{"id":15159,"date":"2010-11-15T07:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15159"},"modified":"2020-12-21T05:32:39","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T11:32:39","slug":"the-great-poll-scam-part-iv-hubert-you-magnificent-bastard-i-read-your-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=15159","title":{"rendered":"The Great Poll Scam, Part IV: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hhh.umn.edu\/index.php\">Hubert H. Humphrey Institute <\/a>is a combination public-policy study program and think tank at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.\u00a0 Named for the patriarch of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party &#8211; a forties-era amalgamation of traditional Democrats and neo-wobbly Farmer-Labor Union members whose Stalinist elements Humphrey famously purged in the mid-forties &#8211; the institution serves as a clearinghouse of soft-left chanting points and a retirement program for mostly left-of-center politicians and heelers.<\/p>\n<p>The Institute has been doing general public opinion polling for years; in 2004, in conjunction with Minnesota Public Radio, they dove into the horserace game.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s just sum up their performance in each of the five Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races they&#8217;ve polled in that time:<\/p>\n<p><strong>2004 Presidential Race<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll<\/strong>:\u00a0 Kerry 43, Bush 37<\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election Results<\/strong>: Kerry 51, Bush 47<\/li>\n<li>Bush underrepresented by 10.61, Kerry by 8.09.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2006 Gubernatorial Race<\/strong>]<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll: <\/strong>Hatch 45, Pawlenty 40<\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election Results: <\/strong>Pawlenty 46.45.<\/li>\n<li>Pawlenty underrepresented\u00a0by six, Hatch polled accurately.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2006 Senate Race<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll: <\/strong>Klobuchar 54, Kennedy 34<\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election Results: <\/strong>Klobuchar 58.06, Kennedy 37.94<\/li>\n<li>Kennedy underpolled by 3.94, Klobuchar by 4.06 &#8211; but it was a blowout.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll come back to this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2008 Presidential Election<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll: <\/strong>Obama 56, Mccain 37<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election Results: <\/strong>Obama 54.2, McCain 44.<\/li>\n<li>Obama overrepresented almost two points; McCain, almost seven points under. A ten point race was portrayed as a 20 point landslide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2008 US Senate Race<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll: <\/strong>Franken 41, Coleman 37<\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election Results: <\/strong>Franken by 41.99 to 41.98.<\/li>\n<li>Franken underrepresented\u00a0by less than a point; Coleman, by almost five.\u00a0 A tie race was portayed as a convincing five points beat-down.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2010 Governor Race<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>HHH Poll: <\/strong>Dayton 41, Emmer 29.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Actual Election<\/strong>: Dayton 43.63, Emmer 43.21, recount in progress.<\/li>\n<li>A tie race was depicted as a 12 point blowout.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A polling guru will say that these gross inaccuracies are a function of the Humphrey&#8217;s likely voter model &#8211; which for whatever reason assumed in each case that Democrats were much more likely to vote than Republicans, and likely to make up a greater portion of the electorate.<\/p>\n<p>And yet the Humphrey Institute&#8217;s heuristics &#8211; the procedural, institutional and methodological rules by which institutions develop intelligence about things like voter behavior &#8211; seem to be stuck, for whatever reason, in the eighties.\u00a0 The <em>average <\/em>HHH poll shows Republican candidates to be polling over five and a half points lower than Democrats in their real-life election performances.<\/p>\n<p>Coincidence?<\/p>\n<p>In five of the six races covered above, the errors in measurement underrepresented the GOP.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an figure lower than that of the &#8220;Minnesota Poll&#8221; only because they&#8217;ve been in business sixty years fewer than the Strib&#8217;s poll.<\/p>\n<p>Why would this be?<\/p>\n<p>More next week.<\/p>\n<p>In our next installment: I&#8217;ve shown you the behavior of both polls in horseraces across the board. \u00a0But a particularly interesting bit of behavior comes out if you throw out the blowouts &#8211; the 30 point massacre in the 1994 Governor race, the 20 points slaughter in the 2006 Senate contest &#8211; and focus on the tight races.<\/p>\n<p>More on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>\\The series so far:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Monday, 11\/8: <a href=\"..\/?p=15133\">Introduction<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Wednesday, 11\/10: <a href=\"..\/?p=15148\">Polling Minnesota <\/a><\/strong>&#8211; The sixty-six year history of the Strib&#8217;s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Friday, 11\/12<\/strong>: <a href=\"..\/?p=15157\"><strong>Daves, Goliath<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0 Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 &#8217;til 2007.\u00a0 And the statistics during that era have a certain&#8230;consistency?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Monday, 11\/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers<\/strong>!:\u00a0 The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.\u00a0 And the results are&#8230;interesting.\u00a0 In the classic Hindi sense of the term.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wednesday, 11\/17: Close Shaves<\/strong>: Close races are the most interesting.\u00a0 For everyone.\u00a0 Including you, if you&#8217;re reading this series.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Friday, 11\/19: The Hay They Make<\/strong>: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Monday, 11\/22: A Million&#8217;s A Crowd<\/strong>:\u00a0 Attention, statisticians:\u00a0 Raw data!\u00a0 Suitable for cloudsourcing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute is a combination public-policy study program and think tank at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.\u00a0 Named for the patriarch of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party &#8211; a forties-era amalgamation of traditional Democrats and neo-wobbly Farmer-Labor Union members whose Stalinist elements Humphrey famously purged in the mid-forties &#8211; the institution serves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,125],"tags":[262,208,120],"class_list":["post-15159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-the-great-poll-scam","tag-minnesota-poll","tag-a-klo","tag-polling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15159"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38357,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15159\/revisions\/38357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}