You may not have noticed, but weekends are different from week days. For example, you aren’t at work on weekends (not if you’re like most normal wage-earners, anyway). You definitely go to church on the weekend (whereas you may or may not during the week–your choice). Your kids (if any) are home from school (if you don’t homeschool) and probably whining to have you take them places. There are also sporting events you may go to on the weekends. So, y’know, they’re different.
That’s why we have a special name for them.
I see the difference every week in my blog traffic. It goes way down on Saturday and Sunday and then snaps right back to its usual weekday traffic level on Monday.
This is a regular, normal, predictable cycle.
It also poses an interesting challenge for political pollsters. Everyone’s schedule is different on the weekends than it is on weekdays, with lots of people out of the house or otherwise busy doing something other than watching sitcoms when pollsters call. But does this tend to tip the direction of the polling more one way than another?
Think about it: Kids. Church. Sports.
Are the red state folks or the blue state folks more into those three things?
You got it: The red state folks are. As a result, the red state folks are less available on weekends to take pollsters questions and every weekend the polls tip blue state. Then, come Monday morning, the sampling snaps right back in place, just like my server traffic.
This is a story today because it’s Monday and the polls being released today are based on samplings taken over the weekend, when the polls get blue-shifted. Since today is the day before the election, though, that normal, predictable weekend tinting will get portrayed as Kerry “surging” and “closing the deal” and a lot of other similar-sounding thing among blue-ish pundits and spinmeisters.
That’s what I told a friend who called today who very much wants Bush rather than Kerry to win and who was concerned by Kerry’s apparent upward bump in the polls over the weekend.
I don’t claim to know who’s going to win tomorrow (or whenever), but I do know about the weekend polling effect that happens because red state folks are out with their kids, in church, and at sporting events. I’ve read the weekend blue-shift is as much as three percentage points.
Professional pollsters (as opposed to hungry blue pundits) therefore look askance at polls based on weekend data.
Thank-you for this insight. I was also worried about this morning’s poll increases for Kerry.
Hey Jimmy, you were exactly right.