Polling the New Hampshire Primaries: What Happened?

There was no shortage of polls going into the New Hampshire primary in 2008 and it looks like we all missed the mark on the Democratic side. This will require a lot of scrutiny in the coming days and weeks, but here are some initial thoughts on what has been happening:

1. According to the exit polls, 18% of the voters said that they made up their minds on primary day. That is just an unprecedented number. I have polled many races, especially close ones, where 4% to 8% have said they finally decided on their vote the day of the election and that can wreak havoc on those of us who are in the business of capturing pre-election movements and trends. But nearly one in five this time?

2. It looks like the always feisty voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire have rejected pre-election coronations. In the case of Iowa, Democratic voters said that Mrs. Clinton is not inevitable, while in New Hampshire they were not ready to endorse the Obama train without checking the engine.

3. The compressed schedule of the two events may have had an impact. Normally the winning candidate gets an initial big bounce out of Iowa, and then plateaus. Then the next primary race begins. With less than five full days, Obama got his bounce in New Hampshire, then the settling down period began on the last day -- under the radar screen.

4. My polling showed Clinton doing well on the late Sunday night and all day Monday -- she was in a 2-point race in that portion of the polling. But since our methods call for a three-day rolling average, we had to legitimately factor the huge Obama numbers on Friday and Saturday -- thus his 12 point average lead. Unfortunately, one day or a day-and-a-half does not make a trend and we ran out of time.

5. Going into the New Hampshire primary, we certainly did see Clinton holding on to a significant lead among women and older voters. But we were focusing on Obama's massive lead among younger and independent voters. We seem to have missed the huge turnout of older women that apparently put Clinton over the top.

6. We expected that Obama would receive the lion's share of independents and drain the Republican primary of these voters. It now appears that, perhaps with a sense that Obama had a lock on the Democratic side, independents felt free to vote on the Republican side and reward their hero, John McCain.

We will pour through the data and try to come up with something more definitive, but those are my early observations. There is much speculation that Senator Clinton's crying incident may have offered voters -- especially women -- a peek at the human side of someone who is often seen as scripted. I think she also scored points during the ABC debate Saturday night when she declared, amid a discussion about the country's desire for a change in direction, that electing a woman would represent a big change in itself. Her numbers did go up in that last 24-hour period.

On the other side, most of us did a whole lot better coming close to the numbers on the Republican side of the aisle. But this is one of those cases that remind us that pre-election polls are guides to voter attitudes and shifts. All things considered in this and other cases, we pollsters still do a creditable job.

Comments

[TadAllagash]

MANY outlets predicted that Obama's appeal to Independents would hurt McCain.

Then the opposite happened. I think because independents saw those polls where Obama had a huge lead and they decided to put their vote where they thought it would count more.

In the Republican race.

Those polls screwed Obama. They made the Hillary people come out in force and made the independents think they didn't have to come out for Obama.

Hopefully Obama will recover or Edwards will drop out. Because I feel strongly that it is important for the Dems nominate someone who will win in the general.

[ccspruce]

Mr. Zogby,

Although your poll numbers are well known in political arena. I always wondered how you guys do this. But after reading your article, I have to say that your methods of polling need significant tweaking. I think your statistical models are likely to be full of biased "weighting factors". It is hard to imagine that you could come up with unbiased polls. It is oxymoron to say that you have under-, or over-estimated "certain factors". I mean the very reason we use sophisticated mathematics in statistics is to avoid biase. Now, you are telling us that you have been using some kind of perceived estimations. LOL.

[Mort]

Maybe the question shouldn't be what happened to the polls, but rather why have them at all! Often wrong, easy to skew and use as a tool in the propaganda wars.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

I hope the lawyers are watching the exit polls and comparing them to the Diebold tallied results.

[rh654]

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.

Talk about Spin.

You got it wrong - just admit it.

I know that you all make a ton of money from this stuff and are now doing some CYA but please - just say - Hey, we blew it but are looking to do better next time.

That's all - everyone has to spin everything these days - this is part of the Change that people want.

[OkieMon]

US Iraqi death toll is twice the rate this month as last month due to twice as many US soldiers on patrol. Death rate is therefore directly related to the number of US soldiers in the field. Danger in Iraq remains the same despite the "surge".

[ProudLiberalDan]

In statistics class, we often measured to 95% certainty. This means about 1 in 20 times, the statistics are wrong.

All candidates trailing in the polls say, "the only real poll that counts is election day." We all say, "yeah, right." Most of the time they are just desperately keeping hope alive.

Last night's primary proved that the only real votes that count on are election day, not in the polls.

I also wonder how many Independents voted for McCain thinking their vote would make more of a difference than for Obama, thinking he had it in the bag because of the polls.

Polling is an art and a science, but not always an exact one.

[cavegal]

I find the expertise rendered to pollsters in our high tech age pretty funny. How many people have lied on a poll just to screw with the numbers? I know I have. Only because I so despise being pigeon holed by these people.

Think about any type of sample they are using, whether it be 100, 500 or 1,000 people, the people they can poll and bother have to have land lines. How many people under 45 do you think have land lines? I don't. The samples that they are reaching are in a highly skewed bracket in my opinion which is no longer representative of the country. I also agree with other posters that find a sample of 500 people to be representative of the whole country.

[Impeachthechimp]

7. The MSM hates Hillary's guts and did everything possible to brainwash the voters into voting for Obama, who they know McCain can beat once the swiftboating starts.

[carfino]

I posted this on another entry on this web site:

It should be noted that the polling was indeed accurate in terms of what the pollster were told. They had no idea they were lied to by a substantial number of those polled, but this has happened before so they shouldn't be surprised. Allow me to offer an opinion as to why they were so "wrong".

I think I can offer an answer to the question with a very brief story. About 18-20 years ago or so in California there was a gubernatorial race that included the ubiquitous Republican empty suit named Pete Wilson. Pete Wilson was a very typical California Republican, meaning he was white, wealthy and backed by corporate America. That year the Dem's put up the very popular Mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley. Bradley was a former policeman, city council member, middle class.........and black. All the polls had Bradley ahead up to election day by a margin of nearly 10%. The exit polls had Bradley winning. The race was called by all the networks in Bradley's favor. Yet when the ballots were counted.....Bradley had lost by nearly 10%.

Moral of the story........when polled, a large number of the participants said they intended to (prior to the election) or did vote (as noted in exit polls) for Bradley. Turns out....the majority had lied to the pollsters....they didn't want to be thought of as racist. But in the confines of the voting booth......they exercised their racism.

[gypsy508]

I can't help but scratch my head at all these headlines that say Hillary came from behind to win. When was she behind if votes had not yet been cast? Her victory wasn't any particular surprise to people who don't obsess about politics every day. I mean, New Hampshire is overwhelmingly a Republican state. Of course the independent voters are going to go for McCain over Obama. Duh.

[RichBixby]

Polls are inherently inaccurate because they operate on a limited sample of people, which is skewed because it only consists of those who:
* Are home when the poller calls;
* Don't hang up on the call;

Ever get a poller calling during your dinner time? Did you participate, or hang up? How many dinners were interrupted in New Hampshire over the last few weeks? Any chance those being called got more and more likely to hang up, leaving just those most determined to support their candidate by responding to the call?

Same applies to exit polls, too. The person who doesn't stop doesn't get counted, even after they voted. So the exit poll only counts the 2000 people who did stop, and only represents them, not the whole voting process.

[egp]

Have you all compared the Diebald machine-counted votes with the manually-counted votes? I have and it does not compute...and every Democrat should be up in arms. This matter really does need to be investigated and soon.

[nastywolf]

Anyone know the phone calls-to-response ratio up to the NH primary, compared with earlier primaries? Does it take MORE calls to get each response than it did years ago? If so, is it due to a growing trend amongst a portion of the voting population to ignore polls?

As a slightly seasoned campaigner I've noticed that more and more people refuse to respond to polls, both over the phone and when we knock on doors. This wasn't the case just 8 years ago.
Perhaps this trend is allowing those who are willing to respond to skew the polls.

[thepeoplechoose]

This is amusing. Both the U.S. government and corporate America repeatedly lie to the American people and when the American people lie to them they both go off the deep end.