(PatrioticPost.com)- In advance of this year’s midterm elections in November, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer discussed the most recent polls and voter turnout on Tuesday’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
Fleischer said that it’s just an extraordinarily skewed method to provide information to anyone curious about the shape of November. What occurs in the cities is irrelevant. Whatever happens in some rural districts, where Republicans will win 80-20, is irrelevant. In those battleground neighborhoods, it matters. The fight for control of the House is taking place there. Therefore, the only polling we should focus on is those in the Senate’s battleground states and districts.
Fleischer pointed out to Ingraham that the Washington Post poll was conducted among registered voters. Registered voters don’t do voting. Votes are counted by people who vote. You must therefore change to likely voters.
Likely, voters cast more Republican votes than registered voters.
The media continues to draw from a nebulous pool of people called “registered voters.” This does not represent who will show up in November.
This explains why there is currently a Democrat bias in the polls.
Gallup’s classic “likely voter” model, which it has used for previous elections, takes both past voting history and present intention into account. Because Republicans have historically been more likely to vote than Democrats in recent polls, this has usually reflected a closer race.
“A good citizen votes” is one of the core principles underlying American political culture. More individuals declare intention to vote than do so. Not all respondents who say they intend to vote to challenge election pollsters. In general, actual turnout is lower than respondents’ self-reported voting intentions in pre-election polls. The pollster’s issue is determining who will actually cast a ballot on election day.
In the polling industry, it is generally agreed that it is preferable to report “likely” voters rather than “registered” voters, mainly as election day draws near.
