Discussion: Poll: GOP Lead Shrinks Dramatically in Colorado Senate Race's Final Days

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Discussion for article #229635

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The polling in so many races has ping-ponged for the last week.
All about creating a narrative-- then not having the numbers to support it?

COY(D)s!

jw1

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So in less than a week, the very same poll has swung by 5 points, and yet they expect us to believe that these damn polls are not so effing screwed up. I just heard on MSNBC that people talking to the pollsters in Colorado, that the one thing they are being told, is that there has not been ANY polls in that state since the beginning of this race, that has said the same thing. I have been saying this for weeks now, and I will say it again, in race after race I have never seen such bipolar polls.

As I have also been saying, although we have been told that “likely” voter models are more important. That is total BS, because remember 2012? For months the "registered " voter model had Obama with a decent lead. Then when they changed to the “likely” model, that is when the Cons were running all over the place screaming that Romney was going to win, and even Romney’s internal polling said he was, or so they claimed. Now what happened? Oh yeah when election night was over Obama won, and the funny thing is, the results looked a whole lot like those “registered” voter poll numbers.

Thousands of people in all of these states have been newly registered in the last two years, meaning not a one of them show up in “likely” voter polls, because that is only people who have voted in the last two elections. How in the hell can a poll be representative, or even close to what is going to happen on election day, when 10’s of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who are going to vote are left out of EVERY recent poll taken?

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Once again, those mysteriously disappearing Republican polling advantages, on the eve of an election.

And once again, I reiterate, if you can’t see the pattern in these skewed polls, you are simply naive.

I am not saying some of the newer pollsters haven’t developed a fairly reliable model. Nate’s model seems to work quite well.

When it is done without an agenda other than accuracy, polling certainly can be predictive, even quite accurate.

But anyone who claims a billion dollars in oldstream ad revenues over the last two elections isn’t enough motive for this rampant polling deception is, at best, naive.

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…why do you think we call them “CONS?”

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And not just in Ad revenues either. I am old enough to remember when we had maybe three reliable polling entities, and now we have them crawling out of the woodwork like roaches. They are making big bucks off this crap too. It is all about following the $$$$$, and how they want to lead us by the nose to get the results the corporatocracy wishes for.

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NEWS! GOP Lead Shrinks dramatically just as the price for TV ad time triples!
Expect the local TV and radio stations to trumpet how “CLOSE” the election is, and profit handsomely from the frantic ad-buys the campaigns make in the last two days.

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Why am I not surprised that the poll they’re talking about is Quinnipiac? They’ve been all over the place for CO-Sen this year, and I trust them about as far as I can throw them.

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Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

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The polls are way different when registered voters are polled vs. likely voters. The old models are old. Watch. Aint gonna be no GOTP wave…A ripple perhaps.

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And Joni “John” Ernst is tied with Braley in Iowa, according to Quinnipiac, which has had some truly bizarre numbers this cycle.

But then again, that personification of nepotism, Luke Russert, called the election for Ernst on Sunday after the Selzer poll had her up by seven.

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He also called the election for Romney in 2012, and clung to that deep into election night.

No one in Iowa is going to give a crap what Russert says. What worried me is that Iowans will hear the endless hype about the “gold standard” Seltzer poll, assume the race is over, and not bother voting as a result. Hopefully, polls aren’t that influential (they usually aren’t). We’ll see.

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I still think there is going to be a big shock tomorrow night. I predict things won’t go the way it’s assumed it will.

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The overly-optimistic me says: ‘Yeah, I’m right there with you!’
Then I remind myself I’m overly-optimistic.
But I’m right there with you.

Everybody vote!
(And use the buddy system.
Find another (D) and take them with you!)

jw1

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Russert is pretty dumb, I think. When Obama enunciated his stance on Ebola, saying that the military would be quarantined, Russert fumbled around saying, “The President was trying to say…” a phrase he reiterated, while reporting on one of the world’s most straightforward enunciation of policy.

(I get why the military is quarantined: because they are soldiers and do as they are commanded, not to mention that they are not trained as doctors to recognize if they were to become symptomatic.)

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How will we know the results tomorrow night, if it’s this close, and Colorado is undertaking its first all mail-in ballot election?

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I wonder how much of this polling craziness is designed, at some level, to undermine legitimate polls and/or give fuel to movements like “true the vote.”

So, in the first case, if low-turn-out Democratic voters start to think things are hopeless, they are less likely to make the effort to vote. The polling becomes a self-fulling prophesy.

(Covering up these kinds of shenanigans would require the polls to be way off base for a long enough time to turn off voters and then swing back into line with reality just before the election to save their predictive credibility for next time.)

In the second case, if, say, Udall wins “despite what all the polls were saying,” that fuels suspicions that something was wrong with the vote. “How could he have been THAT far behind and then win?”

Imagine, for example, to take an extreme case, the Democrats keep the Senate and, against all polling odds, capture the House. What’s the first thing that’s going to happen? People are going to question the vote. No way could the Democrats have been “that far behind” and then go on to win the election…legitimately.

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Mid terms are notoriously difficult to poll and Colorado is difficult to poll in any election. That said, you still ahve to hand the advantage to the GOP in this one.

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Whatever.

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It’s easy to see the pattern in these polls that doesn’t require any nefarious agenda, if you ignore the breathless headlines and just look at the numbers. Gardner is fixed at 45 or 46% in every poll; what changes is the number of people who are saying they’re voting for Udall vs. being undecided. 45-43 vs. 46-39 is not really a 7-point swing. The same thing applies in Iowa.

The fact that Gardner’s support has a ceiling while Udall pulls in nearly all the undecideds when more of them make a choice is a good sign for Udall. I predict he’ll win at least 51-49.

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