Practically Speaking
Kyle and her husband moved to Brookfield in 1986. She became active in local politics and started blogging in 2004. Her focus is primarily on local issues but often includes state and national topics, too. Kyle looks at things from the taxpayers' perspective in a creative, yet down to earth way, addressing them from a practical point of view.
Polls have a bias--they will tighten up now because they all want to be right
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=278 Eighty-Four percent say they'd never lie to a pollster, Oct. 15
...In addition to the social pressure to constantly prove you're not a
racist, apparently there is massive social pressure to prove you're not
a Republican. No one is lying about voting for McCain just to sound
cool.
Reviewing the polls printed in The New York Times and The
Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since
1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to
Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they
overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10
points.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48
percent. And yet, on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks
before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup
Poll by 6 percentage points -- down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead
in August.
Reading newspaper coverage of presidential elections in 1980 and
1984, I found myself paralyzed by the fear that Reagan was going to
lose.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent
to 41 percent. In a Gallup Poll released days before the election on
Oct. 27, it was Carter who led Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent.
In 1984, Reagan walloped Walter Mondale 58.8 percent to 40
percent, -- the largest electoral landslide in U.S. history. But on
Oct. 15, The New York Daily News published a poll showing Mondale with
only a 4-point deficit to Reagan, 45 percent to 41 percent. A Harris
Poll about the same time showed Reagan with only a 9-point lead. The
Oct. 19 New York Times/CBS News Poll had Mr. Reagan ahead of Mondale by
13 points. All these polls underestimated Reagan's actual margin of
victory by 6 to 15 points.
In 1988, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by a whopping 53.4
percent to 45.6 percent. A New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 5 had
Bush leading the Greek homunculus by a statistically insignificant 2
points -- 45 percent to 43 percent. (For the kids out there: Before it
became a clearinghouse for anti-Bush conspiracy theories, CBS News was
considered a credible journalistic entity.)
A week later -- or one tank ride later, depending on who's telling
the story -- on Oct. 13, Bush was leading Dukakis in The New York Times
Poll by a mere 5 points.
Admittedly, a 3- to 6-point error is not as crazily wrong as the
6- to 15-point error in 1984. But it's striking that even small "margin
of error" mistakes never seem to benefit Republicans.
In 1992, Bill Clinton beat the first President Bush 43 percent to
37.7 percent. (Ross Perot got 18.9 percent of Bush's voters that year.)
On Oct. 18, a Newsweek Poll had Clinton winning 46 percent to 31
percent, and a CBS News Poll showed Clinton winning 47 percent to 35
percent.
So in 1992, the polls had Clinton 12 to 15 points ahead, but he won by only 5.3 points.
In 1996, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole 49 percent to 40 percent. And
yet on Oct. 22, 1996, The New York Times/CBS News Poll showed Clinton
leading by a massive 22 points, 55 percent to 33 percent.
In 2000, which I seem to recall as being fairly close, the October
polls accurately described the election as a virtual tie, with either
Bush or Al Gore 1 or 2 points ahead in various polls. But in one of the
latest polls to give either candidate a clear advantage, The New York
Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 3, 2000, showed Gore winning by 45 percent
to 39 percent.
In the last presidential election the polls were surprisingly
accurate -- not including the massively inaccurate Election Day exit
poll. In the end, Bush beat John Kerry 50.7 percent to 48.3 percent in
2004. Most of the October polls showed the candidates in a dead-heat,
with Bush 1 to 3 points ahead. So either pollsters got a whole lot
better starting in 2004, or Democrats stole more votes in that election
than we even realized.
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