Fool me thrice?

By Stephen Fountain, Editor

Filed Under Race for White House 2008 on Jan 9 

Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News, is lamenting the errors made by pre-election polls in New Hampshire.

It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong. We need to know why. But we need to know it through careful, empirically based analysis. There will be a lot of claims about what happened – about respondents who reputedly lied, about alleged difficulties polling in biracial contests. That may be so. It also may be a smokescreen – a convenient foil for pollsters who’d rather fault their respondents than own up to other possibilities – such as their own failings in sampling and likely voter modeling.

Let us not forget the scenario that played out in 2004, as reported by Fox News:

By the time most of the polls closed in precincts across the country Tuesday night, real numbers began to suggest that the early estimations that had been so upbeat for Sen. John Kerry were over-inflated — so much so, that FOX News Channel decided to quit using the exit poll results Tuesday evening, calling them inaccurate and unreliable.

And in 2000:

The new pollsters had replaced the Voter News Service, a consortium of media outlets that did its own exit polling and vote counting in 2000, and was largely blamed for misjudging the 2000 election.

So, in 2000, 2004, and 2008 polling organizations have consistently called it wrong. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Three times? Where do we go from there?

Comments

  • http://www.azconservative.org Bruce, Political Columnist

    Polling errors or skillful manipulation of the vote? There are questions.

    Didn’t the Dems cry foul when polling showed Kerry won but votes showed Bush the winner?

    Someone cried foul… the silence in New Hampshire is awfully loud.

  • Toby

    kind of a weak analysis, since the exit polls this time around were just about dead on- it was the pre-primary polling that seems to have failed us.

  • http://americanrevolutionof2008.blogspot.com Josh

    I’m not saying this out of bias, but I believe the voter fruad is alive and well. You’re a fool if you believe anything and everything the government and media tell you.

  • Lazlo

    Speaking of fooling people, what do you think of the voter fraud?

  • William Kone

    The predictions are as reliable, but much better written.

  • ShawnN

    I only go to Political Derby for my election news. Besides the predictions here are as reliable as the ones we get from the MSM ;)

  • Lisa

    What do you call 500 polsters at the bottom of the ocean?

    …

    a good start! HA HA HA HA HA HA.

  • RedstateEddio

    Four out of five Americans think pollsters are blind idiots right now. That’s according to Rasmussen. RCP says it’s only 3 out of 5.

  • PSU2007

    Good idea. I vote we round up pollsters, lawyers and lobbyists and dump them in the ocean.

  • David Kaiser

    “Where do we go from there?”

    Maybe we should take a poll on that Stephen…