Just remembered something my mom told me about New Hampshire voters.

This is pure, undistilled anecdote here. Nothing more.

My mom lives in Cheshire County, NH, and has spent the last several years doing a lot of grass-roots activism work - canvassing towns, GOTV work, petitioning in the town square, meeting candidate or candidate reps, etc. So her finger is pretty spot-on the NH voting pulse in her county. Cheshire is the most populous NH county, so it's an important one to say the least; win Cheshire, and you probably win the state.

We were talking some months back about the primaries-to-come, and about whatever the recent poll numbers were for candidates in NH. She pretty much dismissed any NH poll data out of hand. "A lot of people around here lie to pollsters as a rule," she said.

Made it sound like a pretty common thing. She explained that they lie because they resent the intrusion; NH voters get fifty billion telephone calls from all the campaigns for two weeks before primary day, and get sick to death of it, so they fuck with the pollsters.

1. Anyone else heard of this?

2. If true, makes for a good explanation why the news folks had their numbers and analyses wrong.

My mom is a DUer named Raven, btw. I'll bug here to get on this thread tomorrow. I may, honestly, not be remembering the details of how widespread this phenomenon is.

Good point.

it's massive sense of entitlement would annoy the hell out of me.

by all of the canvassing and robo-calls over the past few weeks.

I'd do the same thing, "play with the pollsters" as a coping tool.

in differnt places for various reasons. x(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect

around politics since the 1950s.

Very sad, but very interesting.

But not so far as I know...natives (and there are increasingly few) may differ.

I heard this last fall during the Niki Tsongas campaign just across the border in NH. (And lots of NH folks infiltrated MA to help in a Dem race at that time. Nice reversal from the usual hordes of MA folks who go up to NH to influence the Dem races there.)

The phone calling is just too constant. My family in Kingston and Londonderry were bombarded with calls. This is why the got caller ID. The phone calls were ignored if the number was blocked or unknown according to caller ID and the robocalls simply erased without being playing.

Something has to change on that. I think it's coming to the point where the calls do more harm than good.

I stopped as soon as I moved away. :D



:patriot: GEAUX KUCINICH!!! :patriot:


Hello Hampton Beach!!! :hi: :loveya:

to Gallup during the 2000 election. Both declared themselves as undecided, but leaning Democratic. They never told Gallup the truth, and they both voted for Bush. We are no longer friends. Just anecdotal, but it opened my eyes about believing polls.

They're not really "news" people then, are they?

.

One of them is a native New Hampshire-ite. I have to say, it sounds like something he would do. I think your mother is on to something.

Hillsborough County has to have more people. Both Manchester and Nashua, the two largest cities in the state lie within Hillsborough County.

right-
I'm a native and I'd be really surprised if Hillsboro Cty didn't have the largest pop by far.

He has been saying the same thing all week.

Reminds me of my ex-brother-in-law who lived on the Cape. He got so annoyed with the tourists asking for directions that he started sending them all to the dump.

to what you're mother is saying Mr. Pitt.

Hope we get the chance to hear from her.

vote, so they lie. I, personally, have come across people like that here, but they just flat-out refused to say who they would vote for or how they would vote. I just assumed they were repukes and ashamed to say so.:)

2000 Census Figures -- see http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=04000US33&-_box_head_nbr=GCT-PL&-ds_name=DEC_2000_PL_U&-format=ST-2

By name:

Belknap County 56,325
Carroll County 43,666
Cheshire County 73,825
Coos County 33,111
Grafton County 81,743
Hillsborough County 380,841
Merrimack County 136,225
Rockingham County 277,359
Strafford County 112,233
Sullivan County 40,458


By population:

Hillsborough County 380,841
Rockingham County 277,359
Merrimack County 136,225
Strafford County 112,233
Grafton County 81,743
Cheshire County 73,825 <--
Belknap County 56,325
Carroll County 43,666
Sullivan County 40,458
Coos County 33,111


Tesha

Like I said, my memory may not be complete on this, i.e. she could have said Cheshire has the largest number of registered Democrats...which sounds more correct. Backup:

http://www.nhelects.com/NH-Map.asp

Sorry about that. :(