Posted on 09/26/2012 4:29:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I want to hear from commenters on this, as I think all bloggers are dealing with some variation of this problem right now. Standard practice on the site is for Ed and I to post any poll that we think you'll find interesting, whether the numbers are good or bad; normally the readers are fine with that, if only because they can use the thread to goof on me for being a dirty, dirty eeyore. But for two months every four years, the calculus changes for some and they start screeching that posting bad numbers is an act of treason that might actually damage the GOP nominee's chances. And in fairness to those readers, there's a wisp of truth in that, sort of. As pollster John McLaughlin said to Jim Geraghty:
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.
The “anti-Obama voters” whom McLaughlin has in mind are swing-state undecideds who either voted for Obama in 2008 or stayed home and are now persuadable by Romney due to their disgruntlement over Hopenchange. They’re low-motivated fence-sitters. People who read partisan blogs every day are not. My guess is that our readership consists of two groups: 99 percent of you would walk barefoot through a snowstorm to get to your polling place to vote for Romney even if I was following you in an Eeyore costume, rattling chains and moaning, “Dooooon’t vooooote.” (I won’t actually do that, except maybe to Ed.) The other one percent are media types and/or liberals who are curious about what righty bloggers are saying on a particular issue. Neither of those groups will be discouraged by poll news, whether good or bad for their guy. Nor should they be: In case there’s any ambiguity as to the point of posting these polls, needless to say it’s not to discourage anyone from voting for Romney. You must vote, and the worse the numbers are, the more determined you should be to get out there because the deficit will have to be made up in higher turnout. Ed and I have spent four years explaining why another four years of Hopenchange dreck would be terrible; why you’d suddenly lose your determination to vote O out now because of bad numbers from the NYT or wherever is utterly beyond me.
The point of posting polls is to track trends in the race and try to get a rough sense of which states will ultimately decide the election, which strategies are working or aren’t, whether one side or the other has momentum, etc. Sometimes, like today, you get some highly dubious samples and you toss them out. Sometimes you don’t. My question is, if for some reason you’re not convinced that partisan blog readerships are essentially immune from being discouraged by polls, what should the rule be on filtering them? There seem to be three schools:
1. The “give us everything” crowd. These are the people who want the good and the bad. They’ll decide for themselves whether a poll is credible or not, but they want the data so that they can make a judgment.
2. The “give us bad news too but make sure you debunk it” crowd. They’ll accept discouraging numbers if a case can be made against the partisan split in the pollster’s sample to debunk it. Ed and I oblige on that whenever we can, but I’m not sure what to do with a poll like, say, today’s Gallup tracker, which has Obama suddenly out to a 50/44 lead among registered voters. Five days ago we were high-fiving over Gallup when they had Romney tied. Is the poll suddenly less credible now than it was then? Rasmussen seems to be the gold standard in credibility on the right, but what should we do if Romney’s numbers tick down there too? And what are we to do with the fact that Romney’s own pollster recently told Guy Benson that he’s expecting a national turnout advantage on election day of something like D+3? Should we be demanding a more even sample from pollsters than even Team Mitt is?
3. The “give us only good news” crowd. They think that posting bad numbers legitimizes those numbers and gives them wider reach, even if there’s an effort to debunk the sample. Essentially, they want a total blackout on downers until election day in the interest of leaving nothing to chance. Question: Does it mitigate the problem if we post a downer poll and post thoughtful analyses like Jay Cost’s and Brandon Gaylord’s that challenge the assumptions of the downer polls lately? If it doesn’t mitigate it, what are we to make of the fact that conservative warriors like Newt Gingrich, Erick Erickson, and Michael Walsh all seem to think that Romney’s campaign is underperforming and that the polls are a reflection of that? (Read Walsh’s conclusion, especially.) Is that higher or lower treason than posting a bad poll in the first place?
Those three schools broadly represent the spectrum of opinion on whether a partisan news site should be more newsy or more partisan. Group one wants to know what’s driving the news, even if it doesn’t trust the underlying data; group three wants victory above all else, even if that means suspending normal operations and ignoring bad news entirely. Group two wants a compromise. I prefer group one, especially since I think the fears of influencing the race by posting glum polls is baseless, but I have a lot of sympathy for group three even though they tend to be the nastiest with their criticism. We all want to win (even Eeyore!), and if you’re a sports fan, you know the special agony of being heavily invested in a contest whose outcome you’re helpless to influence. You’re not helpless in this one, of course — you can vote, and should — but the idea that merely mentioning bad news might sink Romney’s chances when we have fully seven weeks and four debates still to go is like sincerely believing that the Yankees lost because you forgot to wear your rally cap.
Like I say, I’m interested in reading your comments. I’ll leave you with this, from senior Romney advisor Ed Gillespie. Quote: “We have a no-whining rule in Boston about coverage in the media.” Click the image to watch.
This election is ours to lose.
I think, more than anything, the media likes a horse race, rigged for their horse.
As a tactic, I think this has the chance to backfire on the media, in that, DumBO's constituency is less enthusiastic than they were, and, if they think it is in the bag, they may be less likely to show up.
I don't answer telephone polls at work or at home. Period.
Same thing with any internet based polls asking for personal contact information. No, thanks.
I used to make a little bit of extra money by registering with a company that paid me to come in and give my honest opinion of various product marketing concepts.
Participants were heavily screened prior to being invited to any particular “poll”.
In my short stint as a volunteer at my local Republican Party HQ, I was the one asking the questions. I was not impressed by the quality of the contact lists, nor the attitude of their call center manager. She lied like a Union Boss.
The primary goal was obviously to identify potential financial donors.
After this election, I WILL change my political party affiliation to “Independent”.
Focus groups, yes. I was a regular once, but they haven't been calling lately. You know what I discovered? The market research company was located on the third or fourth floor of a narrow city building. As we, the participants, collected our tax free cash, ate the cookies and chocolates and boarded the elevator down, I was hearing from my fellow opinion givers their true opinions, as often as not contradicting the opinions which they expressed in that room upstairs with a two way mirror wall and the microphones in the ceiling..
Just posted about that too...
They were disgusting in their most pontificating, superior, smug, lib dim mode...
In weaker moments, I dream of meeting them in a bar someday, able to tell them what I REALLY think....
In the Hugh Hewitt show he had a guest come on and explain that pollsters are only getting a fraction of responses that they did in 2008. In particular, Pew had a 9% response rate. I googled 2008 response rates and the first pollster that came up had a 38% response rate. That’s only 1/4th of the total.
Take a look here: http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog
Only Rasmussen’s “likely voter” polls are accurate.
Even Ras should be taken with a grain of salt. There might be a D+1000 advantage in the populace, but Hugh Hewitt pointed out in his show that the response rates are way, way down.
Like, 1/4 of 2008 down with only 9% answering. My gut says that the people who aren’t answering aren’t a representative sample of the overall, thus creating skewed ideologies within the 9% who are answering.
Well .. you can take “Ras” with a grain of salt if you want, but he’s the only one who hits the mark at the end of the election.
I just hope everybody is prepared for the onslaught of polls after the debate on 10/3. I expect the left will taunt us with over-estimates of how well Obama did .. and then try to show Obama ahead by at least 10 points.
Once a liar, always a liar.
I’ve decided I’m going to print out a sign, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” - and place it just below my TV screen - that way I will always be reminded that Obama always lies.
Yep, that makes sense. I suspect the pollsters are going to be scrambling after this election year to come up with new polling methodologies. Either all the standard political calculations about economics, unemployment, approval ratings etc no longer impact on elections or the pro Obama polling is completely wacked. One way or the other this election is going to teach us a lot about America’s soul.
I didn't stick around to talk to the other participants afterwords, so I can't relate to what you experienced.
It does explain why I only got called in about four times a year.
I was getting paid for an honest opinion, so that is what I provided.
“What about the Battleground states? Does Rasmussen have similar polls on each of them?”
Go here:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/2012_electoral_college_scoreboard
Warning: you may not like some of the numbers you see.
(However, some may be out-of-date by now)
They were disgusting in their most pontificating, superior, smug, lib dim mode...
Agree. Kirsten comes off as an air head, especially when sitting next to Krauthammer.
A.B is a Martha Stewart clone. Every vowel pronounced perfectly. Realities described in an Alice in Wonderland scenario , where what you actually see isn’t what she is educating us on.
Yep, knowing she is such a heavy smoker, i’ve often wanted five minutes with her to ask her abt Obummercare and why do the tax payers have to pay for her bad habit...
don’t mind the habit as long as it’s not done around me and I don’t have to pay for it.
It’s the “Silent Majority” .. the left thinks we have gone away, but they’re wrong; We’re still alive and kicking.
The left has no clue what’s going to happen on election day.
There was a great article the other day at the American Spectator, “How Carter Beat Reagan”. Of course, we know Reagan won .. and the story is how the NYT continually ran down Reagan, calling him all sorts of names (language which is very similar to what the NYT and the rest of the lefties are currently saying about Romney. In fact, it’s kinda weird to see how they are using the very same slogans that they used in the 60’s.
What the article shows is that from the beginning the NYT continued to POLL Carter higher than Reagan. That appears to be the very same thing we’re seeing currently .. while “unskewedpolls.com” is showing something very, very close to Rasmussen .. and Romney appears to have anywhere from a 7 pt lead to a 9 pt lead.
Rush mentioned the other day that he couldn’t understand why Obama was spending so much time in Ohio, since the media’s polling says Obama is ahead by 25 pts ..??
We cannot get discouraged .. let this article show you that the NYT is just doing what they always do and the polls which show Obama ahead may possibly be another great hoax by the NYT.
I also saw an article regarding one college campus, where it was a madhouse prior to the 2008 election .. but this time, there is hardly any activity for Obama on that same college campus today. Another good sign for Romney.
If there’s any chance you (or anybody you know) will not be available to vote on election day, go and vote early (in CA and other states), or get an Absentee Ballot and send it in as early as you can.
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