Thursday, January 10, 2008

Frank Luntz blames the voters

Frank Luntz, pollster and focus groupie extradinaire, was on Fox this morning. This is the guy, back before NH primary poll closed, who did the video of a room full of voters. He opens by asking everyone who hasn't made up their minds to raise their hands. Every hand goes up. Then Frank gives his pitch. At the end he asks how many will vote for Romney. Every hand goes up. Message: Everyone really wants to vote Romney. Just let me give 'm my patented Romney pitch. Why do I have trouble believing this?
Anyhow, back to Fox this morning. The Fox guys ask Luntz why the NH polls predicted an Obama win. Luntz says a couple of really astounding things. "Oh the tremendous turnout threw our models off". Translation, the pollsters fudge the raw poll data based on past history. I didn't know that. I thought that "40% favor so-and-so" meant the 400 people out of the 1000 polled said they mean to vote for so-and-so. Apparently the pollsters "correct" the counts before releasing them to the press.
Second, Luntz said "Oh its a racial thing, 20% of whites are secret racists and say they will vote for Obama to conceal their racism, not because plan to vote for Obama." I don't believe this either. Obama is charismatic speaker, good looking young guy, a real politician who has achieved high office and is very attractive to every one. Even us old McCain republicans think Obama is one hellova candidate. I dislike having a slippery pollster like Luntz, call us Yankees racists. I think Luntz is excusing his polling failures by blaming the voters.

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