Election time, who did you vote for?

[GameOver22]

gergroy said:

GameOver22 said:

gergroy said:
to those of you arguing about polls and the legitimacy of those polls. I would just like to note that polls can be a good barometer of where an election is at, but hardly a good predictor of where an election will go.

For example, look at the 1980 election, a week before the election most polls had the race relatively tied or Reagan losing, I think there was actually only one poll that showed him winning by the large margins he actually did win by. People complained about that polls inaccuracy at the time, but it ended up being the most accurate.

So basically, take all these polls with a grain of salt, the election is close enough and polling is inaccurate enough that it could go either way.

While I agree with your main point, on average, Reagan was actually ahead in the polls over the final weeks. The margin of victory definitely increased over the final couple days (a lot of short-term factors). Interesting thing about the 1980 election, is most people forget that Anderson had a pretty significant third-party showing.

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/08/09/what-really-happened-in-the-1980-presidential-campaign/

yeah, my point was that most polls had it a lot closer then what actually happened in the end.  

Thats true, but you can also see the polls starting to pick up that movement. In addition, as I mentioned, Anderson played a significant role in the election, and while I don't have the info for this election, people often overreport that they intend to vote for a third-party candidate. I know this happened in 2000. People reported they were going to vote for Nader, then voted for Gore. This is why polls tended to under-predict Gore's share of the popular vote.