Now that the Senate elections are over (apart from the Louisiana runoff and Alaska), I have noticed that the actual results were very different than what the polls indicated. Polls showed the Republicans slightly ahead, giving the Democrats an outside chance of retaining the Senate.
Instead the Republicans enjoyed a landslide and won 7 Senate seats so far with two more to be determined. I predict that once the Alaska votes are counted and after the December runoff in Louisiana, Republicans will end up with a net gain of 9 seats.
For some reason or another, the polls underestimated Republican strength. This made the contest  seemed close. What happened in the end was a Republican landslide. Let me run through the pertinent examples.
First Mitch McConnell was supposed to be having a serious challenger – Allison Grimes. Early polls showed her a few percentage points behind McConnell, the Senate minority leader. Just before election day, the polls showed McConnell ahead by 7%, Â In the end, McConnell won by nearly 16% Â or 9% more than what the polls predicted.
Then there was the contest in Kansas between Republican incumbent, Pat Roberts against Independent and suspected surrogate Democrat, Greg Orman. Just before election day, Orman was ahead by 0.8%. In the end, Roberts won by 10.8% ahead. Â So the polls were wrong by a whopping 10%!
In Iowa, another closely watched state, the polls showed Republican Joni Ernst had a narrow lead over Democrat Bruce Braley of about 2% before the elections. She won by a margin of nearly 9%.
The biggest surprise was Virginia. Republican candidate for the Senate, Ed Gillespie was written off. His Democratic opponent Mark Warner was ahead by  nearly 10%, according to the polls.  In the end, the election was a cliffhanger with Warner ahead by 0.8%, making it a polling error of 9%.
I could go on but I will stop here with the Virginia example. Had the polls been more accurate, both sides would have spent more money in Virginia. But then the Republicans would have spent less money elsewhere and this would have given them more money to spend on the real marginal states like Virginia.
I don’t know why the polls are so skewed in favor of Democrats. The margin of error was supposed to be 4%. But we are getting more than that in so many cases and usually in favor of Democrat candidates. Some suspect a deliberate bias in favor of Democrats, but I don’t buy that. I think the pollsters are just incompetent. I don’t know which is worse.
A successful businessman and author, Robert H. Lee has spent years extensively researching the history of nations for his book Saving Democracy from Suicide. (LINK: www.savingdemocracyfromsuicide.com) A self-professed Americaphile, Lee resides in Singapore with his family, but he previous lived in the United States where he went to the University of Michigan for his MBA.
“For some reason or another”. Come on . The media is so far in the tank with the liberal progressive communist administration, it is disgusting. The media, instead of stating facts, tell tales and express their fantasies. They are all complicit in the degradation of our once great country.
@Disenchanted: They are in the tank. But it may be just the almost total ignorance of the voters when being polled. Watch the people on Watters World on Bill O’Reilly, they don’t have a clue. They don’t even know who the candidates are, most certainly not who they will vote for. An example, and I consider myself an ‘informed’ voter, but had I really had a choice, in Louisiana I would vote for Maness (actually I did in this round) but he is the opposite of Landrieu, not Cassity. Louisianan’s are going to find that Cassity will be a Rino. But I knew no one would get 50% in the race so there would be a runoff so I voted for the preferred candidate. Had every voter been informed, Maness would have won with over 50% and we wouldn’t have this runoff.
But, the media is so far in the tank, the average person won’t even listen to them (for good reason) so they are uninformed and the media attempts to influence them.
The problem with these polls can be laid on Obama.
He brought out tons of black voters who then counted as ”likely voters.”
As such, many more blacks had to be polled for the poll to be representative of the demographics of the last voting in 2012.
So, black voters were over-polled.
And, when asked, they SAID they were going to vote this way or that, but when election day came too many of them stayed home.
The MSM and most pollsters are lefties. No surprise that the polls would over-sample Democrats. Nate Silver at 538.com said the morning after the election he “mistakenly” over-sampled Dems by six percent. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia called the election correctly with Republicans coming away with 53 senate seats…Sabato says the entire polling industry needs to be investigated. The dirty little secret is…Dems are regularly over-sampled. Obama’s 39% approval is likely 33% or lower.
@Nanny: IMO This comment is another example of Yogiism/Stengelese.
Happy 239TH USMC
@Redteam:
Regarding Watter’s World, I imagine it is filmed much the way Jay Leno’s Jaywalking segments were. You go to a location where you are likely to have bunches of low information types. and you ask questions. You use the footage with the dumbest answers. Watters tends to favor going to beaches and boardwalks in blue states.