You might recall the experimental online poll we ran here at RK starting January 5. Well, here are some fascinating results, courtesy of one of the poll's creators. Believe it or not, this may explain what happened with the New Hampshire primary polling in the Democratic race. Thoughts?
BULLITICS NH RESEARCH SAW ELECTORATE SHIFTBy: Ricardo Rossello, PhD
It might be true, as the saying goes, that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, but sometimes there are just the plain old facts.
Tuesday's New Hampshire primary has produced all kinds of discussions about what went wrong with polls and pundits, but at least one test measure of the granite state's electorate picked up what was happening in real time (figure 1). From the ABC News debates Saturday night to Hillary Clinton's 'crying game' to the actually vote, there were two key points of inflections - independent movement from the Democratic primary to Republican and undecided shifts in the last 30 hours to Clinton
The alpha-version Bullitics platform, a novel mechanism to determine society's pulse, predicted the NH results and trends, observing movement in the electorate that started on Saturday, January 5th after the debate and continued 24 hours before the polls opened.
Bullitics uses a novel allocation mechanism that enables users to change their allocated percentages of answers as many times as they want.For this prediction, the platform performed in its alpha stage, using only a small number of NH voters (276), and 6 questions (2 general, 2 Republican, 2 Democratic). Two general questions were asked: (a) How likely are you to vote in the primary? and (b) What party affiliation best reflects your views? On both Republican and Democratic questions, individuals were asked whom they were inclined to vote for and who was more presidential.
Based on that sample size and the questions, Bullitics was able to predict Senator Clinton's victory in the NH primary, and identified two instances where a shift was occurring. To analyze the Democratic results, tallies were taken for those who were voting either Democratic, None, or Undecided. On the Republican side, those who aligned themselves with Republican, None, or Undecided were also tallied. This type of tallying reflected the reality of a semi-open primary in NH (independents can vote anywhere).
The first tally was taken after Saturday (Jan 5th) night's debate. Before that time, Senator Obama had been steadily increasing his aggregate score after the Iowa Caucus. The changes in percentages were not significant (as Senator Obama remained consistent, Clinton only slightly increased, and Edwards slightly decreased). However, two things changed.
First, the percentage number of "Undecided" increased right after the debate. Second, a rising number of "None" and "Undecided" shifted to the Republican polling alternative. Thus, it could be concluded that the presidential debate affected the trends in public opinion by (1) enhancing uncertainty in the Democratic pool, and (2) shifting more attention to the Republican primary (relative change -- most Independents still were with the Democratic party, figure 2 ).
The second tally was taken 30 hours before the polls closed in NH, when the Undecided segment started yielding steadily to Senator Clinton (77% of the Undecided segment tracked an increase for Clinton).The momentum started changing then, most likely due to the press coverage of her "emotional" moment on TV. In the end, the Bullitics platform had Barack Obama (37%) behind Hillary Clinton (38%) at 7pm EST, the night of the primary.
The conclusion is that Obama did not lose votes to his Democratic competitors, but rather lost a segment of the independents to the Republican Party and a large portion of the "Democratic-Undecided" vote within the last 30 hours. Had pollsters been able to pick up on this trend, they would have advised Senator Obama to target either the "Independent" crowd more heavily, or concentrate on the "Democratic-Undecided" vote.
Although this is a pilot study with no gender/race differentiation, future studies will be able to consider the effects of a gender/race shift in the contest. The beta version of this study will be able to differentiate within that context. Still, our preliminary data points more to a shift in Independent voters (None-Undecided) going to the Republican primary, and a significant gain of "Democratic-Undecided" votes by the Clinton camp, rather than Obama losing the support of his base of voters.
Bullitics has finished its alpha-stage pilot study and will introduce its beta product in 10 days. We offer real-time changes, a better model for surveying online voters, and the best analytical tools anywhere!
Contact: ricky.rossello@gmail.com
Now, I am not so sure. Did the independents shift to McCain out of conviction he should be President, rather than just to give him a boost against Huckabee and Romney? If the shift was from conviction, will this shift to the Republican side hold in the general election as well? Are the Democrats losing the no-party moderates and independents they must have nowadays in order to win a general election, as they did in 2006? If so, what can be done to halt the shift?
Regardless of what happened, Dem candidates should continue to fight for the middle by appealing to populist domestic issues, moderate foreign policy issues, and continue to build up their credibility and likeability. The recent back-and-forth by both the Obama and Clinton campaigns are likely to detract from that goal; we should hope they get back to the issues affecting the American people sooner rather than later.
To your second question of "are the democrats losing the non party vote" - I don't think so. I just think the shift of the independents was so heavily in favor of the dems at the start of the NH race, that the shift caused significant changes in the tallies. I don't think it's a national phenomenon, particularly now with people not trusting the "inevitability" statements of the press. Nothing seems farfetched these days...
-R2
We should also resolve questions coming from the exclusive contract between big media and Edison/Mitofsky, the exit pollsters. Edison/Mitofsky admitted it screwed up in Ohio in 2004, and they still won't release the numbers they showed the media in NH this year that caused the media to be surprised at the outcome.
We should continue to explore alternatives to machines that can be rigged. To the extent we have to keep using them, we should at least routinely engage in random hand recounts of the results of these machines. Finally, we should NEVER be left without a hand marked paper trail and the highest level of security over that paper.
The stakes are too high.
I think it ought to go without saying that they have no interest whatsoever in persuading anyone to believe that they have a worse methodology to sell, so let's just take it for granted that they would rather you think they were more reliable and not less so.
Therefore, in this pilot study, we were able to see trend changes in the sample's aggregate. On the beta version of bullitics that comes out soon, users will be able to do much more than that. Just give it a try in a couple of days, and you can be the judge of our robust statistical analysis tools and mechanisms.
Here is the article:
Compare these vote tallies:
Clinton optical scan vote 91,717 or 52.95%
Obama optical scan vote 81,495 or 47.05% and
Clinton hand-counted vote 20,889 or 47.05%
Obama hand-counted vote 23,509 or 52.95%
Notice anything? The percentages are exactly reversed. This is precisely what would occur if the machines flipped the votes, that is, a vote for Clinton registered as being for Obama and a vote for Obama registered as being for Clinton. I am not saying the nefarious convicted felon who ran around opening and replacing memory cards in the Diebold machines during the voting (as stated in that article you linked to) did anything wrong. Actually, these very machines have been shown to have flipped votes on their own, accidentally. Nor do I want to take away anything from Senator Clinton's magnificent comeback.
What I do want to ensure is that we have no chance for unreliable or inaccurate vote counts in the rest of the primaries and in the general election. We are all becoming less and less sure of the reliability and honesty of our election system, and if we lose faith in that, our democracy is dead.
Here is a story from WDTNof Dayton OH.