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Sunday, February 27, 2000
By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Pollsters are having a bad year.
Not one in the public arena accurately predicted Arizona Sen. John McCain's 19-point win over Texas Gov. George W. Bush in New Hampshire. Most thought Bush would win or said the race was too close to call.
Nearly every polling operation, except Gallup, failed to predict Bush's big victory last Saturday in South Carolina, where he won by 11 points.
Nobody had a seven-point win for McCain in Tuesday's Michigan primary. Most pollsters said it was too close to call. NBC reported that even Bush's internal polls showed Bush with a double-digit lead the night before the election. McCain's own pollster, Bill McInturff, predicted that McCain was probably headed for defeat.
McCain ended up winning Michigan handily, 50-43. On the same day in McCain's home state of Arizona, where pollsters had found the race tightening after Bush's strong showing in South Carolina, McCain trounced Bush 60-36.
The main problem for pollsters this year has been figuring out whom to count as "likely voters" in states such as Michigan and South Carolina and New Hampshire where Democrats and independents can vote in Republican primaries and vice versa.
Pollsters were dumbfounded that only half of those voting in the Michigan Republican primary were registered Republicans; independents. Eighty-two percent of Democrats and 67 percent of independents voted for McCain, while Bush easily defeated McCain among registered Republicans with 66 percent of their votes.
Record turnouts also have upended pollsters' predictions. In Michigan and South Carolina, Republican turnout was twice as large as it was four years ago, and in both states nearly a third of the voters said they had never before participated in a GOP primary.
Pollsters might miss the mark this coming Tuesday, as well, when Washington state and Virginia hold open Republican primaries in which Democrats and independents can vote. Washington's primary will select 12 of the state's delegates, with the remaining 25 decided in caucuses on March 7.
March 7 is the day when there are Republican contests in 12 states and Democratic races in 15 --- including primaries for both parties in the delegate-rich states of California, New York and Ohio.
A study last year by professors at the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University found that despite skepticism, Americans remain poll-crazy because they like to know what is likely to happen and how their own opinions fit with those of others.
But it is important to remember, warns Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, that even the most accurate poll is only a snapshot of opinion at a particular moment.