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Politics

Journal pudge's Journal: Undecideds 7

Journal by pudge

People keep saying undecideds usually break for the incumbent. Perhaps that's technically true, but there's a few things to keep in mind:

  • In 2000, while Gore was not the incumbent, he represented incumbency to most people, to a large degree, and undecideds broke to him (Bush led by about 4% in polls, going into election day, and Gore had more votes nationwide by 0.5%).
  • We usually have a lot more undecideds, and the number by which undecideds break for the incumbent (about 2/3 to 3/4) is the approximate number undecideds are fewer now than in 2000 (was 7% in 2000, is 3% now).
  • One of the major reasons undecideds break for the challenger is because people decide that they just want change (this is probably why they broke for Gore in 2000, because the felt we did NOT need change), but security concerns changes all that math.
  • We have less reason to grant credibility to the polls this year than any year before, anyway.

Just some random thoughts in my noggin' ... it will be interesting to see the results of polls vs actual results.

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Undecideds More

Undecideds

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  • I think the polls probably mean nothing for this election. Do you know of any other time when the numbers were off by so much (as I am betting these will be)?

    Any guess as to whether there will be a record (for recent years) turn-out this year?
    • The most significant example I can think of was that most major pollsters predicted a Dewey defeat of Truman. But I don't know numbers.

      For turnout, I dunno. I suspect it will be a record, but I don't have a strong feeling for who will comprise it, except for one thing: I predict the young adult turnout movement will be a failure. All this hip-hop artists and MTV trying to rock the vote won't get as far as they think they will. Puff Daddy says hip-hop generation is a bigger demographic than NASCAR dads,
  • Polls (and least the majority of them) are by telephone. They only call land lines, not mobile lines. More and more poeple have gone mobile only and these people are left out of the polls. Young people make up a very major portion of this group, and young people typically are more liberal and vote for the democrat (if of course they vote at all). The FCC said 2 years ago that 5 percent of the US homes had mobile only service and 15% of college students. I'm betting that number has gone up fairly signif
    • I don't believe this at all. People who use ONLY mobile phones are not a significant demographic. They are far less significant than, say, people who simply *are not home when pollsters call,* let alone the *majority* of people who actually are home who refuse to respond.

      Think about what it means to say that polls are wrong because of mobile-only voters: it means that these people are different enough from the rest of the population that their exclusion can make a difference in the polls. Are people who
      • I don't think mobile only users in general are signifcantly different than other voters and those who aren't home or don't answer the phone wouldn't be any different for any reason that I can think of, but I do think the 18-24 demographic is consistently different. Clearly I wouldn't take Zogby's poll of Rock the Vote people at anything resembling face value, but rather rely on recent history--this demographic leans towards the democrats and/or the challenger historically. I'm not saying that it's an enor
        • I don't buy that 18-24 yr olds will turn out in greater numbers, because they are a bunch of mostly apathetic losers. I hope they prove me wrong, I really do.

          But anyway, nothing shows that the people in this demographic are not already accounted for by the existing poll results, so I don't know why you keep bringing up mobile phones as though it changes anything.
      • Mobile only user here in that wacky 20-29 age group...and voting for W.

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