re: #35 goddamnedfrank

The thing about voting is that it’s totally binary, either you do it or you don’t, doesn’t matter how enthusiastic you are. Likely voter models are important, but the way some pollsters construct them is intrinsically flawed.

Gallup’s model assumes that if this is your first election, or if you’ve moved to a new precinct and don’t know where your polling location is that you’re aren’t going to vote. Those people never make it into Gallup’s likely voter model, even if they tell Gallup that they’ve already voted via absentee ballot.

Didn’t know that about Gallup. I remember reading that one of the flaws in the 1936 polling that actually had FDR losing to Landon was that only people with telephones were polled.