The Minnesota Public Radio and the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute released critiques of their much-criticized 2010 election polls late Friday afternoon.
The two entities commissioned the review after their final poll put DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton up 12; he beat Republican Tom Emmer by 0.4 percent. Republicans especially have howled about the result.
The U profs who direct the poll, Larry Jacobs and Joanne Miller, did an internal critique, which was reviewed by Gallup Editor-In-Chief Frank Newport.
Safe to say, Jacobs and Miller don't find a lot of fault with themselves; Newport, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, was a tougher grader.
Newport says the "issue which appears most relevant" is a potential oversample of the 612 area code. The Minneapolis-anchored area favors Democrats.
According to the U profs, 81 percent of "612" voters participated when asked. Statewide, the figure was 67 percent.
This is one of the areas where Jacobs and Miller make the numbers dance a bit; Newport notes they should have compared "612s" to non-612s. The gap would’ve been even more stark.
Jacobs and Miller suggest weighting future polls by region. Newport agrees, somewhat witheringly: “This is commonly done in state polls, particularly in states where voting outcomes can vary significantly by region, as apparently is the case in Minnesota."
At one point, there’s a jolting suggestion that the U employed too many African-American interviewers.
Jacobs and Miller wonder whether the proportion of African-American poll-takers — 44 percent — might've freaked out (presumably white) voters in a state that’s only 5 percent black. However, they conclude, "This investigation failed to detect statistically significant differences” in candidate support.However, Newport wonders if minority interviewers achieved higher cooperation rates among minority voters — perhaps a factor in the high "612" cooperation rate, since that D-favoring area code also has a higher percentage of minorities. He suggests going back over the data.
http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2010/12/17/24352/mprhumphrey_institute_poll_review_too_many_612s
