the pollster said he believed that was a “probably unlikely” scenario. Instead, Brown kept saying that he thought his poll was an accurate snapshot of reality at the time.
“What I believe is what we found,” he insisted while also touting his organization's record of polls closer to actual elections.
Unfortunately, this cavalier attitude toward accuracy is actually widespread throughout the entire polling industry. As NewsBusters noted in June, exit polls, which rely on far larger sample sizes than those conducted by Quinnipiac and others have long been known to oversample Democrats, sometimes even drastically. Sadly, the awful record that many pollsters have is something that most people barely know anything about. As such, it is one of the media’s “dirty little secrets” since Americans certainly won’t hear about it from the press.
Despite not believing that Democrats would have a 9-point advantage, Brown defended his organization, claiming that he and his colleagues were not intentionally trying to skew their sample size:
“We didn’t set out to oversample Democrats,” he protested. “We did our normal, random digit dial way of calling people. And there were, these are likely voters. They had to pass a screen.”
But what if that screen is simply not enough? The 2012 presidential election is unlikely to have an electorate which is similar to the ones before it. In the 2008 election, young and black voters turned out in record numbers and voted in even higher percentages for Obama. As specific surveys of these two voter groups have shown, however, both are dispirited this time around and are less likely to turn out for Democrats.
This point is particularly crucial given that the electorates in the years following 2008 have been much more Republican skewed. It could be argued that these were off-year elections and thus less likely to have blue-collar and college kid Democrats turn out to vote but ultimately no one knows today what the party breakdown will be November 6.
That’s why it’d be best for pollsters like Peter Brown to double-check their work the way that Scott Rasmussen does against a running party ID poll, especially considering by Brown’s own admission that Quinnipiac’s process for determining who will actually vote is “not a particularly heavy screen.”
A partial transcript of this highly illuminative interview is provided below courtesy of Hewitt show. Please see this link for the complete discussion. (Hat tip to Da Tech Guy who has more on the sampling controversy.)
HUGH HEWITT: Why would guys run a poll with nine percent more Democrats than Republicans when that percentage advantage, I mean, if you’re trying to tell people how the state is going to go, I don’t think this is particularly helpful, because you’ve oversampled Democrats, right?
PETER BROWN: But we didn’t set out to oversample Democrats. We did our normal, random digit dial way of calling people. And there were, these are likely voters. They had to pass a screen. Because it’s a presidential year, it’s not a particularly heavy screen.
HEWITT: And so if, in fact, you had gotten a hundred Democrats out of a hundred respondents that answered, would you think that poll was reliable?
BROWN: Probably not at 100 out of 100.
HEWITT: Okay, so if it was 75 out of 100…
BROWN: Well, I mean…
HEWITT: I mean, when does it become unreliable? You know you’ve just put your foot on the slope, so I’m going to push you down it. When does it become unreliable?
BROWN: Like the Supreme Court and pornography, you know it when you see it.
HEWITT: Well, a lot of us look at a nine point advantage in Florida, and we say we know that to be the polling equivalent of pornography. Why am I wrong?
BROWN: Because what we found when we made the actual calls is this kind of party ID.
HEWITT: Do you expect Democrats, this is a different question, do you, Peter Brown, expect Democrats to have a nine point registration advantage when the polls close on November 6th in Florida?
BROWN: Well, first, you don’t mean registration.
HEWITT: I mean, yeah, turnout.
BROWN: Do I think…I think it is probably unlikely.
HEWITT: And so what value is this poll if in fact it doesn’t weight for the turnout that’s going to be approximated?
BROWN: Well, you’ll have to judge that. I mean, you know, our record is very good. You know, we do independent polling. We use random digit dial. We use human beings to make our calls. We call cell phones as well as land lines. We follow the protocol that is the professional standard.
HEWITT: As we say, that might be the case, but I don’t know it’s responsive to my question. My question is, should we trust this as an accurate predictor of what will happen? You’ve already told me there…
BROWN: It’s an accurate predictor of what would happen is the election were today.
HEWITT: But that’s, again, I don’t believe that, because today, Democrats wouldn’t turn out by a nine point advantage. I don’t think anyone believes today, if you held the election today, do you think Democrats would turn out nine percentage points higher than Republicans?
BROWN: If the election were today, yeah. What we found is obviously a large Democratic advantage.
HEWITT: I mean, you really think that’s true? I mean, as a professional, you believe that Democrats have a nine point turnout advantage in Florida?
BROWN: Our record has been very good. You know, Hugh, I…
HEWITT: That’s not responsive. It’s just a question. Do you personally, Peter, believe that Democrats enjoy a nine point turnout advantage right now?
BROWN: What I believe is what we found.
Elections are big business. Why would we or should we expect these guys not to earn a buck? They cannot do that if Obama’s getting clobbered. They need to keep it close.
Interesting that they are using Rasmussen as the measure of accuracy, or so it sounds.
I believe they gamble on a last minute incident to hang their hat on.. Let me be a bit more precise.. If they have been tampering with the data, as we know they have all through this election cycle, they have to have a “cause, or case” to get back to reality before they are humiliated on election day..
I recall several incidents that the media has overblown to justify the dramatic last minute shift in the momentum to the actual, and ultimate results on election day..
I think they hang on to the fraud until the very last possible minute to skew the momentum, then look for any reason, or create something, to save their a$$.. My 2 cents.. :)
What better way to convince the looters that the Republicans stole the election?
Push bogus polling up to election day.
used to follow roperpoll more than the others but they're into marketing more than politics. noneof this is carvedin stone. someday rassmussen will fail to detect a change in the environment and all his stuff will turn to garbage just like everybody else's.
I think Limbaugh had it correct today when he said lots of people are afraid others will stay home but wouldn’t dream of doing so themselves.
Any “conservative” who won’t cast a vote to remove Obama might as well change their name to Arianna Huffington. I don’t believe such a person would have supported Gingrich or Santorum and I don’t believe they’ll support a Gingrich or Santoraum type in 2016. I’m as tired of the “Take my ball and go home” people as I am of the establishment types.
Sam.. one more thing.. LOL Sometimes they can’t find a good, believeable, reason, so they just claim VOTER FRAUD.. The morons will keep the faith so they can blame anything on their loss, since they are in LaLa land already.. :)
Exactly!
It would be preferable if the buck they earned was earned honestly.
Nailed it.
BINGO!
Yep, eventually the truth outs. If they cannot deflate Mitt now it’s over for Obama.
Bottom line is the cliché used here..Only polls that matters is on election day when they count the votes. It pretty indisputable that most of the pollsters this election cycle are fully in bed with the Democrats. It’s a psy-ops campaign meant to dispirit us. You’d have to be a moron not to see that at this point. The election is tight in some states and not in others, the punch line is by 11pm R&R will be declared the winner. These polls will show eventually a tie as election day nears, but the byline will be Obama is up slightly. We are dealing with dangerous, radical, evil people who will stop at nothing including starting a national race riot saying the election was stolen from the Chocolate Messiah.
The article is about new registrations, so whether they remove people from the rolls is irrelevant. Lack of new registrations would point to lack of enthusiasm, IMHO.
“Lies, Damn Lies, and Statics” Mark Twain.
You can add Election Polls to the list.
Beware the Democrat Media Complex (aka Pravda)
Why does that point even matter when everyone knows that there won’t be a 9% Dem advantage in actual voting? That renders the poll useless as a snapshot, much less as a predictor of the final outcome.
The Democrats had an enormous voter registration drive (among probable Democrats) 4 years ago.
I suspect they really did run out of more people to register ~ fur shur they aren't going to push on potential Republican voters to go register!
These polls are a little bit predictive, a little bit prescriptive, something of a snapshot, entertainment, a guide to where a politician might want to spend scarce campaign resources.
Not to ruin your day, but it has been said and written: "'And concerning that day and the hour no one hath known -- not even the messengers of the heavens -- except my Father only;...."
Yep, all those folks who were 14, 15, 16, and 17 in 2008 just disappeared. Don't you just hate it when that happens!
15%?
So the Dems won 65-35% in 2008?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.