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To: Jan W who wrote (234534)	1/12/2008 9:58:55 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) of 794098

Hi Jan..Thought you'd enjoy a UK's take on this: Case closed: Why Hillary won January 10, 2008 timesonline.typepad.com More on why Hillary won when the polls said that she wouldn't. My two leading theories were the Bradley Effect (people say they are going to support a black candidate then don't) and the Spiral of Silence (people are embarrassed to tell a pollster they really supported Hillary not Obama). Both of these had arguments in their favour, but both had this problem - the exit polls. Surely if either of these effects was important they would have made the exit polls wrong. And yet the exit polls seemed, looking at them the morning after the night before, to be right. Now I've spoken to one of the best polling gurus in the business, Andrew Cooper of Populus, and I think I understand. The correctness of the exit polls is an illusion. When I first saw the exit polls (at 1AM Wednesday morning UK time) they showed a 39-34 per cent advantage for Obama. When I woke up at 7AM they seemed to be totally in line with the result. The reason? The exit polls are reweighted as the night goes on to incorporate the results as they are counted. And the original polls disappear from the website. This is very important indeed in gaining an understanding of the Hillary victory. It means that any explanation of her victory must explain that voters told exit pollsters after they had voted that they were not for Hillary even though they had just voted for her. This means that the polls were wrong because people weren't telling the truth to pollsters and not because of a last minute change of heart. So you can dismiss, for instance, the crying as an explanation because even if it didn't turn up in last minute opinion polls it surely would have done in an exit poll. We really are just left with the Bradley Effect and the Spiral of Silence. So which is it? The Spiral of Silence. How can I be so sure? Because of this graph from Matt Yglesias's site. As you can see Obama's vote came in on the money. Hillary's didn't, not by miles. People voted for her who didn't tell pollsters that they would. And they kept it to themselves even after they had done so. The wikipedia entry is particularly good at explaining how something like Obama's incredible media coverage post-Iowa might make people unwilling to admit they were actually for Hillary. Case solved. Posted by Daniel Finkelstein on January 10, 2008 in Hillary Clinton \| Permalink \| Comments (68) \| TrackBack (0) \| Email this post

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