If we are to believe the hype that 18 to 19% of Ohians have already voted as per the surveys from Marist and PPP are claiming, where are the voters? If the Democrats are turning their ballots back in droves, where the hell are they?
Per the SOS’ own press release, 1.1 million voters have requested (not submitted, as we see above, that is not the case at all) absentee ballots, and 59,000 have voted in-person. That totals to just around 20% of the 2004/2008 total vote, so on it’s face the 18/19% statistic being bounced around and “found” by polling firms like Public Policy Polling could be true, except for two things: counties are still mailing out these requested ballots so it is impossible for those voters to have sent them back; and on the county level the return rate yields a number in the mid-single digits, if that. A third of what PPP and Marist’s respondents are claiming.
The smaller the # of respondents for a given question/sub-question, the higher the margin of error. It is how you can wind up with polls giving a Republican 45% of the black vote: if that sample size out of the larger polled group is small, wackiness can ensue. It is why ultimately these subsamples need to be taken with a grain of salt, and not paraded about as significant when the actual numbers on the ground don’t match up.
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