Democrats review polling techniques, strategies after 2014 election losses

It has been eight days since history was made in Arkansas, with Republicans sweeping all federal and statewide constitutional offices. But the history making night appears to have caught some Democrats off guard after internal polls showed at least one statewide candidate up by four points going into election day.

In a day and age where a solid ground game and big data propelled Barack Obama from the Illinois State Senate to the White House in just four years, how can polling be wrong?

The answers run the gambit, but Democratic consultants who spoke on the record said the internal polling conducted for the Democratic Party of Arkansas was flawed in a few different ways, starting first with how the polling was conducted.

Will Watson, a Fayetteville-based Democratic consultant, said the increasingly popular trend of cell phone-only households skews polling. The reason, he said, is because federal regulations state that any polling conducted by cell phone must be done by a real person when the call is made to a cell phone while so-called robocalls are permissible for landlines.

"I think that a question both political parties are going to have to answer going forward are how do you connect with voters who are increasingly not on land lines, but are on cell phones or even the Internet to get an accurate sample of public opinion? The honest answer is that we have the ability to reach voters, it is just not cost effective. It is more expensive to use a live caller."

According to Watson, conducting polling on down ballot races using the proper methodologies that include live callers reaching out to cell phone-only households can sometimes be "prohibitively expensive." To understand just how expensive, he said a robocall can cost "pennies on the dollar," sometimes as low as two cents per call. On the other hand, he said live caller polls can run "50 cents, 75 cents per dial. … I've even heard $1 per person you talk to. That's in addition to the cost of assembling the poll and doing the data work afterward."

The other issue Democrats ran into this cycle is leaning too heavily on newly-registered voters versus consistent voters with a long history, according to Jonesboro-based Democratic consultant Taylor Riddle.

He said the comparisons between the accurate polling reported by the Arkansas Poll the week before the election – which showed Democrats down double digits in the races for U.S. Senate and governor – and those done by many campaigns were off based on methodology.

"You look at the methodology of Janine Parry's (Arkansas) Poll and our’s, we were basing it off of newly registered voters," Riddle said. "The centerpiece of the campaign was registering enough voters to turn the election. We were basing it off of newly-registered voters versus those who have voted consistently."

Reputable polls have traditionally queried likely voters, or those with a multi-year voting history, to establish credibility.

But sources familiar with the Democratic Party of Arkansas' internal polling who spoke on background for this story said in spite of the election results, the internals actually held up.

In the race for attorney general, for example, internals showed Rep. Nate Steel up four points against Republican Leslie Rutledge going into the election. While Steel lost by nine points on Nov. 4, one of the sources noted that the poll and the final vote total were nearly identical – around 43%. But Steel's numbers barely moved from that spot when factoring in undecideds and the margin of error because nearly all the respondents who self-identified as undecided chose to cast their votes for Rutledge and other Republicans, the source said.

The sources said many of the internals were consistent, showing again that voters who had not yet made up their minds were choosing Republican instead of Democratic, a trend seen nationally with governors mansions lost in liberal bastions such as Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts on the same night Republicans made history in Arkansas.

Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, said the Republican wave was something Democrats did not expect. But he said Republicans were not necessarily expecting it, either.

"The margins in the (Arkansas) House surprised everyone," he said. "Most Republicans expected Congressman Cotton and Congressman Hutchinson to win. But I think it's fair to say that everyone was shocked by the margins. And Democrats and Republicans were shocked by the extent of the losses in the House."

The Republican majority in the Arkansas House increased from 51 to 64.

Riddle said the next few weeks and months will be a time for soul searching within the Democratic Party of Arkansas as it picks up the pieces of what is left of the party and looks forward to the 2016 election, while trying to fix problems with internal polling and possible focus on get out the vote efforts.

"What can be done better? I think that we need to be mindful of the Independent (voter) more. I think that we need to focus on solidifying where Independents are leaning versus basing (efforts) on newly registered voters. Base it on those who we know are sporadic or even consistent voters versus just thinking because they are registered, they are going to vote our way."

Watson said he is not sure there would have been much different that could have been done considering the national wave that turned over control of the U.S. Senate to Republicans, the first time during the Obama administration that both houses of Congress have been controlled by the GOP. But he also implied that what happened last week was cyclical, equating it to another election in recent memory.

"It was not isolated to Arkansas and not isolated to the House. This is similar to what happened with Democrats in '08 when we captured the White House and both chambers of Congress. Arkansans should be happy that the minimum wage passed across the state and (in other states) across the country, but they should continue to find a coalition that will help them win in 2016 and beyond."

Leding said while there are no answers on what could be done to improve polling in 2016 and beyond, he said it is important that stakeholders understand that polls are just that. And polls can change.

"I certainly hope candidates, campaigns and the media place a more careful emphasis on polls in the future."