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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective
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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (4392)11/2/2000 10:39:19 PM
From: fuzzymath   of 10042
 
The polls could be very wrong because one thing is very different this year compared with previous years: the number of people who are answering the pollsters' phone calls.

In the past, about 60-70% of people picked up the phone and responded. This year, the estimates range from 20% to 40%.

This means the pollsters have to INVENT and apply algorithms based on their interpretation of the data, to try to mold their raw data into a realistic image of how people will actually vote.

The problem, of course, is they lack test data to work with. The voting preferences of this years new non-responding voters could be very different from the voting preferences of 1996 non-responding voters.

I think this may explain some of the differences in polling numbers -- for example, the fact that Portrait of America has consistently given Bush a larger lead than Zogby. The algorithms they chose to work with their data may be causing this to occur.

The small set of people willing to participate in polls also suggests the possibility that all the polls could be way off, and on election night we could all be very surprised by what we see.

FWIW, my mathematical consolidation of 5 tracking polls has Bush ahead by 4.3% tonight, a 0.9% gain for Gore, but within the range where it's stood since before Debate #3. Data available at fuzzymath.com.

kfarnham@fuzzymath.com
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