Minnesota Poll

In recent elections - and some not-so-recent - the inaccuracy of the Minnesota Poll has become a statewide joke.

Scott Johnson of Powerline writes this piece. Here's a money quote:

The Star Tribune's final pre-election poll was published on November 3, two days before the election. It showed Mondale leading Coleman 46 percent to 41 percent. In the actual election results, of course, Coleman beat Mondale 50 to 47 percent. The Minnesota Poll understated Coleman's strength as measured in the actual election results by 9 points and missed the margin between them by roughly the same amount.

Again Daves has attributed the discrepancy to a volatile electorate. However, it is a mysterious kind of "volatility" that somehow manages to disfavor only the Republicans.

We know there's a problem. What is it?

There appears to be a problem here that has less to do with a volatile electorate than with the Rube Goldberg methodology of the Minnesota Poll. Traditional electoral polling methods call for the identification of "likely voters" and the tabulation of their preferences. These are the methods used, for example, by the Mason-Dixon polling organization that conducts polls for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

However, this is not the methodology employed by the Minnesota Poll. The Minnesota Poll takes into account the preferences of all respondents, but it "adjusts" the survey results; it "weights" the preferences of poll respondents according to "formulas verified in past elections."

At the City Center shopping mall in downtown Minneapolis, the fire alarm occasionally goes off accidentally. When it does so, City Center security staff deactivates the alarm and announces that the "alarm has been verified as false." That is the sense in which it appears the Minnesota Poll's formulas have been verified in past elections.

It's been said the art of political polling is dead - but according to some pundits, the major pollsters (Zogby, Mason-Dixon, et al) did quite well this past election.

So maybe it's just the Minnesota poll that, while not dead, perhaps deserves a jab to finish it off...

Posted by Mitch at November 11, 2002 11:18 AM