What If The Polls Are Wrong?

After six months of bruising political hand-to-hand combat, President George Bush and Sen. John Kerry have somehow managed to battle to a draw.

The presidential election, we've been told ad nauseam, is a dead-heat, neck and neck, too close to call.

We've heard it so much, it must be true - right?

Well here's a thought - what if the polls are wrong? What if, come Tuesday night, we're in for a surprise?

"I hate tell you this, but in times of uncertainty, we're uncertain. There's only so much that we can do. There's only so much that we can project. And if the American people haven't made up their minds, how can we?" says Frank Luntz, a former Republican pollster, who now works for corporate clients.

"I don't know of any time in my lifetime that my profession is under such scrutiny, under such pressure, and having a more difficult time predicting who's going to win."

Political polling began in the early 1900s, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod. Warren Harding used polls to try to figure out how women might vote in 1920, the first presidential election in which they could.

Since then there have been polling successes, and notable failures. Polls predicted a solid victory for Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman in 1948. Truman won.

In 1980, polls showed Reagan and Carter in a close race, but Reagan won by a landslide.

In 2000, most polls had George Bush leading Al Gore in the popular vote by 5 or 6 percent. Though Gore lost the electoral vote, he won the popular vote.

So what about 2004?

"There are certain aspects of this race that are unlike any other. Perhaps most important is a surge in registration over the past month. Some states don't even have their electoral rolls completed yet," says Luntz.

New voters are registering in record numbers - 500,000 in Pennsylvania, 800,000 in Ohio, 1.5 million in Florida.

Nationwide, as many as 15 million more people could vote in this election than in 2000.

To complicate matters, many if not most of them will be under 30. That's a pollster's worst nightmare, because of the cell phone phenomenon.

"You're not supposed to call cell phones because the respondent actually ends up having to pay for the phone call," says Luntz. "And you're losing as much as six percent of the electorate who only have cell phones and don't have land lines."

So what's really going on in America? You've got passionate support and opposition to the war, an energized youth movement, Ralph Nader, Bruce Springsteen and 15 million new voters.

Perhaps there are too many variables going into the political blender for anyone, even pollsters, to have a clue.

"We are breaking every rule of politics in 2004. We have done so since the beginning. And we will continue to do so right up through the next 48 hours, through the election and beyond," says Luntz. "This is a bad year for politics. It's a very tough year for democracy - and for pollsters, it's the worst year of all."

If you want to know who's going to win the election, forget the polls and vote. That's the only opinion survey that matters.