yes
I’m sure several on this site could tell you, but then they’d have to ... Well, you know.
The public polls are giving the ridiculous turnout models of 2008 and in some case, the Democrats outperforming that!
This is going to be a +R1-3 election, not a +D anything.
Independents are going to break hard for Romney, not Obama.
The public polls are just advertising. The “Internal Polls” are actually paid for and their methodology is determined by the customer. So, they may or may not be more accurate, depending on what the buyer asks for.
Well ... it’s “money” that makes them more reliable ... :-)
No lib bias, no invalid interpretations, just the numbers and the facts gathered by experienced professionals who leave the smoke-blowing to the skewed media polls.
Fundamentally, the difference is that candidates want to win. They must deal with reality.
The other guys want to sell a product, whether it is the result of their “poll,” or, perhaps, airtime or advertising space in their news papers.
Internal polls are most accurate because they don’t pander to political correctness of having to include a certain amount of black/hispanic/female/young voters.
Internals look at who is most likely to turn up at the polls. This was the whole reason Axelgrease made his bully-boy phone call to Gallup. He threatened Gallup with legal action because he said they were not representing the African American vote enough in their sample.
I noticed too that the lastest Pew poll methodology asked to speak to the YOUNGEST registered voter of the household...
So pollsters may not intend to over-represent Dims, but if they are having racial/other groups weighted, then this has a result of showing more Dims in the sample. (This is how Dick Morris explained it earlier today.)
Anyhow — NOW for a trip down memory lane. The Wisconsin Recall was ‘too close to call’. Ha! 49 Minutes after the polls closed, the race was called for Walker. His victory was 53-46. Enjoy this clip of Mizz Madcow and company eating crow...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pchwcD4IPzs
These internal polls are no-BS products that give the candidates the unvarnished view of the facts on the ground. Romney`s internals reveal solid opportunities for victories.
BTW, has anyone else noticed the 0bama campaign hasn`t released theirs?
Internal polls are more accurate because campaigns use them to decide where they are going to spend their money. If you can’t get accurate polling you might be wasting money where it could be better spent elsewhere.
On the other hand, public polls are done on the cheap, with smaller sample sizes, and are commonly performed by organizations and pollsters whose preferences influence the results.
Scott Rasmussen has been asking exactly the same question, using the same polling methods for almost four years. His public polls give us a good yardstick to observe trends in public opinion. From reading his site, we don't know if he overstates or understates support for Obama, but we know how that support has changed in relative terms over time. That is the best of the public polls in existence.
Some private polls are generated to be leaked, and they are pure spin (garbage), of course. The high quality private polls do a better job on improving response rate and on modeling turnout than any of the public polls, but the details are proprietary.
My guess is that, each campaign involved has to be doing more accurate polling, in order to insure that, they are not deluding themselves.
They’ll use any external polls that favor them to arouse the base and voters in general, but, it would be a lot more prudent to be truthful to themselves, therefore, they need to be more accurate in their polling. They can’t afford to not look at the true picture with the electorate’s feelings and intentions.