Oh,Yes. I Vote Every Time
Friday, January 21, 2000
Real reporting happened again at Mullings this week. Mullings was wondering, as I know you have been, about this: New Hampshire has one presidential primary every four years and not in all those years is there a contested primary. In addition to that independents - that is people registered to vote but not registered as a member of either the GOP or the Democrats - can vote in either primary. How confident is the pollster of a major campaign that the data he is looking at are an accurate reflection of what is really going on?
Bill McInturff is a principal in Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm. POS is the pollster-of-record for John McCain's Presidential campaign. I asked him.
McInturff says the major trick is in the screening process and how you weigh those who get through the screen against known history. Political polling firms - Republican and Democrat - use much "tighter" screens to determine whether someone is likely to vote and if so, how they are likely to cast that ballot no matter what they say the first time the question is asked.
Political pollsters are likely to ask whether the respondent knows the date of the election? Does he or she know where their polling place is? Other factors such as the age of the respondent are noted - younger voters are more likely to say they will absolutely go to the polls even though pollsters know they actually vote in much smaller numbers than older people.
Many media polls are not as tightly screened. If a respondent says he or she intends to vote, they often go down as a "likely voter" thus skewing the results.
In spite of a withering barrage of questions McInturff wouldn't tell how he thought the election was going to come out. But he is confident that he knows what's going in the minds of New Hampshire voters.
The other day I tempted fate by sneering at 2.3 angstroms of snow. This morning, the snow gods got even. I arrived at Ronald Reagan National Airport at 7:40 for a 9:00 am flight. It finally left at 1:30 in the afternoon. Here's a rule: If you get to an airport and there are more little yellow vehicles with scoops on their front moving around than there are airplanes moving around, pack a lunch.
I'm certain this experience was duplicated in other airlines' clubs, but in Delta's Crown room it fell to Melody and Rita to keep everyone informed, at ease, and (at least in my case) non-violent. Brava.
In the olden days (last October) a glance at laptop computers would have yielded about equal parts people composing e-mails and working on documents in a word processing program. Once in a while you might spot a programmer examining some COBOL code, but that was before the Y2K bugs were exterminated.
Yesterday a significant number of people working on laptops were writing HTML coded documents. HTML is the code which is used to make up web pages on the internet.
The Navy is renewing ties with the infamous Tailhook Association of navy fliers. In 1991 there was a sex scandal of enormous proportions at their annual debauch in Las Vegas following which, serving officers were no longer given leave to attend.
At the next Gore-Bradley debate someone should ask whether they think Heidi Fleiss would be an acceptable model for a Naval (watch that spelling) Aviation recruiting poster. In the interests of efficiency they can borrow a piece of an existing policy currently in the news: "Naval Officers, when coming into social contact with members of the opposite sex, shall adhere to the following: Don't pursue."
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