The indefatigable Mark Blumenthal over at Mystery Pollster has yet more on the revisions of the the NEP exit poll Hispanic figures. Read his whole post, but here’s the essence:
1. The initial TX Hispanic figure of 59 percent support for Bush, according to the NEP, was the result of a “tabulation” error that improperly weighted telephone interviews with early/absentee voters that were conducted to accompany the election day polling place interviews. (OK–but how’d that happen? And why did it take so long for them to figure it out? And what about the TX white vote for Bush now–doesn’t that have to be higher as a result?)
2. The 40 percent figure for Bush’s national Hispanic support issued by NBC, based on aggregating all the state polls, was not a “correction” of the NEP national poll data, but simply a different, (though better, according to NBC) estimate, of Bush’s national Hispanic support. The NEP national exit poll figure of 44 percent for Bush’s Hispanic support still stands uncorrected by Edison/Mitofsky, the actual exit pollsters. (OK–but if we needed a better estimate than the national poll estimate because the sampling was screwed up–NBC’s story–why is Edison/Mitofsky sticking by their national estimate? If NBC is right, doesn’t it need to be corrected? If not, why not?–isn’t it a problem that the national poll estimate and the state poll-based national estimate don’t matchup (they did almost perfectly in 2000)?
Clear? I thought so. I eagerly await, as I’m sure you do, more “clarifications” from the good folks at the NEP, Edison/Mitofsky, NBC and whoever else is getting into the act.
One comment on “Hispanic Revisions Update”
abraham on
looks like for mitkofsky its hard to admit a mistake most probaly when he corrected his poll that kerry was leading by 3% he came up with this number now he cant figure it out
but after all votes are in a real hard look at sample hispanic precints would give us a decent sample how the hispanic vote went
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
looks like for mitkofsky its hard to admit a mistake most probaly when he corrected his poll that kerry was leading by 3% he came up with this number now he cant figure it out
but after all votes are in a real hard look at sample hispanic precints would give us a decent sample how the hispanic vote went