Survey Says ...

George Gallup

This is an interesting article in light of the current controversy about polls in the US election. It points out that only 9% of those that pollsters try to contact actually respond to the survey, and this number has been dropping quickly in recent years. A growing number of people have number display and will not answer a number they do not recognize. But even among those who do answer the phone, only 14% will agree to answer the survey.

Those who will not answer are apparently largely motivated by a mistrust of pollsters or the media. But Democrats trust the media twice as much as Republicans do, because of its perceived leftward bias. Accordingly, those who do not answer are twice as likely to be Republican or Independent, this article says, than Democrats.

Hence, using poll numbers is growing increasingly dubious, and hence perhaps the apparent partisan skew in the polls.

Moreover, this issue almost guarantees that there is also a "shy Tory" factor. If that many people are sure the media and pollsters have a left-wing bias, then even among those who do consent to answer the poll, there will be a huge incentive among those with right-wing sympathies to lie: either to avoid offending the pollster, or to deliberately distort his statistics.

So there you are-- a reasonable argument, without any vast left-wing conspiracy, for why the polls may be wrong this time.

Here's another relevant recent article, noting that actual stats for voter registration suggest that Democratic registration is actually down significantly from 2008. So how can the polls be showing that more Democrats intend to vote this year than in 2008?

SOMETHING is certainly wrong with the polls.Two and two keeps coming out as 47. It seems just a question of what it is, and what is causing it.