My first poll. How exciting.
But first a little context. The following quote comes from AGuyFromCarolina’s recent diary, Give us a reason to vote:
What excites me the most about this campaign is that all of the people I am seeing are new to politics. These are fresh faces, and a completely different group than who I normally see at official party functions. Other people within the party are noticing that the Bernie campaign is out and about and exciting voters. None of these people are folks that would show up as "strong Democrats" in Votebuilder, if they were on Votebuilder at all. They are definitely NOT appearing in any polls' "Likely Voter" screens.
I’d very much like to see AGuyFromCarolina put up a separate diary to expand on this point, as I feel there’s some important stuff to unpack here:
1) Can we break this down in more detail? Are the new organisers also first-time voters? or are they people who haven’t been excited about previous elections, but who nonetheless have done their duty and voted against Republicans? In either case, now that they are energised, who are they bringing with them?
2) If (as I think AGuy is saying) there is a contingent of Sanders voters that are essentially invisible to the polls, and will only show up once the ballots are counted, what sort of numbers are we talking about?
3) If that contingent is truly invisible, then — again, until the ballots are counted — all of this discussion is by its very nature anecdotal. Is there a way to model and/or frame the behavior of this purported voting contingent in useful ways, in anticipation of the actual results? For instance, if the results in the first three states were to depart strongly from expectations based on polling, what would that say about upcoming states?
4) Is building a narrative that anticipates these results playing with fire? My impression has always been that it’s common for a campaign to try to lo-ball its expectations, so that results look good by comparison. Anticipating an invisible-until-polling-day electoral bloc seems the exact opposite…
So those are my questions for AGuyFromCarolina. Now here’s my question for you:
The poll asks you to 1) identify which candidate you personally support, and 2) respond as to whether you think Sanders current supporters are being significantly undercounted in the polls. I’ll repeat that for Sanders boosters – I’m asking about his current support. We’re not talking about people he hasn’t reached yet.
It’s a bit awkward to ask both questions together, but I’ve tried my best to make it readable:
(oop — sloppy of me: please read “current support” as “current support among people who will vote in the primaries”)