Why were the polls so incorrect?
The GOP results were very close to the polling numbers in New Hampshire, but not so on the Democratic side. The final RCP polling averages had Obama up over Clinton by 38 to 30. The actual results were far different — with Clinton over Obama by 39 to 36. ABC has some speculations on the reasons, not particularly convincing. 9% is a big swing in a couple of days.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:41 am
The ABC piece is quite interesting. After Sen. Clinton’s unforeseen NH victory, many people are questioning the pollsters. There is so much to consider when exploring what goes into political polling. Predicting elections is one of the most difficult challenges in survey work. Generally speaking, election surveys actually do work fairly well (it’s worth remembering that the polling on the Republican side in New Hampshire was pretty accurate). For all their flaws, surveys are still one of the best available tools for figuring out what the public wants. Check out our Public Agenda blog at http://publicagenda.org/headlines/headlines_blog.cfm for more on this!