Pete Tucker, a writer in Washington, D.C., writes about a peculiar phenomenon: Opinion polls consistently underrate candidates who are progressive and who are black or Hispanic.
Predicting the winner (falsely) and underreporting the support for a candidate is a form of voter suppression, he writes.
Ayanna Pressley, a progressive African American congressional candidate from Boston, was predicted to lose by 13 points in the Democratic primary, but she won by 18 points. In the primary for a New York congressional seat, the final poll showed Latina socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trailing the Democratic incumbent by 36 points; she won by 15 points. In Georgia, polls showed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the African American former minority leader of the State House of Representatives, well ahead in the Democratic primary, but nowhere near the 53 points she won by.
In Florida, the nation’s third largest state, polls for the Democratic gubernatorial primary showed Andrew Gillum, the progressive African American mayor of Tallahassee, finishing fourth, with around 12 percent of the vote. But Gillum won 34 percent of the vote, nearly three times what most polls had him at, and captured the nomination.
Then there’s Maryland, where the Democratic gubernatorial primary was supposed to be neck-and-neck, but the more progressive candidate, Ben Jealous, walked away with it, beating his chief challenger by over 10 points and taking all but two counties.
While primaries are difficult to predict, today’s polls are not just failing, they seem to be doing so in a way that makes progressive candidates of color appear to have less support than they do.
These polling errors are far from harmless. Faulty polls can turn into real losses by suppressing both votes and funding. It’s not hard to see why: Who is excited to back a sure-loser? This applies to potential voters, who are more likely to stay home on election day if their preferred candidate has no shot, as well as to potential donors, who would rather support a winner.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perhaps pollsters want to discourage voters from voting for progressives. In the Florida primary, I voted for Gwen Graham because I never considered Gillum a serious contender. Graham led the polls throughout the primary campaign, and, frankly, she was a compromise candidate for me. My family and I are more than happy to vote for Gillum. The right wing is running a bunch of negative ads against Gillum now. They are trying to paint him as a crook under FBI investigation and in bed with lobbyists.
Though not a minority, I hope the pollsters have it wrong in Texas. Despite having $38 million in his war chest, Beto O’Rourke continues to poll behind Ted Cruz. I hope thinking Texans show up for Beto.
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Apparently they underrate candidates who are Orange buffoons, too.
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Michael Moore didn’t.
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In my canvassing work, encountering blacks is almost always a joy. Older blacks tend to be exceptionally politically aware (and staunchly supportive of Democrats). Many younger blacks are disengaged, but they’re usually up for a playful debate about why they should get engaged. I’ve persuaded a bunch to register for the first time. Blacks may save American democracy.
By contrast I have to brace myself for a talk with whites and Asians –they’re usually Trump supporters or resentful of having the unsavory topic of politics being raised (as if politics were not The lifeblood of our democracy).
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I think engaging young people of all colors may help save us. That is why the right wing is so eager to suppress their vote.
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Making the U.S. the most imprisoned population in the world (ALEC’s success) was also about denying Black people the right to vote. Black people are arrested and convicted more often than Whites for similar crimes.
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so many ways to influence “voting” outcomes: ticket-based criminalizing, test-fanatic school-to-prison pipeline, strategically truncated educational thought, making people of disfavored groups into incarcerated felons
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I recall an Ohio, White, female voter in Jim Jordan’s district saying she, “wished people would stop talking about racism”. (She’s a ditto head). I heard the response back to her, “Not talking about race is convenient for you.”
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The posted examples reflect 2018. In 2016, the prevailing wisdom was that Bernie’s appeal was limited to millennials. It was an intentionally false claim to distort the presidential selection process. Sanders’ demographic was far more equal in distribution. What is true, is given Trump and the Dem. establishment’s choice, the millennials stayed home and didn’t vote.
Core Democrats will always vote Democratic. Centrist Republicans won’t abstain from voting nor shift parties even if Bloomberg, Kasich and conservative newspaper columnists tell them to. Dems could have had the millennial vote, Black vote and a substantial number of the independent votes, if they voiced the right message and had the right candidate. That will never happen as long as Podesta and the Center for American Progress steer the ship.
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Earlier this week Michael Bloomberg re-registered as a Democrat. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry over the news. Sure, his wealth can help some Democrats, but who needs more wealthy, corporate Democrats?https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/politics/michael-bloomberg-registers-as-a-democrat/index.html
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I recently read a piece that was about new online polls that use Survey Monkey (or similar internet sites) and no control over who responds to questions that could be designed to lead to a specific outcome and how the traditional media isn’t pointing out the difference between these bogus sites with no history to check (and no transparency) and long-time established polls like Gallup that uses methods designed to limit errors.
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After the huge mistake in the prediction of Hillary’s win, the pollsters’ defense was that they got their info. from the campaigns. So, evidently Hillary’s campaign provided info. that she was going to win. Either Podesta’s circle was incompetent or, an opportunity was acted upon to discourage fair weather voters i.e. Democrats, from going to the polls.
The movie, Fahrenheit 11/9, asked Podesta the question, why was Obama encouraged to betray the people of Flint and by whom. Podesta had no answer.
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Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight (538) is selective in the polls it uses and even ranks them as to their reliability, and 538, before the election, predicted that there was a slim chance for Trump to win and went into detail about that possibility.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
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Five Thirty Eight’s creators are no longer its owners. The more distance between origination and subsequent management, the less likely the original values remain in place.
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ABC news currently owns 538, but Nate Silver is still listed as the Editor. The partnership with the New York Times ended in 2013. ESPN owned 538 until ABC bought it from them in 2016.
ABC is owned by Disney.
Who makes the decisions at 538 is probably based on the agreement made during the first sale that carried over from ESPN to ABC.
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Corporate owners, one board vote away from what happened at CBS when a former Fox exec. was hired to head the news division and brought in the Republican, Dickerson, for on air talent- one vote away from a clone of CBS Mooves who helped Trump’s campaign because it brought in ratings.
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Three of the Congressional races that worry Republicans today. In Illinois, Democrat Sean Casten, who is opposed to school privatization, is making Peter Roskam sweat. In Pennsylvania, NEA endorsed, Susan Wild has Marty Nothstein worried. And, in California, Katie Porter who teaches at a public university is making Mimi Walters worried. Walters votes with Trump 99% of the time. She voted against overturning Citizens United. Daily Kos has a 2018 House Race Triage Tracker. It indicates, based on shifts in ad buys by the parties, which candidates are in trouble. There are problems for Republicans in 13 districts, problems for Dems. in 2.
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