- I think that it is appropriate to use wikipedia as a reference after our class discussion of it. This is a condensed version of some of the other links I provided in a previous post but it offers an answer to my question about past elections as well. Polls before the 1948 election predicted a landslide victory for Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman. Truman was the incumbent and apparently not very popular at the time. He led from the second votes started coming in, and even then was predicted to lose. I'm not sure how much relevance this has for us because I would assume that polling methods have changed in the last 60 years, but certainly an interesting turn of events.
- In trying to answer some of the questions I posed in my last post on polls I came across this study. It isn't very recent (published 1993) but it uses the 1988 election as a case study. Dukakis led Bush in the polls by 17 points in the early stages of the general election. We all know what the outcome of that was. Bush was able to change the public's initial perceptions of Dukakis with the Willie Horton and other ads. I would like to concentrate on this conclusion the article makes:
"Finally, journalists should realize that they can report the polls all they want, and continue to make incorrect causal inferences about them, but they are not helping to predict or even influence the election. Journalists play a critical role in enabling voters to make decisions based on the equivalent of explicitly enlightened preferences. Unfortunately, by focusing more on the polls and meaningless campaign events, the media are spending more and more time on 'news' that has less and less of an effect."
I think this statement can be applied narrowly to just the early polls (say just after the conventions and before). The current election and the 1988 one support that polls at this time are not accurate indicators of the outcome and that the general campaiging does matter. We sometimes hear people talking about how people have already made up there minds long before we get to the election, but if polls are any indicator, that is not the case. So, I don't think this conclusion can be applied at all points in the general campaign.
2 comments:
I think in a tight election polls are sometimes useless. In the 1988 election the polls showed that Bush Sr. had a commanding lead up to election day. In that election the polls showed who would win. The smart money had Bush all the way and they were right. In this election I think there is a feeling in the media that Obama will win. However, no lead in the polls is going to make me feel at ease on election night.
I think the polls have thus far framed the election. Votes are typically private, and people, especially in this election, are concerned about the way others are leaning. Polls are a way of being a bit of a voyeur-what do others think, who will everyone else vote for? Can I change their minds?
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