Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Confidence or Idiocy?

Suffolk University announced yesterday that they were suspending polling operations in North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida as they felt that those states were going to be won by Mr. Romney and would only waste their money.

I don't know much about Suffolk University polling but this strikes me as very, very odd. I can understand North Carolina as I've felt confident that Mr. Romney would win their easily. But Florida and especially Virgina make little sense to me. Florida has always been a bit close and even if you were confident that Mr. Romney (or Mr. Obama) were to win there, why not keep the polling going as it is a good benchmark for the overall election?

Virginia makes even less sense to me. The strong Democratic presence Northern Virginia has made the state a strong purple, counterbalancing the natural Republicanism of the rest of the state. I've seen almost no polling that has Mr. Romney outside the margin of error in Virginia and even if you attempt to correct for any perceived Democratic bias in the polls, the race is still very close. In my thinking, announcing that you are not going to poll Virginia is nearly equivalent to washing your hands of the whole election.

Suffolk University is either very confident in things they are seeing on the ground, very strapped for cash and cutting costs in large states, or very stupid.

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