Topeka ? Accurately predicting what voters will do on Election Day is becoming more difficult, a pollster says, but media polls conducted before the 2002 Kansas general election were on the mark calling this year’s winners and losers.

Determining the margins of victory was a bit more dicey.

Polls by Kansas newspapers and television stations – including The World Company, which owns the Journal-World, World Online and 6News – were right on the money forecasting victories for Democrat Kathleen Sebelius in the governor’s race and Republican Phill Kline in the attorney general’s race.

Results of The World Company Poll published in the Journal-World on Nov. 1, just four days before the election, showed Sebelius leading by seven points; she eventually defeated Republican Tim Shallenburger by eight points.

The poll also showed Kline leading Democrat Chris Biggs by seven points, but it said the race was worth watching because it showed Biggs was gaining rapidly among the nearly 20 percent of voters who still hadn’t decided. Kline wound up winning the race by one-half of 1 percent.

Most of the other media polls also showed Sebelius’ double-digit lead of summer dwindling in the closing days of the campaign. The day before the election, The Wichita Eagle-KWCH 12 Eyewitness News poll showed Sebelius up by seven points. A week earlier, the same group had her ahead by 15 points.

A poll conducted for Harris News Service the week before the election showed Sebelius up by 19 points. And a survey the week of the election by the Kansas City Star had her leading by nine points.

The Sunflower Survey, a statewide poll conducted by Kansas University students in late October, showed Sebelius with a 17 percent lead.

All the polls had more trouble accurately predicting the outcome in the race for attorney general.

Mark Joslyn, an assistant professor of political science at KU who specializes in polling, says polls are becoming less reliable nationally.

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“It is tougher getting people to respond” to pollsters, he said.

The increased use of cell phones and answering machines makes it more difficult for polling companies to get a representational cross-section of the population to answer their questions in telephone polls.

“It is a major problem in the business,” he said.

And, he said, the horse-race polling that dominates the election season may have a negative effect on voter participation. A poll that shows a candidate with a large lead in the final days of the election “kind of deflates the opposition,” he said, and may reduce voter turnout.

Nonetheless, he said, recording people’s opinions on issues is crucial because it informs politicians on what is important.

He said on Election Day 2002, a major chunk of polling data was lost nationwide when the Voter News Service, which provides exit polling data for the major television networks and The Associated Press, pulled its data after determining that its analysis could not be trusted because of faulty computer software.

The loss of the exit polling data would leave it to pundits, rather than the voice of the voters, as to why elections turned out the way they did, he said.

“For the election cycle, there comes to be a conventional wisdom as to why someone lost or won,” he said. “Part of that data is from Voter News Service, and in the absence of that, people may get it wrong as to why they won or lost.”