The Conservative vote in Tuesday’s election may be three or four percentage points higher than polls indicate, pollster Angus McAllister says.
That’s because national polls may be missing parts of important demographic groups, McAllister said.
McAllister, of McAllister Opinion Research, said it appears that people who refuse to tell pollsters who they are going to vote for tend to be Conservative supporters.
Women aged 55 and over are twice as likely as other groups to refuse to tell pollsters who they’re going to vote for, McAllister said.
What’s more, women who won’t state a party preference tend to live in rural areas or in areas like the 905 belt outside Toronto.
And older women in these areas are twice as likely to vote Conservative than other demographic groups, McAllister said.
People who refuse to state a party preference tend to say that health and the economy are their top issues, he said.
“They don’t care about the environment. It’s all about health and the economy.”
He said the reluctance of Conservative supporters to talk to pollsters fits with social values research that indicates that older small-c conservatives tend to be less trusting than most people – and therefore less likely to tell a stranger on the phone who they’re going to vote for.
“It’s a theory,” McAllister said. “It’s not proven.”
But it is clear that who you get to answer your poll determines your outcome.
For example, McAllister said, American pollsters know that if you do a poll on a Friday night you’re likely to overstate Republican support. Democrats are more likely to go out at night than Republicans.
To offset such problems, pollsters can call refusers back repeatedly until they get an answer. But this isn’t possible with the quick-turnaround polls that have dominated this campaign.
“Polls that are overnight polls, three-day, two-day polls, polls that are really quick, there’s no way a pollster can make that amount of effort unless they have huge resources, which they usually don’t,” McAllister said.
People who refuse to state a party preference are different from those who say they don’t know who they’re going to vote for, McAllister said. “Don’t Knows” tend to lean toward the opposition parties in roughly equal numbers, he said.
McAllister said it’s also possible that the missing older women are balanced by a lack of young people, who tend to vote for parties other than the Conservatives.
Young people are “harder to get a hold of,” McAllister said. “They’re more mobile. They travel more, they’re home less often, they’re also on mobile phones. So we have to work harder to get young people.”
This might not have as much impact on election day, however, because young people are also much less likely to vote.
And one last thing to watch for: the Green party vote might fall short of the party’s poll standings, and not just because the Greens don’t have a big machine to get the vote out.
Many Green supporters, McAllister said, are telling pollsters they will “probably” vote.
“People who say they are probably going to vote don’t vote.”
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor at The Tyee.
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G West
3 years ago
This is just baloney - in my view
I've been called three times by pollsters during this campaign...each time I fed them different answers to their stupid questions.
A lot of people I know, with whom I discussed this tactic, have been doing - and will continue to do - the same thing.
The simple fact that pollsters often don't even have lists of cell phone numbers - at a time when fewer and fewer people use land lines (or may have opted for Voip phones) is also far from trivial.
The ridiculous swings in many polls during this campaign is just another example of how unreliable the whole exercise has become.
Ignore the stupid pollsters and put them out of a job - democracy should be a question for the people, not for hired guns with phones in their holsters.
Luke Skywalker
3 years ago
Possible...
Frankly, I find that hard to believe. It certainly wouldn't benefit the NDP. What if the pollster's result would be 9% NDP instead of 20% federally (today) as a result?
Demoralized NDP campaign workers, demoralized NDP voters who wouldn't likely vote, and other NDP voters moving to the Greens or Liberals as a result.
I guess one can learn something new everyday. Nik Nanos of Nanos Research has confirmed on CPAC that his firm uses the whole mix... landlines, cell lines, and VOIP.
G West
3 years ago
Not at all luke
You clearly don't know much about the way NDP (and I suspect every other) campaign(s) work...the people on the ground in each riding pay virtually NO attention to polls. It is a counterproductive waste of time.
The only real concern is identifying the vote and getting those voters to the polls.
In a riding with, say 150 or 200 polling stations, and a margin of victory of (as for example North Island in the last federal election) 616 votes, the key may be as simple as an extra 10 or 15 votes in each box on Tuesday; paying attention to polling is a stupid game for amateurs like you.
The key is to get every single supporter to the polls. As for cell phones and VOIP lines - the fact Nanos calls a few of them means virtually nothing - the fact is, most polling is directed toward listed home phones....as you well know.
David Lewis
3 years ago
great bunch of commenters here
One reporter's take on Mark Jaccard's relationship with the powers that be is described in this Tyee article:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/25/Jaccard/
Jaccard has worked as a bureaucrat under the NDP government, he's worked for the Harper Conservatives and now he's working with the Campbell Liberals in BC. He's gone out on tour with David Suzuki as well. He says he'll get into bed with anyone who wants to do something about climate change, so if anyone wants to attack him as being in bed with any particular poltical group, he's been in bed with them all at one time or another.
The BC carbon policy was described in an article by Bill Rees, published in the Tyee:
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/02/26/TaxShellGame/
as "by far the most aggressive carbon pricing regime in North America", although Mr Rees, being a rather flint eyed planet hugger, pronounced the effort to be nowhere near enough for his taste.
G West
3 years ago
David Lewis
SO.
Did you read the comments after those two articles?
I suggest you do.
And I suggest anyone else who cares about the environment in this province and the Premier’s facile salute to it read them as well.
I don't care who Jaccard is currently in bed with, his status as an independent voice is seriously challenged by his current membership in Campbell's little group.
The reason the Carbon Tax is a joke is the fact it is purpose built to do NOTHING but spin money. The latest installment of the pander went out with the October quarterly GST cheques to low income British Columbians.
DO you seriously think that extra cash is doing anything to address global warming?
It's not - and neither is any of the other cash Gordon is spending on, for example, Gateway.
The whole thing is a farce and the 'scientists' like Jaccard and Weaver who were taken in by Campbell's scheme are laughable in their naïveté.