Polls cause voters to follow the crowd. Voter behavior is affected by how they perceive the public will vote, especially when the media analyzes poll results. This happens by the means of the ‘Boomerang effect’ – where voters see a candidate is so far ahead in the polls, they feel their vote doesn’t matter and don’t vote at all – or the ‘Bandwagon effect’ – where essentially the opposite happens, and people want to vote with the crowds to support a candidate.

Some voters even switch sides to be on the ‘winning team’, according to a paper from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Microsoft Research. When the study’s subjects learnt an expert favored a different position, 11.3 percent of people changed their opinions – although only 6.2 percent of subjects did when they learnt a peer favored a different position.

The paper also found polls help people to seek out new information about a candidate or party. Voters then try to discover if they support this information or not based on ‘the wisdom of the crowds.’ For example, polls show 61 percent of Americans support a relaxed immigration plan. In this, a voter may see this policy as valuable and support it, too.

https://sociable.co/

As I tracking every public poll, I have found it amazing on how many pollsters are oversampling Democrats.  On average, every poll is indicating a partisan ID similar to 2008.  Based on my analysis, the average gap is +6.4% Democrat which compares to the +7% which was in 2008.  Alas, for the RCP poll average to be correct you have to assume the self-identified party preference turnout will be similar to 2008, if the turnout is similar to 2004 or 2000 or 2010, Obama’s polling leads may as well be part of his “story telling.”  For  the pollsters that look at preference, Rasmussen has indicated that the self-identified party ID (for Adults – not likely voters) is about +1.4% Republican.

https://www.nationalreview.com/