The Conflict between Conservative "Facts" and Reality

[Bricker]

@Lobohan

I understand boosterism and positive thinking. But as I recall, in 2004 there weren’t any memes about “oversampling” or alternate guys who just altered the polls to make them more comfortable.

Sure there were. Many posts on this board talked about how pollsters were undersampling your voter because they were calling land line phones for surveys, and not cell phones.

@rfgdxm

Electoral-vote.com

Scroll down the page to the final 2000 national poll results. While Gore was just slightly higher in the final popular vote, only 2 polls had Gore ahead, with 2 tied. This suggests to me that however the pollsters were doing things in 2000, they had a sample that was skewed Republican. Perhaps younger voters hang up on pollsters more than older people? With the cell phone factor missing a lot more younger voters than in 2000, this may skew the poll sample even more Republican.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

You automatically have to add a few points to Kerry for the national polls. They don’t account for new voters, for cell phones or for overseas votes. That means they are missing almost the entire youth vote and an awful lot of the absentee votes from Americans abroad are going to Kerry. My father is a 22 year State Department dip now doing a tour in Brazil. He says the sentiment abroad among Americans- at least among the civilians- is almost violently anti-Bush…they have to reap the consequences of Bush’s anti-international dick waving, after all. The absentee vote from the military has always gone more or less for the Pub, but there’s a lot of resentment in the miltary right now, and more minorities as well. That military vote is no longer as solid for the Pubs as it once was. They’ll still probably win a majority of it but it’s not a blow out any more.

Kerry is leading today at Electoral-Vote.com, btw.

@SmackFu

It is interesting how he points out that now polling can’t reach people who have no land line and have moved to cell only. I would guess that’s a group that skews young and democratic.

@BobLibDem

Don’t watch the numbers, Kerry vs. Bush. Watch Bush vs. Bush. If Bush goes over 50% in the polls, he should win. If he can’t cross 48%, he will lose. Undecideds break for the challenger by more than 5 to 1. The story is going to be the turnout. High turnouts historically favor Democrats, and this turnout should be historic.