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New York polls — 22 Comments

  1. Every pollster knows the statistical sample needed to ensure accuracy. Knows what questions need to be asked, to gain a clear picture. So, if the polling methodology is ‘puzzling’, it’s an indication of a hidden agenda, where accuracy is not the goal but being able to ‘report’ the ‘results’ desired.

    Political polling is a business and as often as not, the client’s desires are the polster’s primary consideration because staying in business is always the polster’s foremost priority.

    Political organizations fund polling not just for the usual reasons (public reaction, trends, current placement within the field) but for less obvious reasons, such as influencing the electorate.

    After all, if Trump is @ 50% and Cruz @ 15%… why bother to vote in the primary?

  2. Right Scoop is reporting that Ivanka and Eric Trump did not register as republicans before the deadline, so they will not be voting for daddy. The kicker is Ivanka is team trump’s get out the vote spokesperson. This shows the level of the YUGE! deal maker’s managerial prowess. No wonder the well oiled Cruz machine is running circles around Trump in Colorado and elsewhere, harvesting delegates by the rules, while team trump whines that Cruz is cheating. And, its just not fair!

  3. Geoffrey – It’s doubtful that there’s an agenda. It’s simply the case that New York is a big place with few Republicans. There were 190,000 voters in the NY primary in 2012, which was almost exactly 1% of the state’s population.

  4. I don’t really trust any of the polls where delegates are elected on a district basis. Most of the reporting I see is so superficial that I think it’s more about ratings and clicks than about providing info. I just hope Cruz is getting out to districts where he might win.

  5. NIck:

    I agree that proper and valid polling is especially difficult to do in a situation like that.

  6. Nick,

    I can readily accept that New York is a big place with few Republicans but there is always an agenda. Given the current climate, when it comes to politics, how could it be otherwise?

  7. Geoffrey – It’s in the interest of pollsters to be as accurate as possible. It’s one of those professions where failure is mathematically demonstrable.

  8. Geoffrey Britain:

    Yes, but what is the agenda, and how much does it affect the polling?

    For example, if a pollster fails to predict an election, and is off (or particularly way off) too often, that pollster’s reputation suffers. That is very important to a pollster, and argues for trying to be as accurate as possible in predicting outcomes.

    Some pollsters are known to be more propaganda-driven than others. That is based on their track record, and who hires them and for what. But a great many of the mainstream pollsters’ fame and reputation rests on their predictive ability, and to be accurate you cannot also be skewing the data.

    Polls cost money. Pollsters are a money-making proposition. They spend money on polls, and the more subjects, the more expensive the poll is. Doing all the matching for each district, and getting it right, as well as getting enough subjects to be accurate in each district, would probably cost a lot more than they are willing to spend for a state poll in a primary.

  9. Trump is a man-made disaster.

    No censor button.
    Inarticulate.
    Will set conservatism back a generation at least.

    If anybody associates Trump with conservatism we are doomed.

  10. GB,

    I can guarantee you the Cruz machine is doing in depth polling and other research precinct by precinct. In a state like NY and in many other states, a slim majority in any given precinct harvests delegates. In NY the goal for Cruz is keeping Trump below 70% of the total delegates. I am confident his team will succeed. It is a numbers game.

    Polls are polls, some more valid than others, but as nick and neo note, polling firms that are wildly off base do not stay in business for long.

  11. It is hardly an all or nothing proposition for a pollster. If the client’s priority is accuracy the pollster will focus upon accuracy.

    If the client indicates that ‘evidence’ in support of their propaganda is their priority, those pollsters who have previously indicated a ‘willingness to cooperate’ will be sought out. You can bet your last dollar that both parties know exactly which pollsters can be counted upon to ‘cooperate’.

    Such a pollster will protect themselves by asking some questions that allow them to make some accurate predictions. Carefully crafting their questions so as to create the evidence the client desires, while also protecting their reputation by getting some things right.

    Obviously, the closer to the primary or election, the less latitude pollsters have, so their results become more accurate.

    This is known as covering your a**.

  12. Geoffrey, I just don’t think that you’re describing reality. Campaigns need accurate information. No campaign wants misleading information, and no pollster is going to release bad or tweaked data. Now, the press may be interested in pushing a story, and they’ll phrase a policy question in a leading way. That definitely happens. And campaigns may do internal polling that they don’t release publicly. But a polling outfit won’t knowingly produce bad horse-race data.

  13. One other thing, since I’m listing every possibility. There’s such a thing as push-polling, which only pretends to be polling. Candidate A’s campaign calls someone up and says, “Hello, I’m from a polling company you’ve never heard of. Would you more or less likely to vote for Candidate B if you found out he abused animals?”

  14. I think this is great, and I was wondering specifically about NY districts because of the delegate system.
    Per the other commenters, pollsters can’t just skew polls for long without taking a business hit. I would assume the general polls are ballpark, but the devil is in the details for NY.

    Nate Silver projected Trump to get 71 delegates, but Trump’s already behind the general pace so he would like more. If he gets fewer than 71, it’ll be a loss.

  15. Nick,

    No offence but I think you’re being a bit naive. Look at the overwhelming number of questions pollsters ask that reveal bias, which you evidently assign to plain incompetence.

    Neo has devoted many a post mentioning the misleading questions often asked of voters. Perhaps I’m wrong but I neither think it accidental nor an indication of stupidity or incompetence. I do think it a clear indication of bias and purposeful misdirection, which to me is clear evidence of an agenda.

    I would much prefer that polling be as you believe it to be, I simply find it unpersuasive.

  16. GB…

    I’m in your camp.

    I term it Agit-Polling.

    The idea is to create an Astro-Turf of ground swell support.

    Which, IIRC, is what happened when Trump used paid actors to flesh out his earliest ‘crowds.’

  17. We are witnessing how Trump is not going to attain a 1st ballot nomination — and how Cruz is piling up delegates to throw himself over the top on the second ballot.

    Regardless of Rubio, Rubio’s CROWD has figured out that they have to join forces with Cruz to stop Trump.

    Everywhere one turns, Trump is not attaining devout Trumpbot delegates.

    He’s getting long time Republicans, most of them conservative.

  18. Let me say this more clearly – you’re unlikely to find that kind of bias in polls about competing candidates. Issue polls, definitely.

  19. neo,

    my wife is demographically similar to you.
    She doesn’t trust Cruz and won’t vote for him.
    what would you say to her to convince her otherwise?

  20. avi:

    It’s not easy to change a person’s mind, even if it’s one’s spouse.

    Maybe especially if it’s one’s spouse.

    That said, there are several approaches you could take. One is to find out exactly why she doesn’t trust him, and rebut those points (including the one about his face), one by one.

    Another is to tell her more about Cruz’s record before he became a politician, and his many accomplishments.

    Another approach is to compare his trustworthiness to the trustworthiness of whoever she’s thinking of voting for instead. If it’s Trump she favors, there’s a lot of information to do that.

    Another is to have her read neo-neocon 🙂 .

    But the bottom line is that not only are people often less-than-amenable to persuasion, but that tends to be because these things are often based on emotion, and emotion is seldom susceptible to reason.

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