Posted on 10/30/2014 10:41:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Polls show that the Republicans have an advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. They lead in enough states to win control, and they have additional opportunities in North Carolina and New Hampshire to make up for potential upsets. As Election Day nears, Democratic hopes increasingly hinge on the possibility that the polls will simply prove wrong.
But that possibility is not far-fetched. The polls have generally underestimated Democrats in recent years, and there are reasons to think it could happen again.
In 2010, the polls underestimated the Democrats in every competitive Senate race by an average of 3.1 percentage points, based on data from The Huffington Post’s Pollster model. In 2012, pre-election polls underestimated President Obama in nine of the 10 battleground states by an average of 2 percentage points.
A couple of elections in which polls tilt slightly Republican aren’t enough to prove anything. The polls have erred before, only to prove fine over the longer term.
But the reasons to think that today’s polls underestimate Democrats are not based on just the last few years of results. They are also based on a fairly diverse set of methodological arguments, supported by extensive research, suggesting that many of today’s polls struggle to reach Democratic-leaning groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Because dead people and multiple voters are underrepresented in polling.
The Slimes laying the groundwork for the coming fraud?
Or really counting on the DNC's legendary ballot manufacturing operation.
That was my thought too. Hard to tell how many dead people and illegal aliens will vote.
I thought all aggregators built that into the results. So that using historical data, poll results are adjusted up/down based upon how close the they came to getting the “correct” result two years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/senate-model/comparisons.html
Dead people have difficulty answering the phone and illegal aliens don’t speak English well enough to do the poll.
Because voter fraud is hard to predict
Polls don’t count the non-citizen vote which is substantial and almost entirely Democrat. Polls don’t allow for all sorts of vote fraud which, as the numerous vote-fraud trials of the past few years show, is entirely Democrat implementation.I would guess that vote fraud constitutes more than 5 per cent of the total vote, maybe a lot more. And Republicans will not make any effort to ameliorate it above the state level. Democrat ruled states encourage it.
The biggest reason that polls undercount Democrats?
Because the dead only vote, they don’t have time for polls.
As is the Push/Pull/Drag machine. Especially with weeks of early voting.
People do not stuff the ballot box in a poll.
Dead people are not interviewed.
People are not counted twice (or ten times).
The percent difference between the final poll numbers and actual votes counted may be a proxy for the percentage of fraudulent votes.
“Unscrewing the polls.” Nathan Cohn is looking for a silver lining in a storm.
The Left is getting desperate if they have to shout Democrats are underrepresented in the polls.
Huh? These are their polls! This is too funny to watch.
It’s hard to tell just how many times the machines will have to be recalibrated and how many time the same liberal will be allowed to vote and how many illegals will be bused in to the polling sites.
BINGO
Because it’s difficult to poll democrat voters who haven’t left Guatemala yet?
Another “don’t-believe-your-lying-eyes” “whistlin’-past-the-graveyard” article from socialism’s cheerleaders.
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