Now if only we can kill narrative too.

I think those polls were right up until the tears.  Edwards taking the bait was the worst thing possible for Obama i think.

truly unbelievable....just goes to show that no one knows ANYTHING about this race.

Think about it, they've all been at this for a year, and we still have no freaking clue...

Congrats to the Hillary team again.  My hat goes off to ya

Stunning.

I thought you'd gone to bed?

Before we pile on polls, consider that (1) polls were mostly on the field over the week-end when the bounce was at its highest, (2) independents apparently massively switched their allegiance at the last minute from the Dem to the GOP race. We knew Obama and McCain couldn't both do well, and that's what happened. And (3) Rasmussen, ARG and Suffolk all suggested that the race had stabilized and that Clinton was slightly coming back. Remember, ARG said last night that Clinton had regained her lead among female voters.

Frankly there were signs in the polls that Clinton was very much alive. The media is trying to push the responsibility of their misguided coverage on polls, when frankly it's the way they portrayed them.

so, maybe Michael Whouley is the political turnout god that he has been made out to be...i sure wouldn't want to go against him in the future...

I think whenever people feel like media is shoving a specific candidate down their throats they will pick the next available choice.

First they rebelled when Hillary was inevitable.
Now they rebel when Obama is inevitable.

Media should stick to reporting and not converting.

How wrong was Pollster.com?

NOW YOU KNOW WHY I WAS GETTING SO FRUSTRATED ALL THRESE MONTHS ABOUT SO MANY POLLING DIARIES. Discussing polling is fine if not overdone. So I was never against bringing up polling. It was even worse when you had new MYDD diarists act like polling experts and giving polling discussions a reverence it did not deserve.

That was a great headline!  I will never forget it!

yeah and to the person above - the legend of Whouley's genius just grows and grows and grows...

... probably were way off the mark on this one.  My guess is that a lot of voters for Clinton were self-identified Dems who rarely vote in primaries.  My further guess is that a lot of these Dems-who-don't-vote-in-primaries were working-class women (the very demographic comparatively less likely to attend an Iowa-style caucus due to scheduling concerns such as second-shift employment, child care etc.).

I'm not completely sold on the HRC's "showing emotion" moment as making the difference as I am on the possibility that the likely voter models under-counted a lot of HRC's support.

The "showing emotion" moment makes for a nice narrative, but the daily tracking poll missing a HRC "surge" suggests to me that the likely-voter models were a fundamental problem.

I'm no expert, though.  Perhaps the polling gurus out there could weigh in?

Speechless

http://www.pollster.com/SensNHDem.png

Pollster has Obama winning by 7.4 points. Don't leave out our guys in your criticisms Jerome.

UNDECIDED

None of those add to 100.

Here are the undecided counts.  For each poll, there are 9-10 % left off.

I am a statistician.  I work in the med school at a major research university in the midwest.  I am not a poll specialist.  I will say one thing: The standard formulae for standard errors are correct for SINGLE PROPORTIONS.  With MULTIPLE CASES, it's much more complicated.  And with if you consider it one v other, the standard errors get much much higher.

I'd never say one blown election makes for the death, but obviously a thorough reconsideration of methodolog is needed. It could just be timing - that late breaking events like Clinton's emotional softening had a huge impact, and no poll caught it, but Obama really would have won two days ago. It could be that the Independents weren't properly reflected, or that cell phones mattered sooner than pollsters expected - but we won't know about "death" for quite some time.

Shocking.

Obama better start crying.

Questioning of the polling is necessary, of course. What I was thinking earlier and the table confirms, is that the polling was only (that's "only") off for Clinton.

Scan the table:

• Obama's actual % is pretty close, well within the margin of error, to the polls
  
• Edward's actual % is pretty close, well within the margin of error, to the polls
  
• Richardson's actual % is pretty close, well within the margin of error, to the polls

Only Clinton's % is WAY off. I've never seen a poll that was wrong, but only for one of the candidates. But, here we have seven polls with this very unusual pattern. Really unusual.

Well, I stopped believing anything ARG put out awhile ago.

Even Iowa wasn't all that accurate...  We are getting record turnout and that's got to be fucking up the polls too... LV models are JUST NOT falling into line.  Senateguru has an interesting theory as well.

Russert reports that Clinton's own internal polling had her trailing by 11.

My guess is as the election came closer women rallied to Hillary with the nasty stuff in the media against her, and we misjudged how independents would vote in the Republican vs Democratic primaries. In anycase this is a day many candidates coming into election as the underdogs according to polls will point to to try to encourage their base.

NYT reports. CAPS are my comments

"Exit polls suggested that there was a record turnout, with half a million voters -- 280,000 Democrats, and 230,000 Republicans."

THAT MEANS 55% OF VOTERS IN AGGREGATED VOTED IN THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY.

In the Republican primary, Mr. McCain got 38 percent of voters unaffiliated with either party, and the same proportion of registered Republicans, according to a surveys of voters leaving the polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press. Such undeclared voters made up about a third of voters in the Republican primary.

SO MCCAIN GO THE SAME SUPPORT FROM REPUGS AS INDIES

It was different for the Democrats. Undeclared voters make up a larger portion of the voters in the Democratic primary -- about 40 percent. Mr. Obama got about 4 in 10 undeclared voters and Mrs. Clinton got about a third of their support. Mrs. Clinton got 45 percent of registered Democrats, and Mr. Obama got a third.

INDIES MADE UP 40% OF DEM VOTERS, A HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF A LARGER POOL OF VOTERS.

DOING THE MATH, THIS IMPLIES INDIES VOTED 60% IN THE DEM PRIMARY AND 40% IN THE REP PRIMARY. THESE ARE QUITE CONSISTENT WITH THE POLLS.

SO THESE FIGURES REFUTE THE NOTION THAT INDIES BROKE FOR MCCAIN OVER OBAMA IN LARGER THAN EXPECTED NUMBERS.

THE GOOD NEWS IN ALL THIS IS THAT NH VOTERS IDENTIFIED WITH DEMS.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530

What is so amazing to me is not how wrong the polls were, they are wrong far more often than they are even close to being right.  What is amazing is reading so many comments below where people are claiming anomalies or some other bullshit trying to prove that polls really do work. I guess polls really do work as long as you never use them to try and guess what human beings will do.

I know some people here live and die by polls but it seems to me you are wasting your life on falsities.

Get a life, turn off the TV, stop reading the polls and get out on the streets.

PLain and simple.

Dis the sample of any of those polls include 57% women? (Pissed off women!)The Tweety syndrome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jsVM-ma9 DM

The biggest lesson here:

Any poll prior to the day of the election that doesn't show "Undecided" with a sizable lead over everyone else is not to be trusted, and the result of the pollster pushing poll respondents to make a choice when they really haven't yet.

Another lesson:  

Don't rely so heavily on the polls in the year-long buildup to the primaries.  They are entirely meaningless until probably December, and even then they are only a rough approximation.