Five Polling Lessons from 2012

Last edited Fri Dec 28, 2012, 11:06 AM USA/ET - Edit history (1)

Five Polling Lessons from 2012
Harry Enten says there are five polling lessons we should take from the 2012 election season:

1. When likely and registered voter polls disagree in high turnout elections, you should usually go with the registered voter surveys.
2. Cellphones are generally needed for an accurate telephone poll.
3. Internet polling is the wave of the future.
4. Internal polls published publicly generally should not be trusted.
5. When state and national polls disagree, you should generally go with the state data.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/12/27/five_polling_lessons_from_2012.html

I would add one more:
6. Gallup likely voter model is full of shit.

7 replies, 603 views

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7 replies	Author	Time	Post
Five Polling Lessons from 2012 (Original post)	WI_DEM	Dec 2012	OP
I would say too	Proud Liberal Dem	Dec 2012	#1
They are only interested in close polls... Keeps the uninformed interested! n/t	busterbrown	Dec 2012	#3
I always wondered why ANYONE would be interested in national polls...	CTyankee	Dec 2012	#6
And mostly ended up being WRONG to boot	Proud Liberal Dem	Dec 2012	#7
Disregard Rasmussen	VirginiaTarheel	Dec 2012	#2
7. Scotty Rasmussen will ALWAYS skew his polling towards Republicans	RomneyLies	Dec 2012	#4
Lesson Election 2012 in a nutshell as given to us by David Letterman	Liberal_Stalwart71	Dec 2012	#5

Response to WI_DEM (Original post)

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 01:12 PM

Proud Liberal Dem (11,758 posts)

1. I would say too

that polling averaging isn't very reflective either IMHO, particularly depending on which polls you include (or don't include). Also, was it just me or was the media overly concerned about the national polls as opposed to the state polls, which consistently indicated that President Obama was leading in all of the right places?

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Response to Proud Liberal Dem (Reply #1)

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 03:24 PM

busterbrown (1,441 posts)

3. They are only interested in close polls... Keeps the uninformed interested! n/t

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Response to Proud Liberal Dem (Reply #1)

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 07:44 PM

CTyankee (35,079 posts)

6. I always wondered why ANYONE would be interested in national polls...

and why the media kept pushing them on us, when they knew as well as we did that they were highly inaccurate and really did not predict anything...

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Response to CTyankee (Reply #6)

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 10:45 PM

Proud Liberal Dem (11,758 posts)

7. And mostly ended up being WRONG to boot

Most of the national polls (using a whacked out LV model obviously) had Romney running way ahead of Obama during the last month or so but ended up finishing 4% behind instead. These massive leads were never reflected in state polling where Obama held a modest but consistent lead over Romney in the swing states. This is why I remained fairly confident that President Obama would pull it out on Election Night. I thought that it might be a pretty narrow win but it didn't end up even being close. Most of the pollsters were wildly off the mark in the last election- but they'll be back (along with "Unskewed Polls" no doubt) the next election in 2016. *sigh*

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Response to WI_DEM (Original post)

Fri Dec 28, 2012, 01:17 PM

VirginiaTarheel (798 posts)