Different Polls, Different Answers: The Elevator Theory.

Take a look at one poll and you see Hillary leading Barack by 10 in Texas. Another has her up by 4, another has him up by 4. The pollsters are stumped and embarrassed, specifically one Gallup poll being so different from another Gallup poll in the same time frame, in fact, 9 points different. How could the same company take two different polls in the same time period, and get two different results. The answer, other than slight variances for the way the question is answered, is what I’m calling the Elevator Theory.

When 99% of most polling takes place, people have already made up their minds about the polling questions and it is easy to measure. It’s like measuring what floor an elevator is on. Ask enough people, and you get the average answer that is usually somewhat accurate.

However, in the race between Hillary and Barack, we have two moving elevators (one is rocketing up rapidly and the other falling at a somewhat slower but increasing speed), which makes it difficult to get anyone who feels the same way about where the elevators are at that moment.

When you have one candidate that was previously a relative unknown that is inspiring the country, and the most (or second most) famous woman in the country losing credibility, likability, and electability, with every flap of the jaw…you may just have something that is not measurable until election night. Maybe that’s why they set an election date to vote (twice in Texas).

Of course, neither of these theories take into account my previous mention that sometimes the electorate is void of the information needed to make the “right” decision, but will eventually come around with time. Not to mention, the fact that the youth vote is underrepresented by 5-10 points in presidential election polls this year due to the inability to call people who only use cell phones. The only poll I’ve seen that has taken this into account was the public policy polling that predicted an Obama win in Wisconsin by 13%, when their polling only had him up 3%. This is increasingly important when the age group that should usually be underrepresented due to their lack of a presence at the polls, is showing up in force…including 1,000 students marching seven miles to the nearest polling location.

 Next stop for Obama?  Penthouse Suite please.