What if we threw an election? (Who would come?)
There’s been a lot of whiplash the last 48 hours over poll results, some showing Republicans surging against Democrats in New York, others showing Andrew Cuomo and Kirsten Gillibrand holding onto comfortable leads.
Why the stark disparity?
Built into some polls are assumptions about who will actually show up. These “likely voter models” are incredibly complex and controversial.
One of the more conservative national pollsters, Rasmussen, has drawn fire for refusing to offer detailed information about how they come up with their LVM, which tends to tilt toward conservative candidates.
In the case of Gillibrand-DioGuardia, Murphy-Gibson, and Cuomo-Paladino, recent Siena polls shows Democrats sitting pretty. But their poll included all registered voters, without a focused effort to weed out those less likely to show up.
Quinnipiac’s numbers, on the other hand, show a much closer contest, because they’re trying to focus in only on those likely voters. And they think conservatives are more likely to turn out at the polls in November.
Which approach will turn out to be more accurate? No one really knows. Both pollsters have pretty good track records.
Tags: election10
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Again, this is precisely why ordinary people are tuning out of politics and why they are losing respect for journalism. Nearly all the coverage, and I mean in the state media in general not just this blog, of the governor’s race is based on polls (exacerbated when the one was released showing Paladino only 6 points behind)… with the small rest of it being about Paladino’s personality or voter fury. The state’s in a crisis but journalists seem to think that no one’s interested in hearing ideas about how to address the crisis and that everyone’s more worried about the little parlor games of polls that ignore most of the candidates anyway. Yes, the only people talking about issues are the smaller party candidates which the media ignores… but isn’t it the serious media’s responsibility to press the major party candidates to talk about issues?
A perfect example of what Brian is saying is the lack of coverage of the third candidate for Governor, Kristin Davis. Very little discussion of her or her ideas in the press. Is that because of her ideas (legalize marijuana, prostitution and gambling as a way to cut costs and generate revenue) or because she’s not part of either major party? I’d be willing to bet people are interested in hearing more about her, but the media doesn’t seem to give her much attention. Other than tv7 and Jeff Graham that is. For instance, as far as I know her name has never been mentioned in the “In box” or on NCPR. Why?
“At times it feels as if American politics consists largely of candidates without ideas hiring consultants without convictions to stage campaigns without content. Increasingly the result is elections without voters.” –Gerald Ford
Who’d a thunk Gerald Ford was a prophet?
Any way, I’m seriously thinking of voting for Kristin Davis. We know who’s going to win, so why not have some fun?