Polling performance for the 2002 mid-terms?

[ALago1]

Being that this race is going to come down to certain states, I think we are overestimating the importance of national polls.

So, for comparison purposes, I was wondering if anyone remembers the disparity between poll predictions and actual outcome for state races per Zogby, Gallup, etc.

I remember going into election night 2002 thinking that the Dems had a very solid chance of a good showing, or even coming out the majority. We all know how that turned out. Were the polls misleading?

All in all, I think everyone should just forget about the whole poll business, but I am interested in finding out this information. Thanks...

[Snivi Yllom]

1. Mason Dixon was right in 22 out of 23 races and was the closest

Zogby was wrong on 5 races.

http://www.ncpp.org/2002SenGovPoll/2002ElectionPolls.html

[papau]

4. Error analysis assumes 50/50 undecided split. It is one of many

ways to judge the polls.

M-D's GOP bias was aided, IMHO, by GOP cheating via BBV and voter suppression, so they looked the best.

[Snivi Yllom]

16. if you look at M-D polls from 2000

they were pretty on too.

[Zynx]

17. Mason Dixon was hideously wrong in 2000 though.

[pmbryant]

My recollection

I've taken a look at polling performance in past Presidential elections here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1137799

As for 2002, I had the same feeling going in that you did. But it was just a hopeful feeling. I don't think polls gave a clear indication of what would happen one way or the other, because several races were so close.

Cleland losing in Georgia was a big failure of the polls, which had showed him leading fairly comfortably.

The polls were otherwise at least in the ballpark, I think. At least they showed tossups where they were indeed tossups (Missouri, Minnesota). Wellstone's death so late in the race but a big crimp in any predictive values of the polls that year

:shrug:

EDIT: Oh, forgot Colorado. Polls showed Allard in serious trouble that year, but he ended up winning comfortably.

Peter

[papau]

2. 2002 results, like the exit polls of 2000, confirm widespread GOP cheating

The later review of vote totals showed the 18181 amd the more GOP votes than residents problems.

Major media runs from this topic.

The polls are clean and give good trend info.

As to absolute numbers, the question wording bias plus the MOE make their use as absolute predictors silly.

[DaveinMD]

3. Mid terms are different

Republicans made up a larger part of the electorate. Dems stayed home because the Dem leadership wasn't fighting back. The electorate is different in presidential years.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. To be fair, Dems really couldn't fight back.

We were talking about liberty fries and Dixie Chicks back then, and anyone who said anything remotely against the President was considered a terrorist and unpatriotic. Dems didn't stand a chance in those days. If we didn't pipe down, we'd be fucked right now and wouldn't stand ANY chance of winning, as we'd still be labeled as such.

[fujiyama]

7. You're right

At the time Bush was riding high in his approval ratings. It was around 60%....This was also during te one year anniversary of 9/11 and it was leading up to the war.

I was hopefull Dems would at least keep control of the senate, but looking back, I'm not surprised Dems lost so many seats. The one that still frustrates me most is the MN seat. I hate that slimy ass hole Coleman.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

10. It's interesting that you bring this up.

I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist, however, I find it "interesting" that Wellstone's plane crashed. I think it was very dangerous for Republicans to have one of the few outspoken Democrats actually win his Senate seat by a large margin, as Wellstone likely would have.

[fujiyama]

11. There have been several "odd" plane crashes

I too am not big on conspiracy theories, but it's very coincidental that so many democratic senators and high profile people have been killed in small plane crashes over the years.

-As you said there's Wellstone.

-Gov Carnahan of MO was killed in the fall of '00 when his plane crashed. He still went on to defeat Ashcroft in the election. His widow took his seat for him.

-John F Kennedy Jr. very likely would have run for political office though he did say he wouldn't if Hillary was interested.

-Sen. Heinz of Pa also died in a plane crash...He was one of the few remaining moderate GOP senators. His death gave way to Santorum.

-Ron Brown (I think that was his name). He had a cabinet post under Clinton.

[TruthIsAll]

6. Mathematical PROOF the Repukes cheated in the 2002 Senate races

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=85732

[ALago1]

8. Hey, thanks for that link

n/t

[pmbryant]

9. Or it's proof that the polls sucked

I vote for "polls sucked". Plus, I don't remember all those clear Dem leads in places like MN and NH. And TX is TX. Some polls showed it close here, but some showed large GOP leads.

No way do I believe anyone can change margins by 10 percentage points by cheating.

Dems were demoralized back then, and the results showed it. :-(

Peter

[fujiyama]

14. I think you're right

The republicans played a very dirty campaign in GA. Meanwhile many democrats tried to run on prescribtion drugs and domestic issues, when the public clearly didn't care about that at the time. Many democrats had the plan that they would vote for the war and get it out of the way so that they could go back to running on various domestic affairs.

Well, as we saw that wasn't enough. The republicans STILL smeared those like Cleland. In his case it was his vote on the Dept Homeland Security. He wanted civil service protections safeguarded.

For that they had an ad juxtaposing his image and Osama's together. It was really disgusting.

Similar things happened in other races. Jean Carnahan lost the seat her husband had won. I think Mondale lost for unusual circumstances. I heard that the absentee votes that would have been for Wellstone were completely discounted...Then there was the memorial which became very partisan. I'm not sure how big the impact was, but it's possible it turned off undecideds.

[TruthIsAll]

18. You don't remember the leads? I suggest you check out the links.

The Dems led by large numbers right thru the last weekend in four states and lost them all.

Do you know about the Diebold shenanigans in GA? They screwed with the voting machines the last weekened and stole it from Max leland. It's all well documented.

The probability calculations are circumstantial proof; the odds are very high that they stole four elections.

Google Diebold Cleland

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

13. I think what it shows is the lack of being able to gauge voter turn out

I think Republicans got themselves to the polls a lot more often than we did in 2002. They were energized and we were depressed by "unpatriotic" claims. I think the reverse will occur in this election, where you see Kerry and Dems win by double digit percentages higher than the polls claim today.

[Awsi Dooger]

19. TruthIsAll, stop posting intentionally misleading garbage like that

Prior to this year, you relentlessly cherrypicked the most extremely favorable state polls for Democrats to make absurd "points" that DU partisans would cheer you for, screaming fraud. They are no more accurate two years later, no matter which ones you link. Your math is admirable and terrific, but it means squat given the truism of garbage in/garbage out.

Check out pmbryant's post #9 here, in which he correctly remembers the poll numbers you cited in that thread were not accurate. These are your numbers, followed by actual in parentheses:

1-Minnesota: The Democrats were leading 47-39% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 50-47%, an 11 point switch.

(Yeah, OK. Don't even mention that terrible scenario with Mondale replacing Wellstone in the final week, making polling iffy at best. There were final polls all over the place, including some with Coleman AHEAD)

2-Georgia: The Democrats were leading 49-44% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 53-46%, a 12 point switch.

(Nice try. The momentum was with Chambliss the final 2-3 weeks, if not more, due to the Ralph Reed vicious assault and ground game. Several final polls indicated a dead heat. Georgia state polls always overestimate Dem numbers by at least 4-5%, long before Diebold.

3-Texas: The Democrats were trailing by 48-49% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 55-43%, an 11 point switch.

(For reference purposes, Ron Kirk was an 8/1 betting line underdog on election day. Does that sound like a 1 point race? The typical poll had Kirk behind by high single digits)

4-New Hampshire: The Democrats were leading by 46-40% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 51-47%, a 10 point switch.

(This one showed Shaheen ahead narrowly a week or two out, then Sonunu
catching her and passing Shaheen in many polls prior to election day. Even DUers were questioning that 46-40 poll. Robert Novak trumpeted polls showing Sonunu ahead on Crossfire the Saturday before election day)

Finally, you conveniently ignore there WAS a distinct GOP wave in the final days prior to that election, as reported by media outlets after sampling on the final weekend. Democrats underperformed in governors races as well as senate races. Even major Democratic winners like Rendell, Granholm and Blagejovich did not come close to matching their final poll numbers.

[liberalpragmatist]

12. miserable

Even Zogby badly screwed up. He had Tom Strickland, the Democratic senate nominee in Colorado up by 10 over Wayne Allard. Allard won comfortably.

The only races I think were nailed were Missouri and Arkansas.

[DemocracyInaction]

15. This is what I remember and still have nightmares about as this

election nears: We Dems were really pumped up because some polls "looked promising" (just like these "gee Bush is only ahead by 2 point polls today). We knew in our gut that the Dems were 'mad as hell about 2000' and were going to fight back. We more than knew that the people of Florida were going to hand Jeb a defeat that would make his balls fall off. .... and then the night ended with James Carville putting his head in the wastebasket and the republicans laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. I sincerely hope that rank and file Dems are as fired up as we tell ourselves because the final analysis was that the Dems didn't get off their asses and go out and vote (and there were some massive on the ground efforts going, too). I won't believe the massive turnout until they show it me on a piece of paper on Nov. 3rd.