Do the undecided break strongly for the Challenger?
The Vorlon:
There has been a lot of posting about how the undecided break for the challenger, etc in a variety of threads, so I figured I'd toss up a bit of information, and hopefully shed a tiny bit of light on the topic...
A new thread seemed as good a place as any... :)
There have been two major studies that I have personally read on this topic, one from about 1990, and the other from about 2002 or so.
I looked for them on the internet, but could not find them, so I am going from memory here. If you do find the studies, and I am off a few percentage points.. don't shoot me.. :)
I am confident I remember the "broad strokes" pretty accurately, but the percentages might be off a tad here and there...
There was a study done back in 1990 (?) or so which did a simple anaylsis of what the polls said before the election and what the actual results were.
This study concluded that about 80% (+/-) of the time the challeneger did indeed do better than the polls suggested, about 10% of the time the polls were right, and 10% of the time the incumbant did better than expected.
This study had a number of flaws however. Untill about 1990 or so, Republicans historically underpolled a bit - on average by about 4% or so. This combined with the fact that until the 1990s the Democrats held a crushing advantage in the number of state, local, and congressional seats badly distorted the data.
Because the Dems were overwhelmingly the incumbants, and the GOP systematically underpolled, if just looked like the "break" was mostly to the challenger.
When this bias was corrected for in later studies, the "break to the challenger effect" was dramatically diminished, but certainly still there.
After correcting the data for the systemic anti-GOP bias the ratio was that about 55% of the time the challenger did better than expected, about 25% of the time there was no break, and about 20% of the time the break was towards the incumbant.
It should be remembered that, due to random error in the polls, the "normal" result would be 33/33/33 if there was no "break" effect. (A challenger would, due to random chance, underpoll as often as he/she overpolled)
The study also went a bit further and in an utterly arbitrary way divided election races into two categories - Close (under 10% lead shown in the polls) and not close (Over 10% lead shown in the polls)
There is a fairly stong effect where in a one-sided race, the challenger does better than expected. It is fairly common to see somebody go into an election with a 30% lead and then win by "only" 19% as a bunch of his/her supporters stay home on election day. This appears to impact Democrat incumbants a bit more the GOP incumbants, but the gap is not huge.
This is what happened in 1996 - most polls had Clinton beating Dole by 12% or better when the actual result was about 8% - CBS News Polling for example missed this election rather badly having Clinton up by 18% when the actual result was about 8%
A lot of Democrats stayed home, while Republicans went to the polls to protect their hold on the House & Senate.
Within the "close" races, the "break to the challenger" effect was still there, but slightly reduced again. - About 45% of the time the Challenger did better than expected, about 30% of the time there was no break, and about 25% of the time the incumbant did a bit better than expected.
The average "break" at the end was about the same size for both incumbants and challengers and averaged a bit over 3%.
Summary:
A bit under half the time there is an (on average) 3+ % break to the challenger at the end.
About 1/4 of the time there is a 3+ % break to the incumbant.
About 1/4 of the time there is no break at all.
Hope this helps!
Lunar:
Does this include undecideds a few weeks out? If we're just analyzing the "breaK" of undecideds on the actual election day, it doesn't give much information about many of the undecideds.
The Vorlon:
Quote from: Lunar on June 08, 2004, 09:01:22 PM
Does this include undecideds a few weeks out? If we're just analyzing the "breaK" of undecideds on the actual election day, it doesn't give much information about many of the undecideds.
How the undecided break in the last couple weeks is actually more an issue of projecting turnout than it is an issue of actual voter preference. - Sorting out the "leaners" who will actually vote, versus those who stay home. If you "properly" do the exit surveys the large majority of people who say the made up their mind in the last little while were actually always "leaning" at least somewhat to a candidate - the decision they made just before the election was whether or not to actually vote.
2000 is a great example actually.
The polls in 2000 showed a really weird effect. A couple weeks out, If you projected turnout at right around 50% - Bush was up 6% or so. But if you extended your turnout model to about 55-56% the race was tied. There was this huge "bubble" of Gore voters who were almost "likely" voters.
At first everybody thought it was some weird polling quirk, but it just kept showing up again and again, so folks concluded it was real.
When the Bush Drunk Driving thing hit all the polls said two contradictory things - suddently the race was closing fast, but the same polls also said the DUI didn't change a single vote. What really happened is that the "almost" likely Gore voters, seeing the DUI thing got excited enough to actually want to vote, sensing that their guy indeed did have a chance to win.
There was no break per se towards Gore in that very few minds actually changed, but what did change was the decision to actually vote.
This is why Bush did that weird cross country trip in the last few days to weird places - stopping in Illinois and New Jersey and a few other places rather than Florida and Ohio - it was pure voter suppression - by travelling to weird places they were trying to send the message "It's in the bag - don't bother voting" to that "bubble" of Gore voters who were "almost" likely.
One of historiy's unanswerable questions is did this Bush/Rove cross country journey convince 538 Democrats to stay home in Florida that day?
TheWildCard:
Wow.... Thanks for the information Vorlon! I know I heard Dick Morris saying "Undecideds always break for the challenger" good to know that that isn't always true.
The Vorlon:
Quote from: Governor Wildcard on June 08, 2004, 09:27:50 PM
Wow.... Thanks for the information Vorlon! I know I heard Dick Morris saying "Undecideds always break for the challenger" good to know that that isn't always true.
It still happens more than not, just not "always".
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page