Reply #88: If you check the polls

[Nicholas_J]

And they got responses from 400 REpublicans and 300 Democrats, that is oversampling the REpublicans. In fact all they are doing with the data to get the percentages is a simply percentage, with no adjustment for the greater number of Republicans polled. When you look at the complete information, you will see that they polled about ten percent more Republican than Democrats, and the resulting percentage is simply figured by taking a percentage of the total number of people they polled. In that case you are simply going to get a larger margin for Bush because about 90 percent of the Republicans are going for Bush, which skews the percentages in the REpublican favor. IN thois poll they actually polled more independents than Democract but since only about 60 percent of the Independents lean towards Kerry, this does not make up for the fact that if equal numbers of Democrats were polled you would get about 88 percent of then voting for Kerry,so the polls would reflect a closer balamce. When you look ar the ARG or Harris polls you see and almost equal number of Democrats and Republican and these are the polls that are reflecting a one or two point differnce witheither Kerry or Bush leading. Check the methodology of these polls and then look at the numbers of people polled by party.There are several post here that show the actual numbers of the respondants by party, and in all ogf the Gallop polls a considerable number more Repubicans were polled than Democrats. When you do the math, you notice that no adjustments were made for this difference whatsoever.