An article expressing the opinion of “USA TODAY” appeared on the USA TODAY Blog page on August 30 2007. The posting is entitled “Our view on picking a president: Boot rule-breaking states to the back of the line” and can be found at: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/08/our-view-on-pic.html. The article discusses the trend being followed by a few states trying to get their presidential primary election dates moved up. The states purpose of seeking an earlier date being to increase the state population’s influence in determining the various parties’ presidential candidate by influencing the preceding primaries in other states with their results.
The article addresses the issue of bias in decision making. The author (whose name is not given on the web site) also addresses other negative effects that the earlier primary voting would have on individual decision making. This trend if allowed could push the initial primaries into the prior year’s holiday season, almost a year before the national election. If successful, viable party candidates could be produced as soon as early February. The results would leave the two surviving candidates campaigning over the next ten months, with potential results being “ill-considered choices and voter indifference to a long, repetitive campaign”.
Currently the Democratic and Republican parties are moving to intervene and stop the various states. According to the article: “The Democratic National Committee has signaled it will punish Florida by taking away all its delegates at the national convention. Operating under a different set of rules, the Republican National Committee plans to bar at least half the delegates from at least four states: Florida, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wyoming.”
As it stands today, the system is flawed due to political biases based upon regional differences and the current order in which the states have their primaries. It would be beneficial to schedule the various state primaries so that they went in a defined order with each primary date including a state for each of the national regional zones (Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest). The effect would be to see a better overall view of the American public’s view as to a viable candidate based upon the regional differences. The state “scores” could be further weighted by the population totals or candidates that each state provided to the electoral process. This would provide each party with a better idea of which candidate would have the best chance of being elected as president. The federal government might want to get involved and assign primary dates to the states to ensure a more equitable arrangement.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Political Exit Polling
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a polling summary concerning the 1996 presidential race and a U.S. Information Agency survey conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina aimed at determining any long-term difficulties in nation-building in that region. The article can be found at: http://people-press.org/commentary/print.php3?AnalysisID=27
The article discusses that the exit polls provided far better predictions of the actual primary election results than did the “pundits” who were making guesses at the American public’s opinion of the various candidates. The polling information was based upon exit polling and in some instances telephone polling results from pre-election day surveys. A chart of the various polls found at the end of the paper show that individual polls could be off by as much as 60% from the actual election results, which can cause the reader to question the validity of the pollster’s methods of obtaining their data. Still, the polls tended to pick the first place winner 4 out of 5 times, while the “pundits” were correct only 15 out of 29 times.
The model used in exit polling is straight forward and is a simple statistical analysis. I believe there could be a number of reasons for the large margins of error encountered in these polls. First, could be that the samples were not randomly selected. Second, the individuals polled could have provided false information to the pollster. A third possibility for error is the sample size was not large enough to provide accurate information. In the case of pre-election polling predictions is the possibility that some of the individuals polled changed their minds after the poll was conducted and voted contrary to the way they informed the pollster that they were going to vote.
It has been my experience that most polls as they are presented on one of the major/national television networks are normally associated with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 to 5 points. The major network polls are also far more accurate in their predictions than those associated with any of the regional newspaper services. This is probably due to the size of the sample group, although it has been suggested in the past that some papers skew there results to favor a particular candidate that the paper is backing (biased results).
The article discusses that the exit polls provided far better predictions of the actual primary election results than did the “pundits” who were making guesses at the American public’s opinion of the various candidates. The polling information was based upon exit polling and in some instances telephone polling results from pre-election day surveys. A chart of the various polls found at the end of the paper show that individual polls could be off by as much as 60% from the actual election results, which can cause the reader to question the validity of the pollster’s methods of obtaining their data. Still, the polls tended to pick the first place winner 4 out of 5 times, while the “pundits” were correct only 15 out of 29 times.
The model used in exit polling is straight forward and is a simple statistical analysis. I believe there could be a number of reasons for the large margins of error encountered in these polls. First, could be that the samples were not randomly selected. Second, the individuals polled could have provided false information to the pollster. A third possibility for error is the sample size was not large enough to provide accurate information. In the case of pre-election polling predictions is the possibility that some of the individuals polled changed their minds after the poll was conducted and voted contrary to the way they informed the pollster that they were going to vote.
It has been my experience that most polls as they are presented on one of the major/national television networks are normally associated with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 to 5 points. The major network polls are also far more accurate in their predictions than those associated with any of the regional newspaper services. This is probably due to the size of the sample group, although it has been suggested in the past that some papers skew there results to favor a particular candidate that the paper is backing (biased results).
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