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Pulse-takers
(New Haven Register (New Haven, CT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 6--Erin Kelly, a junior at Quinnipiac University, has taken a hard line with her friends lately, making them pay close attention to politics.
"On the night of the debate between (Barack) Obama and (John) McCain, they wanted to go out, but I said we couldn't go until after the debate was over," she says. "You know, they care ... but there's a way that they don't really care. I don't want people to be apathetic."
This interest isn't simply because Kelly is a broadcast journalism and history major. Her fascination with the political process comes from the fact that since her freshman year, she's worked as poll-taker at the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, now one of the nation's leading polling organizations. It was recently hailed by Salon magazine as one of the top five pollsters, beating out many of the larger organizations which have been around a lot longer.
"I took it as just a job," she says, "but now I get caught up in the polls. I really care about this election, and I want to know the results each day. We all come in and read the board to see what the numbers are."
Located just beneath Sleeping Giant on West Woods Road in Hamden, QPI has a brand-new facility with 153 state-of-the-art work stations, manned by students and members of the community working each evening from 5:30-9:30 p.m., and on weekends from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
On a recent evening, the place was humming as poll-takers sat at cubicles in front of computers that were randomly dialing numbers. When a "good" number would come up -- that is, a phone number that is actually in service and connected to a residential household -- a script would appear on the screen, and if the resident was willing, the poll-taker would begin a 7-minute interview.
Quinnipiac has approximately a 50 percent rate of success in having people agree to take the poll, says director Douglas Schwartz. In calls to Connecticut and New York, where Quinnipiac is well-known, that rate jumps to two-thirds.
Quinnipiac has been conducting polls since 1988, but it wasn't until 2000 that they expanded their national polling and became more well known. And now with the election taking on as many twists and turns as a heart-stopping thriller, Quinnipiac is right there in the forefront, with its daily polls often making national news.
Schwartz, a self-proclaimed political junkie, is delighted. "This has been an amazing election, with a lot of surprises. A year ago, nobody would have thought that Obama would beat out Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. And who believed McCain would be the candidate? It seemed clear it was going to be Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani."
Schwartz, along with a committee, decides which questions will be asked of voters -- a dream job for a political junkie. "Right now, of course, we're polling about the economy and the election. We track opinion over time, and of course, add questions as new events come up," he says.
Analysts are always trying to think of ways of asking questions that can get to voters' true feelings and intentions in the voting booth, he says. "Writing the questions is the hardest part. The slightest change in wording can affect the outcome."
This year, of course, there is some concern about different issues that affect the outcome of polls. Some analysts have wondered if there's a so-called "Bradley effect," Schwartz says -- named for the Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who sought the California governorship in 1982 against a candidate who was white. Huge numbers of voters told pollsters they were voting for Bradley, but then the election broke for the other candidate, George Deukmejian. Pollsters have since then used this term to reflect hidden racism in the polls.
"We are unable to get at racism with our polling," says Schwartz. "Voters won't admit to it. But we have reason to believe that's not going to be a factor in this election. The Bradley effect didn't show up in the primary race between Obama and Clinton. There were some polls that overstated Obama's lead, but also polls that overstated Clinton's lead." There isn't much pollsters can do about voters who tell outright lies when they're being polled, he says. Another problem the polling institutes are facing is the proliferation of cell phones. Some statistics indicate that most people between 18 and 29 don't have land lines, and thus are not being accounted for in polls. The law prohibits automatic dialers from reaching cellphones -- and for good reason. Cellphone users mostly have to pay for incoming calls and would never agree to a long interview.
"This is something that concerns all pollsters, and we're going to have to figure out a way of doing it," he says. "Fifteen percent of people live in cellphone-only households. However, Pew Research has found that by excluding cellphone numbers, polls aren't making much of a difference in their findings. If you include cellphone users, they say, it might help Obama by only two points or so.
"Part of the reason that's true is that the people getting missed are disproportionately young, and young people often don't vote. But this year, there has been a lot of interest from young people, so who knows?
"What pollsters can do is a weighting of demographic characteristics, give more weight to certain categories. We do this by education, age, gender and region so that we can have a correct percentage of every population."
To see more of New Haven Register, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nhregister.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, New Haven Register, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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