VICTORY NOT WITHOUT IRONY, EITHER …
Six years ago, political consultant Robert Cahaly found himself in a South Carolina jail after violating a state law banning political calls from “automatically dialed announcing devices” – or ADADs.
Cahaly fought the law … and he won (both at the district and court of appeals levels).
The South Carolina statute – reportedly used against Cahaly at the behest of a rival Palmetto political consultant – was deemed unconstitutional. Cahaly was vindicated.
This year, Cahaly is riding high – and the unorthodox, auto-dialed polls (the ones the Palmetto State attempted to outlaw) are part of the secret to his success.
While the entire American polling establishment was predicting a resounding victory for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – Cahaly’s firm, The Trafalgar Group, called for a decidedly different outcome.
And they nailed it …
In fact, assuming U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is eventually declared the winner in Michigan – where he currently enjoys a narrow lead prior to the certification of results – Cahaly will have wound up pegging the Electoral College outcome precisely. To the last vote.
All across the country – from Pennsylvania to Florida, from North Carolina to Ohio, from Colorado to South Carolina – Trafalgar’s polls were either the most accurate (or tied for the most accurate) of any other poll in the 2016 election.
“I’m either going to be guy who got it right, or nobody is going to listen to me any more,” Cahaly told Breitbart the day before the election.
Well, he got it …
“They were right on the money on this,” radio host Rush Limbaugh said in the aftermath of the election. “They found a way in their poll to uncover and detect the silent Trump support.”
How did Cahaly do it?
As we noted in one of our prior reports, Trafalgar’s surveys asked voters the “neighbors” question – which often provides respondents with an innocuous way to express their true preference on a subject. Operationally speaking, Trafalgar’s surveys were also short and sweet – in contrast to the lengthy, verbose MSM polls that showed Clinton with a seemingly insurmountable lead over Trump.
According to Cahaly, most voters simply don’t have time to respond to longer surveys – meaning their samples aren’t representative of the electorate.
Obviously this shreds the conventional wisdom that automated polls are less accurate than polls using live operators.
Whatever method – or combination of methods – used by The Trafalgar Group 2016, there is no arguing with the firm’s results. Vindicated twice by the federal court system, Cahaly’s polling methods have now been validated on the biggest stage in politics.
(Banner via iStock)