Say 'Yes' to Pollsters

Recently Huffington Post has been my favorite political website. They generally have a wide range of unbiased political coverage as well as dozens of progressive blogs. But I must take exception to a recent post by the site's founder, Arianna Huffington.

In a post entitled Say No to Pollsters Ms. Huffington takes the position that political pollsters are destroying civic dialogue in this country, as well as creating a culture in which pols pander to those likely to answer political surveys over the phone- all for the "buzz of a bump in the polls." She then drives her argument home by claiming that, since these surveys often have a participation rate of only 25% ("abysmally low") of the eligible voting public, they certainly aren't an honest representation of how things will go come election day. "Wow!" you say. "Only 25%. That's not representative at all."

But, while it sounds "abysmally low," 25% isn't far below the voter turnout rate for many elections. And, because the people who are most responsive to telephone polls are the people most likely to vote, it generally does provide an accurate cross-section of voter sentiment. I have worked for a polling firm (Dan Jones and Associates) since 2002, and our pre-election results have almost never been wrong. Granted this is Utah, so most races aren't that close, but there have been some- the SLC mayoral race of 2003, for example. To ensure accuracy we even (at our expense) run our own surveys alongside those commissioned. The New Hampshire pollsters have taken a lot of flak, maybe deservedly so, but the fact that so many of the maligned Democratic Primary polls were taken from Friday 1/4-Monday 1/7 is meaningful. The response percentage of calls made is almost always higher on the first couple days of a poll than the last couple, so most of those polls were likely conducted in the immediate afterglow of Obama's Iowa win. And, because there's no reliable algorithm to factor in 'momentum,' Barak's Fri/Sat votes are no less meaningful to the final tally than Hillary's Sun/Mon votes- when she must have been bringing in a much higher percentage.

Polls certainly aren't infallible; no one's making that claim. But the reason the media and politicians buy into their results so much is simply because there isn't a more effective way of gauging public opinion. Huffington claims that, by hanging up on pollsters, "we can force our leaders to start thinking for themselves again." But weren't they put in office to listen to what we have to say? And haven't we had enough (at least 8 years worth) of politicians thinking too much for themselves? Give pollsters your opinions (assuming it's not a blatant push poll), get your voice heard, then vote.

Yeah...I was totally going to write about Iowa tonight even if Hillary won, but Obama did. So I didn't lie...eat it!

Maybe it had something to do with Kucinich's semi-concession, maybe it had something to do with the abnormally large percentage of younger voters turning out for the Iowa caucuses tonight. Whatever happened, Obama won the Democratic caucuses by a significant margin, and I am currently riding on cloud nine. The only downside is that Huckabee won the Republican caucus, and he is the creepiest guy with a legitimate shot at the White House since Ross Perot-- or Bob Dole?... anyone? I'm a pretty liberal person, but I would personally go stump for Romney (ughh!) if I thought the Republican nominee would be our next pres. Anyone who promises, "A military of sorts that no one on earth would want to take us on," and who would blatantly serve up a wholesale insult of the intelligence of the American electorate (though when have we proved our intelligence in the past- McGovern/Nixon anyone?) by calling a press conference to showcase his new negative campaign ad against Mitt while simultaneously repudiating negative campaining is either the dumbest politician ever or the most "cynically brilliant" (Huffington post). Time will tell, but I think if Huck is the Rep. nominee he will have a difficult time (he'll do it, but it'll be close) even carrying Utah... especially if Obama or Edwards is the Dem. candidate. No matter whose campaigns the rest of the primary season bears out I am stoked. I am an Obama fan- though I will still take bets against Hillary- but now I have unlimited license to gush about the campaigns because of his win (see blog on 12/20/07). So I love him even more for winning tonight. Suddenly my blog is rife with ideas for future posts; most of them political. Sorry, folks- it'll be a long eleven months.