After New Hampshire, will you trust the polls again?

[no name 1]

January 10, 2008

Posted: 02:25 PM ET

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

It was one of the biggest misses by the polls ever. They all saw Hillary Clinton losing to Barack Obama, and they were all wrong. As late as nine o’clock the night of the New Hampshire Primary, people inside the Clinton campaign were still saying they expected Hillary to lose.

So what happened? Some possible explanations from the pollsters suggest record turnouts produced a different electorate than expected. There’s the idea that while the polls accurately showed Obama’s support among independents, they didn’t reflect the large Democratic turnout helping Clinton.

Others point to the fact that almost 20% of voters made up their minds on primary day and most of the polling had stopped before then.

There are those who suggest race may have played a role. The head of the Pew Research Center says poorer, less-educated New Hampshire voters may not have wanted to admit to pollsters that they wouldn’t vote for Obama, a black candidate.

And, of course, there were the last-minute events on the campaign trail itself, including Clinton’s emotional moment in that diner on Monday.

Regardless of why it happened, the polling industry – as well as the news media which rely heavily on polls – were all left looking pretty stupid. And it raises the issue of how heavily anyone should rely on them to begin with.

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

Steve from New York writes:

I never believed the polls to begin with. They take too small of a sample size with such a small margin of error. To be honest, I have no idea how one poll is consistent with the next. I think these polls are a fabricated sham.

Jeff from Overland Park, Kansas writes:

Right up until the end in New Hampshire, I checked the polls on an almost hourly basis. I have not listened to, looked at or looked for a political poll since. Does that answer your question?

Chris from Thousand Oaks, California writes:

I believe it comes down to what voters will admit to. I believe Hillary is a “guilty pleasure” for some people and they just didn’t want to admit to voting for her. As much as people say they want change, change is scary. The fact that Hillary wont change anything is comforting to some people who are unhappy with the current situation but don’t want to risk it getting worse.

Jonathan writes:

I don’t see any reason why not to trust the polls: they were accurate for the Republicans, and the Iowans responded and admitted they were voting for a black candidate in Iowa. I think the answer might be that there was something wrong with the machines used in New Hampshire.

George writes:

I don’t think we should look at polls the same way again. I believe what happened in N.H. shows people are “closeted”. When you go to the caucuses in Iowa, your neighbors and friends get to see who you are voting for. In N.H., you are behind the curtain. I think many more people like Hillary Clinton than let on—especially men.

Jonathan writes:

Forget the polls, I don’t even trust the vote.

Peter from Halifax, Nova Scotia writes:

Jack: You know what little dogs do to polls.

Vic writes:

I think they hired Hans Blix to do the polling and he couldn’t find the Hillary supporters.

source

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I was listening to Bill Bradley on Charlie Rose last night - he said that NH voters wait until the final moments before really deciding, so it wasn't so much that polls were unreliable as it was about the voters being asked, "Who would you vote for (at this minute)?" when they may change their minds several times before they vote.

[lucyrich 20]

I never did trust them much. Certainly not since they said that Dewey beat Truman.

On election day, the sample is self-selected and completely anonymous. With all earlier polls, the group is selected by the pollsters and they know they're not anonymous. Furthermore, people may take the actual election more seriously than the pre-election polls.

As we move away from landline phones and toward cell phones, it becomes harder to get a random sample by phone. And "poll fatigue" may make it still harder to get people to cooperate.

[Otto 83]

Do polls really matter?

[Alex+R 0]

To me, trusting polls is beside the point. How should they affect my choices? I'm not going to cast my vote based on a poll.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

A poll is only as good as the sample and methodology used. A poll, like any other survey product, can be spot-on or dead-wrong. It all depends.

[no name 1]

A poll is only as good as the sample and methodology used. A poll, like any other survey product, can be spot-on or dead-wrong. It all depends.

so stop posting every poll you find!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

A poll is only as good as the sample and methodology used. A poll, like any other survey product, can be spot-on or dead-wrong. It all depends.

so stop posting every poll you find!

Male me

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

A poll is only as good as the sample and methodology used. A poll, like any other survey product, can be spot-on or dead-wrong. It all depends.

There was a guy on NPR talking about this this afternoon - his view was that the voters who participated in the polls were not the voters who form Hillary's core support - typically poor folks with a low general standard of education. He also suggested that race might have been an issue too - with poor/uneducated people people being less likely to hold a favourable opinion of a black candidate. Essentially - the Bradley Effect.

The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate. Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.

Researchers who have studied the issue theorize that some white voters give inaccurate responses to polling questions because of a fear that they might appear to others to be racially prejudiced. Some research has suggested that the race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into that concern. At least one prominent researcher has suggested that with regard to pre-election polls, the discrepancy can be traced in part by the polls' failure to account for general conservative political leanings among late-deciding voters.

[Alex+R 0]

Am I the only person who's surprised that the low-income favorite is Hillary and the high-income and high-education favorite is Barack?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Am I the only person who's surprised that the low-income favorite is Hillary and the high-income and high-education favorite is Barack?

No, absolutely not. Higher income and higher education people tend be less biased and more idealistic. A vote for Hillary is a vote for status quo, for a familiar white face with a familiar Anglo name. Why do you think so many Hillary supporters are so uncomfortable with Barack and deride him for not being black enough? It's because they can't handle a black man who doesn't act and sound like the 'stereotypical' black man.

[no name 1]

Am I the only person who's surprised that the low-income favorite is Hillary and the high-income and high-education favorite is Barack?

That contradicts what #6 says above. I think O has the younger demo (less $$) for sure.

Edited January 11, 2008 by devilette

[JohnK 0]

I never trusted the polls in the first place.

[Alex+R 0]

Am I the only person who's surprised that the low-income favorite is Hillary and the high-income and high-education favorite is Barack?

That contradicts what #6 says above. I think O has the younger demo (less $$) for sure.

But the polls said!

They do seem to mean "younger" as in, 40s and below. PS for the most ridiculous case of the press attempting to seem "with it," check out this video here

*it's about courting younger voters

Edited January 11, 2008 by Alex+R