Polling Problems

One of the reasons that the PRI is mildly disappointed despite scooping 75 percent of the races is that the polls indicated still greater success for the party. It wasn't just the number of victories, either, but rather the projected margin of victories, with blowouts forecast in a number of states that wound up being quite narrow. Which is to say, the polls were very wrong. Milenio's Ciro Gómez chalks the inaccuracies up to a number of factors, principally the pre-election blackout period that failed to catch up with late movements in voter sentiment (especially important in Veracruz, where the tapes of Fidel Herrera emerged just a couple of weeks before the election), as well as the likelihood that respondents offer answers to pollsters that differ with their actual voting preferences.