Influx

The surprise result in New Hampshire has everyone questioning the accuracy of polls.

Every polling company got it wrong, which has sent eveyone into a tailspin. Much of the post-rationalization has centered around the “Bradley Effect” the theory, that in certain situations respondents fail to state their true intentions and in this case, race being the issue.

I prefer this explanation, that seems to make sense. It suggests this is all about timing and understanding that last minute media events can a profound impact on people’s final decisions.

Clearly, it isn’t over, until it’s over and if the polls go out too early, you can’t capture that change.

“Unfortunately, few pollsters polled here in New Hampshire on election eve and no one released Monday only poll results. How New Hampshire voters were evaluating the race and the factors they were weighing in the last hours of the campaign were never measured. Even the exit polls, designed in advance, would not capture the final mood of the voters about the campaign. As a result, explanations about what happened here are fueled more by conjecture than by the numbers.”

Marist College

Posted by Ed Cotton