American Politics: Washington Post on Polling in New Hampshire

Tiassa · Jan 26, 2004

Polling, politics, and the "Graveyard of Pollsters"

The Washington Post presents a rather important article which I recommend to all who are watching the American presidential cycle play out. Beginning with considerations of the miserable record of polling in New Hampshire ahead of the primary vote, Richard Morin and Claudia Dean discuss the problems of the well-known Zogby International polls, optimism and polling, and issues pertaining to Iowa. Highlights, for flavor:

• So is New Hampshire just jinxed, or what?

Not necessarily. The dirty little secret in New Hampshire and elsewhere is that too many of the widely reported pre-election polls cut corners or otherwise use methods that are less than gold standard.

Perhaps the best-known of the bunch, Zogby International, does all kinds of controversial things to produce its headlines-grabbing tracking poll (see next item). Surveys taken by students for Franklin Pierce College, which is reporting a Democratic preference poll today, uses samples based on lists of registered voters that have proven to be incomplete, outdated or both. Suffolk University, which is polling for a Boston television station, asks a curiously convoluted candidate preference question that ends: "toward whom would you vote or lean?" Many professionals consider student interviewers unreliable, especially when unsupervised. Franklin Pierce and Suffolk University also use student interviewers, as does the University of New Hampshire. Polling directors at the schools insist that the kids are alright: "Their quality is tremendous," said Richard Killion, who oversees Franklin Pierce polls, later adding: "It really improved when I started paying them."

• That well-traveled pollster and media demi-star John Zogby is once again criss-crossing the country conducting tracking polls in primary states from New Hampshire to Arizona, apparently much to the chagrin of the political mavens at ABC News.

"The svengalis at ABC News and some major papers don't like Zogby's tracking," reported The Note, the widely read ABC News online politics briefing . Then they quote an anonymous "ABC guru" who called Zogby's tracking polls "crack for the weak."

"I saw that," laughed Zogby, adding he was not surprised. ABC's polling department has reviewed his methodology and rated his polls "not airworthy," he said. "But that's all right. We're doing okay without ABC."

• Surging Democratic candidate John Edwards says he wants to get the votes of America's optimists.

A recent Post-ABC News poll holds some mixed news for the North Carolina senator: he's got a real opening, but it's with Republicans.

• But one lingering question: Why did the final entrance poll estimates differ by so much from the final results . . . .

Could it be that the very first survey by NEP was ... wrong?

Right question, wrong answer, said Lenski, whose firm is conducting the NEP exit polls with Mitofsky International. Yes, the latest Democratic entrance poll had the biggest gap between entrance poll estimate and the final result ever since the networks started doing these surveys in 1984, he said. But it had nothing to do with the quality of the poll and everything to do with the quirky nature of the Iowa caucuses ... and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).
Click to expand...

At any rate, give it a read.

Notes:

• Morin, Richard and Claudia Deane. "New Hampshire: Graveyard of Pollsters." WashingtonPost.com, January 23, 2004. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41186-2004Jan23.html

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American Politics: Washington Post on Polling in New Hampshire

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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American Politics: Washington Post on Polling in New Hampshire

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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