I don't think that 96% of people are lying when they say they already donated. I think there's a high degree of correlation, however, between response rate to a poll and whether you contributed or not. I.e., probably 100% of people who don't bother responding have also not given any money; donors would be overrepresented among people who bother responding to the poll in the first place.

you nailed this one.

Why should I give up some of my hard earned money to rich campaigns? My first choice is Gore, but evne if he runs, I will not donate a single dollar as he doesn't need it. I will however consider donating to Wes Clark if he runs since he won't be inundated with big money the same way I donated to Howard Dean.

I agree that the Democratic primary voters are going to be less than what the national polls are showing. However, it seems like this primary will have a record percentage of participation due to the excitement about the Democratic field.

I think that the "attention" the race is getting in early states though mitigates the above biasis thats why Hillary is not doing nearly as well in those places.

Nice work Mr. Bowers. Your coverage on this topic is impressive and only more impressive in light of the evidence.

I mean if it comes to actually banning me or others over this issue, fine, not seeing 5 snide things being said about Clinton a day may be a good thing I can live with in the long run.

Despite the other good info I find here.

I don't know if this is even partial or impartial or not.

All I know is that you're saying that hillary supporters are more likely to lie and not be engaged in the political process.

great.  edwards and obama supporters are more likely to be hypocrites and condescending towards the rest of the country.  and, you're right.  they may turn out to turn out in droves for their candidate.  and all those people responding for clinton in those polls will just stay at home watching american idol.

who's being elite here, chris?

and just asks if the respondent is a registered voter. It seems likely that even polls of 'registered voters' have some self-reporting error.

I think you're just extrapolating a bit more than you can support.  If we examined Dean vs Kerry, or any other campaign's number of donors compared to actual votes, how much of a correlation is there?

Yes people lie, that's a problem with any poll.  But extrapolating as to who is lying more to make predictions, with scant evidence, seems even less sound of a methodology than just acknowledging, "This what people said, even though they may be lying."  

I think you have made a great case for blogging just a little less about meaningless bull** polls.  I look at 'em too, but that doesn't mean it means anything, sort of like porn.

By the way, the endless shilling for presidential candidates (I'm not talking about any of the front pagers) is getting tiresome.  How many of these people are paid shills?  If it is almost imposible to discuss anything without someone chiming in about how great XXXX is or crying about Matt or Chris being mean to XXXXX than what is it going to be like next December?

Here in Solano County, California, my local Democratic club has a method to identify by name which registered voters have a history of low turnout.  

We take the voting rolls (with voter history), available from the county registrar of voters for a nominal charge, and compute the percentage of time each voter has voted in the last twenty elections.  (County data only goes back that far.)

It takes a fair amount of time to import the data into spreadsheets, enter the coding to do the math, and make the computations.  But once it is done and printed out by precinct, it is very easy for a precinct captain to spot who is likely to vote and who isn't, based on their history of voting or not voting in each of the twenty most recent elections.  Our precinct captains can then concentrate their efforts on those with a low turnout propensity.  

I highly recommend this method as a way to get our folks to the polls.  

This is a well-known effect when conducting studies. Sometimes the effect can be minimized when the poll is filled out anonymously as opposed to answering questions from a pollster.

Where this shows up most is in polls of public policy issues. A perfect example is religious affiliation. The number of people who report going to church each week is about 40% while checking attendance records comes up with a figure closer to 20%.

Bad polling is frequently used to justify a policy that some group is advocating. Even the terms used can affect the result. Asking if a person supports welfare scores low while rephrasing as helping those in need scores much higher.

People also express opinions when they don't know anything about the issue just not to seem uninformed.

If the respondent is called at random and asked if they are a registered voter, a fair number probably lie in response to that question as well.

That being said, voter turnout in the primaries will be very high in 2008, not just because of the wide open field, but because many voters in many states (especially large states like CA, IL, FL, NJ, TX, NY, etc.) will feel that their primary votes matter this time around, thanks to the compressed schedule many of us are complaining about....

Having had personal experiences with conducting public polls for a very prestigious polling organization - and conducting Political polls for candidates, one has to question whether the people who participate are truly representative of the population as a whole in terms of their personalities and mindset.

Many polls are still conducted by phones and  are unexpected and can be quite long.  

There is an attempt to correlate by chosing demographics and including socio economic questions - but that can only go so far.

I believe that analyzing polls is very hard to do, so I commend Chris Bowers for trying.  I for one don't believe that Clinton's numbers are inflated, I actually believe in the opposite, that her numbers are somewhat higher than what an averaging of all polls shows today.    

All primary polls generally capture Independents who state that they lean Democratic and intend to vote in the Democratic primaries.   Those poll results are lumped in with the results of Democrats making their preferences known, which then combine to give polling figures.    However, Independents, despite their best intentions leading up to primary day, are least likely to go out and actually vote.    Thus, they are giving full weighting in polls (and we all know that Independents are less enthused about Clinton than rank-and-file Democrats) when their poll preferences should be viewed as less important, as they simply show up in much lesser numbers at the primaries than partisans.  

The Clinton poll underreporting was discussed in a recent Quinnipiac poll article in which a well-known pollster, who has polled Clinton for years for the New York Senate, has pointed the phenomenon out.  It is largely due to the stark difference in support Clinton gets from Democrats vs. Independents, but also in part due to Clinton supporters not "admitting" to their support because of the small, but very rabid and vocal anti-Hillary contingent voices in the Democratic party.    They then show up in the polling booth to pull the Clinton lever to the consternation and surprise of the anti-Clintoners, who were actually convinced that the Hillary numbers are inflated instead.  

Can the underpolling phenomenon that was apparent in both NY Senate races be transferred to the presidential?  I believe it is the same poll discussion we are looking at here.  Others believe in the opposite, even going as far as citing her 5th place ranking in a recent Moveon.org poll, as if that poll was representative of Democrats at large, which is obviously not the case if one considers that she leads every national poll, has not placed second in a single poll as of yet, let alone fifth.