Talk Elections

It's frustrating to me that states that are considered "safe" never get polled for almost any election. I understand that it's a bit of a waste of money because you know 3/4s of the time who will win, but pollsters won't even check to let us know by how much a candidate of the "safe" party is winning, or if there's a particular event that changes the whole race.

What I guess I'm saying is that I'd like to be polled more here in Utah, and I'd like to have a shorter update than 4-6 months between polls. The pollsters refuse to poll any race besides the Utah 4th congressional, and I'd like them to actually try polling, if only for the principle of the thing. Where's the gubernatorial polls? Where's the senatorial polls? Heck, the SL County Mayoral race is supposed to be rather close for Utah and I haven't seen any polls since before the primary!

     Occasional updates would be nice. Mississippi has a nasty tendency to get polled about once per cycle.

The once a decade Census is all we need to know.....

     Well, that was an example. There are plenty of underpolled states that are not racially balkanized to the extent that Mississippi is.

I don't think there's ever more than one poll for any Utah election besides the ones with Jim Matheson in them.

Everyone was just assumed the Personhood Amendment was going to pass overwhelmingly (even the non-hackish right wing blogs in Mississippi thought it would get over 70%), until someone finally polled it and showed it close.  It ended up failing.

Sometimes conventional wisdom is just plain wrong, even in Mississippi.

Indeed, for a while I thought the era of surprise victories and such were being brought to an end with the excessive polling be done. But now, it seems that the polling is declining in both quality and quantity and being confined back to just the big headline races. Is lack of money the reason for this?

The problem with polling in safe states is finding someone to pay for the poll. Polls are paid for by campaigns or by the media. Campaign polls for districts in safe states happen all the time, but only get covered when the campaign lets the info out. Those polls will often include the top of ticket races to help the campaign judge coattails and crossovers. Media polls look for the story so they make focus only on a region or set of competitive districts that will interest their audience. They may also include the top race for comparison with the local districts featured in the story.

The bottom line is that polls are expensive and that investment has to be worth something to someone to commission the poll.

Well yes, but can't they even just do basic, cheap polling? Part of the reason safe states are safe are because pollsters fulfill their own prophecies by not polling the states, so that possible strong donors and candidates never get in because they assume that it's a done deal, and after that happens, the pollsters go "hey it's safe, no need to poll".

It's incredibly frustrating.

You always can pay for one.

I mean, they don't do polls for love.

I do agree. It would be nice to see a few polls in safe states.

It was nice to see the recent poll in Tennessee. While the Presidential race is R+25 according to the poll, I was really curious to see where the Senate race was at since it was very close in 2006.  R+38...heh.

Same deal in Nebraska. The three recent polls there show Romney +14.3 (average), but the Senate race has become surprisingly close, average R+2.66 (average).

However, it shouldnt take a Senate race to force a poll. Some of these house races are very close in these states. Would be nice to see some pollsters poll the downballot races and as a result give presidential polls. Wishful thinking...

Yeah, but have you read about the Dem nominee?

Never heard of the guy (Mark Clayton). His website looks like it was made 10 years ago. No wonder he is down 35 points.

Yes, you are.

I would like more polling in safe states such as Utah or Oklahoma.  The voters in safe states are just as important as the voters in swing states.

The electoral college system says otherwise. :(

Very true, someone has to be willing to pay for it. The only reason California gets polled so much is because there are several large media markets who are willing to pay for it, although the numerous initiatives are another reason.