New Hampshire Primary Polls Wrong
Surveys of NH Democratic Voters Gave Inaccurate Election Predictions
ABC, CNN, CSPAN, Gallup, Reuters, USA Today, Washington Post, and Zogby polls all had Democratic candidate Barack Obama winning the New Hampshire Primary - what happened?
Possibly not since the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote the erroneous, now famous, headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”, has preliminary election results been so wrong. In the past, political polls have had errors but not until now has such a large group of diverse interests come to the same false conclusions. Pollsters all over America are examining their data and methods of collection in an attempt to figure out what went wrong?
Errors
Different statewide polls indicated Barack Obama was leading Hillary Clinton by 5-13 percentage points in the New Hampshire Democratic primary; yet the outcome saw Clinton win. "It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong," said Gary Langer, director of polling at ABC News to AFP yesterday. NBC, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal too feel the embarrassment.
- Sunday evening a CNN/WMUR poll gave Obama a 10-point advantage over Clinton – 39% to 29%.
- On Monday January 7th the USA Today said “Sen. Barack Obama has opened up a 13 percentage point lead…according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll….Obama: 41%, Clinton: 28%.”
- ABC News reported on Monday, “Amid frenetic last-minute campaigning…onetime front-runners…[are] lagging as Barack Obama and John McCain…have surged to leads.”
- Primary morning January 8th John Zogby announced: “The big momentum behind Democrat Barack Obama…continued up to the last hours…a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows….Obama leads with 42% support, compared to 29% for rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.”
Problems
Pollsters (and journals who reported poll results) have begun to ask how they made such an error? Only in the early stages of this examination, analyses and results are beginning to appear.
- Undecided Voters – considerable attention was given to the independent voter and the significance of that vote. Forgotten was the possibility of many undecided voters. In past elections New Hampshire voters decided early; however, this year Zogby reported “according to the exit polls, 18% of the voters said that they made up their minds on primary day.”
- Primary Schedule – 2008 saw an unprecedented compression of the primary voting season. Scrambles for supremacy by states resulted in 5 days between the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire. There was insufficient time for proper sampling. As Zobgy said, “Unfortunately, one day...does not make a trend and we ran out of time.”
- Political Predictions – the very polls that predicted Obama to win, allowed independent Obama voters to switch to their alternate Republican choice – McCain. According to the final Rasmussen Report telephone survey on Jan 8, “John McCain is…competing…for Independent voters who can choose to vote in either the Republican or the Democratic Primary….data showed that McCain is seen as politically moderate by 53% of New Hampshire’s [voters.]” Zobgy said, “…with a sense that Obama had a lock on the Democratic side, independents felt free to vote [for] their hero, John McCain.”
- Women Voters - One consensus so far has been that pollsters abhorrently miscalculated the female voter impact. Conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote in today’s Washington Post, “those exit polls were so wrong because they grossly understated the female vote…Hillary Clinton’s tears evoked sympathy for her, and Bill Clinton’s sneers generated contempt for Obama.”
Now that the journalist, media and pollsters are licking their wounds, the NH publics' message was clear – Polls don’t elect, voters do! John Harris and Jim VandeHei explained it best in their Jan. 9th Politico.com article Why reporters get it wrong. “Most of all, we treat even legitimate polls as holy writs, rather than simply snapshots of the general contours of a race.” That’s why democracies have elections.
