political polling has built in Democratic bias
I understand people wanting to discount polls when their guy isn’t ahead - I don’t like when people on my side do it either. There are many variables involved in polling, but the basics of it - “who are you gonna vote for” seem to be pretty cut and dry. So on what basis do Hewitt and other con bloggers who have been echoing him for the past month make their assertion that polls favor Democrats? Did the polls in 2001 where Bush hit 90% have a pro-Democrat bias? Or the polls where he led John Kerry in 2004?
Or, as I am guessing, did the insidious Democrat-MSM plot to show a “Democratic bias” in polling just coincidentally happen when Republicans - Bush specifically - started doing badly in the polls?
In other words, lemme get this straight, polls are clear indicators of popularity and favorability when it shows a positive number for a Republican but the minute it shows a Democrat in the lead it’s clearly a biased and partisan conspiracy.
Ooooookkkkkaaaaayyyyyy.
UPDATE: Please read the comments on Hewitt’s blog where one of his readers uses actual data to refute The Cheerleader’s bogus assertion. It is to laugh!
ALSO: As readers know, I am by no means saying polls mean the Dems can rest on their laurels. As a matter of fact, every Democratic campaign as well as the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, DGA and the rest should be in full on game mode for the next 8 days, working their butts off like they’re down 20 points. But my point is that you shouldn’t discount the anti-Republican sentiment that is now in the majority in this country, especially in states like Maryland. If anything we should take the data the polls are giving us and using that as fuel to fight harder and make the Republican numbers go negative.
Pound ‘em, crush ‘em, stomp ‘em. Run up in the stands and slap dey mama.
I do wish Mr. Hewitt had elaborated on this provocative notion.
I assume he’s relying on the notion that well-to-do Republicans have better things to do with their time than chat with (ugh) pollsters and other riffraff. At the same time, layabouts, drug users, welfare cases, lesbian witches scheming to murder the unborn, and other Democratic voters are generally at leisure to spout off their objectionable, out-of-the-mainstream views to anyone who rings them up.
What could be more obvious?
Simple answers to simple questions.
What does Hugh Hewitt mean. “political polling has built in Democratic bias?”
The media, polls, science and facts all have a liberal bias.
Reality has a liberal bias.
Polls have a liberal bias because they require listening… it’s obvious, isn’t it?
But Diebold has a Republican bias.
Have we all forgotten the little nugget from the 2004 elections when exit polls showed Kerry winning but Bush still “won” anyway?
It’s all about the reluctant Bush voter.
Pure crap.
At the same time, layabouts, drug users, welfare cases, lesbian witches scheming to murder the unborn, and other “Democratic voters are generally at leisure to spout off their objectionable, out-of-the-mainstream views to anyone who rings them up.
What could be more obvious?”
Umm. Yeah, thats about it, Quaker. You left out teachers’ union members who have time to respond to polls but not to teach our kids the fundamentals.
And don’t forget the so-called “doctors” who lay down their abortion blenders only to spew their hideous, anti-Christian hate speech to pollsters, acting on their instructions from the Streisand/Soros Jewish high command against America.
Another excellent point, Duggster. (Not!)
You seem to forget about your Lord and Master’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative, which mandates that teachers teach our kids how to take a standardized test, instead of teaching them the fundamentals.
But hey, as long as he got a couple photo-ops out of it, all’s good.
Try reading this article… they sometimes give higher weighting to Dem vs. GOP respondents to extrapolate where the country is as a whole.
Question is whether their weightings are correct.
Hewitt may be right if the Helms-Gandtt contest of 1990 is any indicator (again with that one…). The race was about even the night before the vote, but Helms won by several percentage points. As I recall, there are other examples of the racist asshole vote being underrepresented in polling. This does not bode well for Virginia or Tennesse, obviously.
Well, in a way, they do.
Y’see, a poll can be entirely correct in showing that a majority of Americans plan to vote Democratic, and it can be entirely correct, and it still doesn’t tell you how many Democratic legislators will end up in Washington, because most of those Democratic votes will be confined to Dem-leaning areas.
And since the districting is stacked so that Republicans are over-represented in Congress, the Senate, and the Electoral College, it doesn’t really matter if the majority vote for Democrats - you can still end up with a Republican legislature, as happened in in 2004, when more Americans voted for Democratic Senators than for Republicans.
And, of course, even if Bush had actually won Florida in 2000, he still had lost the popular vote - more Americans certainly voted for Gore, and yet Bush might still have been elected president.
So, there’s an extent to which general polls are “biased” simply by telling the truth about voters’ preferences, because they don’t tell the truth about how those votes will be distributed and affect the actual results in Congress.