Polling may be hard to do this holiday in early-primary states

WASHINGTON — Santa Claus may be coming to town, but lots of people will be leaving or otherwise hard to reach in Iowa and New Hampshire. That makes for plenty of nervous pollsters preparing to take late soundings on the presidential race during the frenzied holiday period.

Thanks to the elbowing among states that pushed the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries into early January, those contests will be held shortly after Christmas and New Year's Day. Campaigns and news organizations scrounging for last-minute data, which can detect crucial 11th-hour shifts, will have to deal with polling during the holidays, something pollsters usually avoid like the plague.

"We're in uncharted territory," said Mark Schulman, who polls for Time magazine and corporate clients. "We've never faced the need or possibility of having to poll during this period."

The reasons: It's harder to get a truly representative sample of the public during the holidays because younger, more affluent people tend to be traveling, shopping or otherwise busy. Even people at home are less willing than usual to be questioned by a telephone interviewer because they're busy or would rather spend time with family and friends.

Add to that the deadline pressure of Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses and New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary, both historically early dates. Presidential campaigns will want data immediately, and news organizations will want to churn out their polls quickly for competitive reasons, leaving less leeway for pollsters to spend more time making additional phone calls to get their samples right.

Pollsters can address these problems with extra interviewing, which is costly, and by weighting, the routine practice of adjusting results so they accurately match the population's makeup by age, income and other categories.

"It's certainly not going to be a piece of cake, but it's not Mount Everest," said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which has been polling in both states.

Even so, many said polling during the holidays may yield questionable results. "I'm sure there will be a lot of public pollsters that get this wrong," said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster not working for a presidential contender. "A lot are quick and dirty to start with, and the holiday season makes quick and dirty even less" accurate.

Some pollsters said there could be a window from Dec. 27 to Dec. 30 when calls could be productive. Andrew Smith, whose University of New Hampshire Survey Center conducts a poll in that state, said he might make calls until 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve and resume Jan. 3, but added that people in the state are already showing signs of polling fatigue.

"People don't want to pick up their phones," he said.

New Hampshire has its own challenges because its primary — the nation's first — will come just five days after Iowa's caucuses. The Iowa results can affect what happens in New Hampshire, putting tremendous pressure on pollsters to accurately gauge how that is playing out.

"You need instant results, and instant results done on a single night of interviewing can be deeply problematic," said Jan van Lohuizen, GOP candidate Mitt Romney's pollster.