In a message dated 8/9/02 8:28:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "I've noticed in contest after contest media polls fairly consistently overstate support for the candidate percieved to be more liberal by 5-15%...." That's interesting. Two serious questions. First, do I recall correctly that the last presidential polls were predicting something pretty close to a dead heat? (I wonder if there is a past poll database out there somewhere....) That's not to contradict your observations, I really don't follow polls much so it's a vague memory. Second, do you think political pollsters are more accurate than media pollsters since their reputations (and paychecks?) hinge on closely tracking actual results? (Or are they more accurate at all?) Curiously yours, jsh >> The last election led me to say "fairly consistent;" it was the anomaly during the period in which I'd comparing polls to elections results. I think that, contrary to the way that some of statist-liberals and their allies within the new media view Bush (or perhaps cynically tried to portray him) he hasn't been seen as particularly conservatives by the electorate, and for many voters did not present a clear-but alternative to Gore. Many conservatives simply didn't vote for Bush; many news stories made much of the Nader impact on the election, but so far as I could tell they uniformly ignored the fact that Buchanan got more votes than the margin between Bush and Gore in states like Iowa (which Gore won). Furthermore I'd veture a guess that more conservatives simply stayed home than voted for Buchanan. Nor I think were many of the left-liberals particularly thrilled with Gore (whom many saw as a pawn of Big Business), and while a few of them did vote for Nader, I suspect many of them too stayed home. Thus a campaign that seemed to start out largely as a referendum on Bill Clinton seemed to end up largely as a personality contest between the frat-boy and the tree. Sincerely, David
