Are the presidential race polls accurate?

[Almighty Colin]

Originally posted by OldJeff@Oct 31 2004, 06:42 AM
There is a major flaw in the sampling they are taking this year.

There is a huge increase in young voter registration (with good reason)

All you need to do is think about who is being polled to see the error.

College kids are not being polled - they are busy with classrooms or parties, your average blue collar joe is not being polled, he/she is too busy putting in the OT to make ends meet.

They are polling retirees and soccor moms with nothing better to do, your typical republican base, many who are in that 18% of Americans believing they are in the top 1% of income earners that the Bush Tax cut actually had any meaning for.

I feel the race comes down to this.

I've seen this argument largely on sites in support of Democrats. The counterargument being used by Republicans is that the methodology in some polls assumes that there will be 60% voter turnout and since this hasn't happened since the 1960s Bush's votes are likely being undercounted in the current polls. I think both arguments are ad hominem. Everyone sees what they want to see. There are few Republicans using the young voters underrepresented argument and few Democrats using the "60% voter turnout" argument.

I agree with you that more voters means better odds for Kerry. Republicans vote in proportionally higher numbers and the strategy for Democrats is always motivating their majority to vote and doing it in the right states.

Modern polling methodology is pretty good at handling the changes you mention though. The Harris poll weights for age, income, and race for example. (They have Kerry 48%, Bush 47%). Many of the other polls use similar methodology.

I don't think there is any reason at all to assume this election won't be extremely close determined more by random factors such as whether people felt like standing in line that day, whether they had a good or bad day at work, whether traffic is bad, whether they had headaches, whether they got in car accidents, whether their football teams won this weekend, whether they got laid and so on.