Word: wirthlin
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...basic conclusions jump out of the unhappy experiences of the pollsters. First, most of the private surveyors stopped work too early to pick up the last-minute switches, whether the change was enormous, as most now believe, or whether, in Wirthlin's phrase, "the mountain didn't jump- it slid a little." The reason that most private firms did not survey intensively right up until the last moment is simple: it would have cost too much...
...Harris organization, which polled throughout the weekend and on Monday, showed Reagan gaining points right up to Election Day. By Monday night, according to Harris Executive Vice President David Neft, an unpublished Harris survey had Reagan six points ahead of Carter. Others picked up the trend too, and Wirthlin showed a widening gap through the weekend until Monday night when he, like Caddell, pegged the margin at about ten points in Reagan's favor. The Gallup survey, which eleven days before the election had Carter ahead by three points, found Reagan moving from...
...happened, only the candidates themselves were prepared to spend that kind of money time and again. Harris, for example, spent $350,000 on presidential polling from Labor Day on, whereas Caddell ran up bills of some $2 million. Wirthlin's operation spent $1.3 million and surveyed 500 people every night of the fall campaign until the last few days, when it contacted 1,000 nightly. The findings were then calculated on a rolling, three-day average, which Wirthlin contends evened out the peaks and valleys that other pollsters perceived with their single-shot surveys. Wirthlin is frank enough...
...although there is agreement on the fact that the gap widened at the end, no one except Caddell and Wirthlin came close to calling the margin. The Harris organization, which is claiming great credit for doing better than other public polls, was four points off Reagan's actual voting percentage, the largest error factor it has ever had in a presidential election. Gallup not only also missed the winner's voting percentage by four points but further erred by saying that Reagan was ahead by a margin of only three points. The margin was, says George Gallup...
Looking for explanations of what went wrong, Wirthlin believes that the other pollsters erred by estimating that there would be more Democrats in the final body of voters than there turned out to be. He also criticizes the others for asking the key presidential-choice question first instead of last, after asking about issues and impres sions of the candidates. This, he insists, produced a pro-Carter bias...