Shot in the Dark

Tag: polling

  • Shot In The Dark: Today’s News, Two Years Ago

    Nate Silver at the NYTimes has been widely respected for his ability as a statistician. His reputation, though, seems to stem largely from his facility at what amount to rhetorical parlor tricks (he once earned a bit of a living counting cards at poker, and he made a name for himself with baseball stats), and…

  • Chanting Points Memo: “Minnesota Poll” Has Your Delivery Of Sandbags Right Here

    Yesterday, the Star Tribune “Minnesota Poll” also delivered its mid-cycle tally of support for the Voter ID Amendment. And coming barely a week after the generally-accurate Survey USA poll showing Voter ID passing by a 2:1 margin, the Strib would have you believe…: Slightly more than half of likely voters polled — 52 percent — want the changes…

  • Chanting Points Memo: “Minnesota Poll” Orders Material For A Narrative-Building Spree

    If you take the history of the Minnesota Poll as any indication, yesterday’s numbers on the Marriage Amendment might be encouraging for amendment supporters: The increasingly costly and bitter fight over a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is a statistical dead heat, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. Six weeks before Election…

  • All That’s Silver Does Not Glitter

    While the national polls show the presidential race a statistical toss-up, Nate Silver points out that polls conducted in swing state show Obama with an actual lead of sorts – around three points:. While that isn’t an enormous difference in an absolute sense, it is a consequential one. A one- or two-point lead for Mr.…

  • Marginal Notes On A Marginal Poll

    I’m going to go back to Dave Mindeman’s piece at mnpACT, about the most recent Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey of Minnesota politics, for the numbers on some issues that don’t pertain to Governor Dayton and the Legislature. Minnesota’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is headed for a close vote. 48% of voters say…

  • Chanting Points Memo: “The People Love Dayton And Hate The Legislature!”

    This particular chanting point has been making the rounds this week – a “Public Policy Polling” (PPP) survey appears to show that Mark Dayton is dreamily popular, and the people just can’t stand the GOP-run legislature. It’s made the rounds of most of the mainstream media, the leftyblogs, and the lowest of the bunch, the…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part XIV: Fool Me Ten Times…

    You’ve heard the old saying – “the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  The joke writes itself.  Nearly every election season, Minnesota’s media runs the results of the Star-Tribune Minnesota Poll and the Humprey Institute/MPR Poll on its front pages; front and center on…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part XIII: Reality Swings And Misses

    Contrary to the impression some wrote about on various blogs, I never worked for the Emmer campaign.  Oh, I did a fair amount of writing about Emmer’s bid for governor – I thought he had what it took to be the best governor we’ve had in a long time, and I was a supporter from…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part XII: The Dog Ate Their Homework

    Writing in defense of the Humphrey Institute Poll – which indicated our tie governor’s race was headed for a 12 point blowout – Professor Larry Jacobs says: Careful review of polls in the field conducting interviews during the same period indicates that the MPR/HHH estimate for Emmer (see Figure 2) was within the margin of…

  • The Great Poll Scam Part XI: Weasels Rip My Results

    Professor Larry Jacobs – by far the most-quoted non-elected person in Minnesota – defends the Humphrey Institute Poll: Differences between polls may not be substantively significant as illustrated by the case of MinnPost’s poll with St. Cloud State, which showed Dayton with a 10 point lead, and the MPR/HHH poll, which reported a 12 point…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part X: Weasel Words

    I’ve been raising kids for a long time.  Before that, I grew up around a bunch of them.  Indeed, I was one myself, once. And I know now as I knew then the same thing that every single person who watches Cops knows, instinctively; if you think someone did something, and their response is “you…

  • The Great Poll Scam Part IX: The Rockstar Who Couldn’t See His Face In The Mirror

    In reading Professor Larry Jacobs’ defense of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute poll – which always underpolls Republicans in its immediate pre-election survey, by an average of six points, with the tendency even more exaggerated in close races – Jacobs writes (with emphasis added): Appropriately interpreting Minnesota polls as a snapshot is especially important because…

  • The Great Poll Scam Part VIII: Snapshots That Never Come Into Focus

    I was reading Larry Jacobs’ defense of the Humphrey Institute’s shoddy work this past election. His first point in defense is that polls are “a snapshot in time”: Polls do not offer a “prediction” about which candidate “will” win. Polls are only a snapshot of one point in time. The science of survey research rests…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part VII: Post Mortem

    The Twin Cities’ media and academic establishment is starting to try to unpack the disaster of their polling efforts this past election cycle. Minnesota Public Radio has done us the service of printing both the Humphrey Institute’s Larry Jacobs’ defense of the Humphrey Institute poll and a counter from Frank Newport of Gallup Polling. And David…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part VI: The Hay They Make

    We’ve been discussing the MPR/Humphrey Institute and Minnesota polls for the past two weeks.  Indeed, it’s been one of the ongoing “go to” subjects of this blog for almost eight years now. Why? Because while  the polls themselves are risible, they have an effect on elections in Minnesota. Part of it is in terms of…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part V: Close Shaves

    It’s almost become a cliche, among conservative observers of Minnesota elections.  You’re supporting a Republican.  You know the race is close.  You can feel the race is close. And the final Humprhey and Minnesota polls come out, and the DFLer leads by an utterly absurd margin – like this year’s Humphrey Institute Poll, which showed…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part IV: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!

    The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute is a combination public-policy study program and think tank at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.  Named for the patriarch of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party – a forties-era amalgamation of traditional Democrats and neo-wobbly Farmer-Labor Union members whose Stalinist elements Humphrey famously purged in the mid-forties – the institution serves…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part III: Daves, Goliath

    Rob Daves took over the Minnesota Poll in 1987. I have never met Rob Daves.  Either, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone else.  I don’t know that his alt-media bete noir, Scott Johnson, has even met him, despite not a few requests for interviews. I have no idea what Rob Daves thinks, believes,…

  • The Great Poll Scam, Part II: Polling Minnesota

    My interest in the Minnesota Poll as an individual institution started right about the time I started this blog, six or eight years ago. Now bear in mind that I, Mitch Berg, have made skepticism of the media at least a hobby, if not a fringey living, since 1986.  I have believed that the media…

  • The Great Poll Scam: Introduction

    The weekend before the election, I was talking with a friend – a woman who has become a newly-minted conservative in the past two years.  She’d sat out the 2008 election, and had voted for Kerry in ’04, but finally became alarmed about the state of this nation’s future – she’s got kids – and…

  • Next On The Agenda

    The die has been cast.  The votes have been counted.  They’ll be counted again, shortly, as re the governor race. So what’s next? It’s time someone investigated the Star-Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll” and the Hubert H. Humphey Institute’s poll. The Minnesota Poll – especially the one released one to seven days before every gubernatorial, presidential and…

  • A Not Remotely Modest Proposal

    We don’t know how the Minnesota gubernaturial election is going to turn out yet.  I have my predictions in; you are welcome to do your own. But one thing is for certain; it’s not going to be a 12 point race. Which would provoke a curious person to ask; what is with the “Star/Tribune Minnesota…

  • The DFL Morale Builder, Part II

    The Star Tribune‘s “Minnesota Poll” continues to serve its primary function – manipulating voter turnout. As always with the MNPoll, the marquee numbers are nearly meaningless; Dayton has strengthened his lead to 41 percent, according to the poll, followed by Emmer at 34 percent. Horner, who has struggled to get out of the teens in…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Garbage In, Garbage Out

    Mark Dayton has run one of the single dumbest campaigns in Minnesota history. Dayton himself has been a virtual non-entity, relying on the Twin Cities’ media’s inability and/or unwillingness to question him on  his background, the immense gaps in his budget “plan”, his history of erratic behavior…anything. His surrogates have been another matter entirely; “Alliance…

  • Meet The New Poll, Same As The Old Poll?

    Yesterday, I dubbed the Strib/”Minnesota” Poll “The DFL Morale Booster”.  Not for the first time, of course. David Brauer writing at the MinnPost responded, more or less: So with the new Star Tribune poll out showing DFLer Mark Dayton with a 9-point lead over Republican Tom Emmer, it’s the right’s turn to howl over alleged bias.…