MSNBC Blames Voters for Bad NH Polls, If Only Archie Bunker Called

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During MSNBC's live New Hampshire primary night coverage, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw warned that poll results getting ahead of the voters could turn the public against the media, but then blamed the inaccurate polling on how “people probably are not as honest with pollsters.” Chris Matthews, who urged an “inquest” on the polls which all had Barack Obama well ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Granite state when Clinton actually won, saw “an ethnic factor here.” Matthews extrapolated on his theory involving “Archie Bunker,” the bigoted 1970s TV character:

I've always thought that pollers, people, pollsters who call people up and ask them how they're going to vote, speak in perfect English, and standard English, they speak with a kind of a politically correct manner and it encourages a politically correct answer. I've often thought that if an Archie Bunker voice were to come over the phone, and ask people how they're going to vote, you'd get a more honest answer.

During the 11pm EST hour, Brokaw warned: “I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us -- if they haven't already -- if we don't begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding...” He soon, however, blamed the voters: “I think people probably are not as honest with pollsters when they get called anymore because they're called constantly and they do change their minds. We're in a culture now, Chris, in which attention spans are very short, which people make quick decisions and change them equally quickly.”

Fuller transcripts of the two sets of comments from Tuesday night, January 8:

Tom Brokaw, just after 11pm EST following Barack Obama's concession speech:

We don't have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed and trying to stampede, in effect, the process. Look, I'm not just picking on us, it's part of the culture in which we live these days. But I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us -- if they haven't already -- if we don't begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding in many cases as we learned in New Hampshire when they went into the polling booth today or in the last three days. They were making decisions very late....

I think people probably are not as honest with pollsters when they get called anymore because they're called constantly and they do change their minds. We're in a culture now, Chris, in which attention spans are very short, which people make quick decisions and change them equally quickly. So we have to be very careful about that. What we ought to do is invest in the American people in their wisdom.

Matthews, a few minutes before midnight EST:

I would like to see an inquest on these polls and the methodology because we have always learned eventually what went wrong with polling. Back in the '36 race, of course, with Alf Landon the underdog against Franklin Roosevelt in his re-election campaign, that was a poll which showed that Alf Landon was going to beat Roosevelt but it turned out it was taken on the telephone and very few people had telephones back then who didn't have any money because nobody had any money. And then of course, the polling that was done in '48 of the infamous Truman-Dewey race. The polling ended like in early October. They just stopped polling way too early.

I think there is going to be some examination here. Hopefully it's fruitful to determine whether there was an ethnic factor here. I've always thought that pollers, people, pollsters who call people up and ask them how they're going to vote, speak in perfect English, and standard English, they speak with a kind of a politically correct manner and it encourages a politically correct answer. I've often thought that an Archie Bunker voice were to come over the phone, and ask people how they're going to vote, you'd get a more honest answer.

Anyway, that's as it stands now. Every one of these pollsters can't have had terrible methodology. There must be an underlying factor here of people giving different answers than they intended to act upon when they went into that voting booth. Unless people didn't even know how they're going to vote and I think there's something common to all these pollsters. We'll find out.