We didn't weight a single poll for party id during the general election, and I think that was the key decision that made us one of the most accurate pollsters in the country- party id is a moving target and where it is in April might not be where it is in October, hence the choice to let it fall where it may.
It's been a different story since the election though. When we conducted polls in Colorado and North Carolina last month the unweighted results came back way too Democratic, with a spread that was 6-7 points higher for the Democrats than what party id showed on the exit polls in November. So we weighted both for party to bring them a little more in line with what our pre election polls were finding.
I'm writing about now this now because the same thing appears to be happening on our Missouri poll. Either there's been a major shift in party id toward the Democrats since the election or Republicans are too depressed to answer polls right now. While it is probably a mixture of both, I think it's likely more of the latter.
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4 comments:
Republicans weren't really that depressed in the three racces in Georgia and Louisiana? That six-point win you projected turned out to be close to a 16-point win for Chambliss.
You may be right. We might be screwed as a party. We'll see who's laughing in November. We've got a good conservative running in Virginia and a moderate in Christie who should be able to take Corzine on. If we win both of these races, that'll be 6-0 since this past November.
You do realize that the last "good conservative" to run in Virginia was either George "Macaca" Allen or Jim "Holy shit, I got pounded by Mark Warner" Gilmore, right?
As for Louisiana, the two races were 1) a very close race in an R+7 district, which is basically what would have happened in a regular election, and 2) you bumped off a guy that had ninety thousand dollars in his freezer and it took a low-turnoff special election to even do *that*!
Georgia is the only outlier here and can be almost entirely attributed to anemic black turnout. For an answer to that you have to look at "Dreams from my Father" and realize that this has happened before--Obama describes blacks who thought that because Harold Washington was mayor everything would soon be better. This is basically what happened in Georgia.
Meanwhile, the Republican brand is damaged not just to the point it was at Watergate but to the point it was in 1932.
America is getting tired of the right-wing fringe, and your party wants to go even further that way. It didn't work for Iain Duncan Smith and it's not going to work for you.
Um, first commenter, I wasn't saying anything about whether Republicans were going to win elections moving forward. Just that they've been answering polls in lower numbers than before the election. Don't be so sensitive.
William and Tom,
It is the messenger that brought us down in the election. When republicans won in 2000,02 and 04, they did not run away from conservative principles.
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