by Hillary LaClair, Senior Editor
For those who left the United States Presidential Election to an online sports bet, Paddy Power was the first to call it (and accurately), some three weeks before election day. In terms of a financial investment, did Paddy Power know what they were doing, or did they get lucky?
The polls did show Barack Obama with an incredibly high lead over Senator John McCain. While Obama did win several swing states as was predicted, sports bettors cannot always rely on the polls to get an accurate representation of voter sway. This is something to keep in mind with any online novelty wager.
In October of this year, a poll in RealClearPolitics shows Obama in the lead with 50 percent compared to a 45 percent support of McCain and 5 percent undecided or voting independent. In a poll conducted in the same time period with Gallup’s Traditional (Expanded) poll, Obama was shown with 53 percent of voter support, and McCain with 43 percent. The question remains, what is the reason for this obvious gap?
The most obvious explanation would be a sampling error, which is all too common in statistics. A sampling error, sometimes referred to as a margin of sampling error or a margin of error, is simply where there has not been a large enough group of voters polled. That is to say, when a poll is 95 percent certain that a percentage represents an entire population, when only a small percentage of people have been polled, this is bound to result in inaccuracies. According to Rasmussen of RealClearPolitics,
“Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 1,000 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error – for the full sample of 3,000 Likely Voters – is +/-2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.”
This means that if the same poll were conducted several times in different sets of 3,000 likely voters, there may be different outcomes. Who is sampled may also lead to polling errors. For example, a likely voter who is polled, but didn’t vote in the last election, is not certain to vote in the current election. Over the phone, such individuals may claim that they will vote for a certain candidate and simply not vote at all. Some voters may express that they plan to vote for one candidate, and then vote for the other.
In the case of this past election, one might also consider the Bradley Effect. The Bradley effect is theory presented that would explain the obvious discrepancies in past voter opinion polls and the outcome of an election. According to the theory, when individuals are polled in whether they will vote for a white candidate and a non-white candidate, some voters will tell pollsters that they are likely to vote for a black candidate, and then on election day vote for the white opponent.
It is said that these voters will give an inaccurate response for fear that their choice of candidate may be subject to criticism due to racial prejudice. The Bradley Effect, less commonly known are the Wilder Effect, was named after Tom Bradley, and African American who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite being miles ahead in voter polls.
As history will show, the only important poll is the election itself. The American people voiced their opinion this week, and voted Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Congratulations to all Americans who, as Obama said, “sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.”
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