Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why everyone got it wrong!

In the wake of the Clinton win in New Hampshire last night it seems that everyone is taking a closer look at the polls and wondering where they failed.
Many polls predicted an Obama landslide a'la Iowa but ended with Clinton winning by 3 points.
Does this mean that polls are unreliable, that we shouldn't trust them?
Many candidates and skeptical members of the public take polling data with a grain of salt. There are many variables that have to be taken into consideration when reading a poll. When the pollster called? Which member of the house they were speaking to? The gender? The skin colour? etc etc etc
Any number of these variables can skew a poll. The pollsters shut down their data collection services around 36 hours before the voting began. Doing that was a mistake because they missed the one event that changed this primary:



The tears almost shed by Hillary Clinton led to an outpouring of emotion from women and the elderly who drowned their sorrows in the voting booths by ticking the name 'Hillary Clinton'. Clinton, who was always lambasted for being to steely and never showing any emotion, won over these voters in the 36 hours that the polling booths were shut down. In this day and age of instant news it's well known that a single event can change the outcome of an election and this was that event. Polls should be open until the voters walk through the front door. After that they should conduct exit polls. Here's Hillary's victory speech, she seems as surprised as anyone else in the room:



I'm sure that polling will be scrutinized a great deal over the next several primaries up to Super Tuesday. I'm sure Barack Obama is feeling awful, he was floating on a cloud and a sure thing for the New Hampshire primary. As i stated in a previous post i'm sure that Obama will make an amazing president once he's had some on-the-job training, hopefully as Hillary's VP. I only hope that he realizes this before he gets too big for his own boots and implodes; denying America of an astounding politician.

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