Good exit pollers, in fact, are required by training to sample randomly and NOT to "choose people like themselves." Sure, it happens.
Absentee voting usually benefits Republicans, esp. in battleground sates. OH and FL are notorious for having absentees that benefit Republicans.
#4. You've gotta be kidding, right? Most people are too busy to hang out on Drudge and get freaked out over exit polls (most people don't even know what an exit poll is). They arrive early, vote, then go to work. You've gotta do better than this.
Yes, party ID is pretty static. It's only bad pollsters who see shifts during conventions. In 2000, and 2004, we knew who our Rs were and we knew exactly how many we had to get out to win. Any good pol in any major organization will tell you the same thing.
“Actually, if you know anything about the “insides” of campaigns, if they say they are 6 down, it’s more likely they are tied or down 12.”
Normally I’d agree, but McCain’s campaign has been an OPSEC travesty. They’ve announced every move they’re going to make in advance. There is no advantage for McCain to tell the world he’s down, yet he did it anyway. McCain’s campaign has been all tactics and no strategy. That’s a lousy campaign, not a sign of some super secret political jujitsu.
“Sure, it happens.”
Yes, in 2004.
“#4. You’ve gotta be kidding, right?”
I stated clearly that I was talking about post-election interviews. Those numbers you’re so sure are absolutely correct, tell me, exactly how are they derived? And please be specific. Somebody who was really “inside baseball” wouldn’t make the rookie mistake of thinking that partisan turnout numbers only come from exit polling.
As for party ID, pollster Mark Blumenthal: “Moreover, more recent studies have shown evidence of significant short-term change in Party ID. The 2000 Annenberg National Election Study (NAES), like the 2004 study now underway, was a daily tracking survey that ultimately included more than 58,000 interviews over the course of the year, roughly 5000 interviews per month. NAES observed that the percentage of the electorate identified as Independent “was not stable over time.” In a chart on page 61 of Capturing Campaign Dynamics, Daniel Romer and his colleagues showed the percentage of Independents falling steadily from roughly 31% to 27% during the conventions, then spiking 8 points to 35% just after the Democratic convention in early September, then falling off again steadily back to roughly 28% on election day, then plummeting sharply to below 25% a few days later. No surprise that they concluded:
Surveys that are weighted by party identification may be operating under some misconceptions about party identification. Party identification may not be as stable as once thought and could be considered an indicator of the respondents’ attitudes toward candidates at a given moment of the campaign.”
Like I said, I deal in facts, not assumptions. If you’ve got better data than the NAES, I’d love to see it.
Wake Co a key county? - please!!!! Bush won Wake by only 2% in 2004. Actually Kerry did much better in Wake than Gore did. As long as McCain talks free markets he should well.
When McCain visited NC he visited Wilmington, which is a bit odd. If I am “losing” in NC I wouldn’t waste time in Wilmington. I would hit