The news media and the cable TV talking heads and the pundits (how does
one acquire punditry?) are sending up a lot of smoke signals about Terry McAuliffe's "surprising" narrow win Tuesday in the Virginia governor
race. I think there's not much more than smoke involved here….
The standard commentary is all shock and awe, comparing McAuliffe's
3-percentage-point win (48% to 45% for Cuccinelli) to the pre-election polling that had McAuliffe ahead by as much as 12 percentage points. The standard observation
is that McAuliffe "didn't do as well as expected" and stuff like that….
I think I can explain much of the sensationalized discrepancy between the
actual voting and the campaign polling results:
The polls were wrong. The survey techniques were questionable, and there
was arbitrary tweaking of the data before results were published.
No
polling organization in America is capable of reaching a true random sample of
persons for any survey, and all polling organizations privately "massage"
their data to "improve" the results, so all poll results should be
viewed only as rough guesses about the truth.
The pollsters got it wrong in Virginia….they're going to get it wrong in
the next election, too.
The news media and the cable TV talking heads should examine and explain the candidates' platforms and the campaign issues, and stay away from the destructively faulty polls. Why do they think we need to know in advance who's going to win?
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