NY primaries might mean something
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- January
- 8
    If Sen. Hillary Clinton loses to Barak Obama today in New Hampshire as expected, his forces could mount a significant challenge to her in her home (sort of) state, and it may even be a crucial piece of the raft of primaries that day, known as ‘Super-Duper Tuesday.’’
 On the Republican side, former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was long seen as a lock in his (real) home state. But someone with momentum from earlier voting could challenge him in the Empire State for the GOP nod.
 Some things never change, though. Voters who aren’t enrolled as Republicans or Democrats won’t be allowed to participate in the New York primaries (unlike in Iowa and New Hampshire) and you can’t enroll on the day of the voting. In fact, the deadline for anyone wanting to vote in the primaries is this Friday.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 1:43 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
Below letter is from one of Americas brightest pollsters who is explaining what went wrong with the polls with Obama & Hillary last night.
(I worked with Matt while I was the Deputy Campaign Manager on last years US Senate Race agianst Clinton, here in NY State)
Thought you would like to know since all who read this are political savvy people. Last night was an embarrassment to the media, politicians, pollsters, experts & campaigns. (Reminds you of Truman
vsDewey)Otherwise, all my predictions in Iowa & NH have been on target and better then CNN’s (LOL)…….
Jim Kelly – NY Conservative Campaigns
Jim –
Just yesterday, some major media polls showed Barack Obama with a 10-point lead over Hillary Clinton. But Clinton won the New Hampshire primary by at least 3%. At the same time, John McCain posted a much stronger lead over Mitt Romney than polling predicated.
The polls were dead wrong tonight. (And so was I. I told many of you that Barack Obama would sail through New Hampshire on his way to the presidency.)
Why? In effect, the pollsters double-counted New Hampshire independents.
How does this work? In order to survey likely voters, pollsters ask a series of “screener� questions. Here is how one public pollster, American Research Group (ARG), asks their screener:
“Would you say that you definitely plan to vote in the 2008 Republican presidential primary, that you might vote in the 2008 Republican presidential primary, or that you will probably not vote in the 2008 Republican presidential primary?�
Typically, pollsters treat each party separately when conducting primary polls. One survey will poll the Republican primary (and all non-Republicans will be screened out), and a separate survey will poll the Democrats (and vice versa). This is the case for two reasons. First, most states don’t have open primaries, so cross-party voting isn’t a concern. Second is cost, doubly true in internal campaign polling. It would be a waste of money for, e.g., Chris Dodd to poll Republican primary voters.
Several well-regarded campaign pollsters will travel to South Carolina tomorrow to find themselves in hot water with their campaign managers.
So let’s think this through. Pollster X conducts his survey in the Republican primary. Independents are allowed into the poll, while Democrats are not. Then Pollster X conducts his survey among Democrats. Independents are allowed into the poll a second time, while Republicans are not.
This is the polling equivalent of being allowed to vote twice. You create a situation where a voter would say this: “Well, if you were asking me about the Republican primary, I’d vote for McCain. But since you’re asking me about the Democratic primary, I’ll vote for Obama.� In fact, it creates the bizarre possibility that the same individual New Hampshire voter could be literally polled twice.
It comes down to what we call “sampling error.� Since the same Independents were allowed into both surveys, the poll’s sample didn’t look like the actual primary electorate. The 10-point Obama lead was only a paper lead  those were actually McCain voters who were erroneously allowed into the Democratic primary polls.
Should pollsters have known this would happen? I’d argue yes. We knew that both Obama and McCain both had wide support among Independents. At first glance, none of the pollsters realized this and changed their models accordingly.
One proper way to screen would have been something like this:
“Q1. Would you say that you definitely plan to vote in the primary, that you might vote in the primary, or that you will probably not vote in the primary?
Q2. Do you plan to vote in the Republican presidential primary, or the Democratic presidential primary?�
Notice that every likely voter is allowed into the poll, and then pushed into the appropriate primary. No segment of the population has the possibility of entering both primaries.
We desperately need to re-think our turnout models in the future, or we will continue to struggle with open primaries, early voting, etc., etc…
Hope this is helpful. If you have any more questions, just ask.
Best wishes, – Matt
Matt Dabrowski
matt@goppollster.com
Since I am a huge Buffalo Bills & NFL fan….Quick pun…..
In a news conference Deanna Favre announced she will be the starting QB for the Packers this coming Sunday.. She claimed she is qualified to be starting QB because she has spent the past 16 years married to Brett while he played QB for the Packers.
Because of this she understands how to pick up a corner blitz and knows the terminology of the Packers offense. A poll of Packers fans shows that 50% of those polled supported the move.
Does this sounds idiotic and unbelievable to you? Yet Hillary Clinton makes the same claims as to why she is qualified to be President and 50% of democrats polled agreed.
Jim Kelly – NY Conservative Campaigns