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The DOOM that came from Gallup.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  October 7th, 2009 at 10:30 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Given in a polite, understated, terribly-sorry-to-bother-you sort of way:

Parties Nearly Tied for Congress in 2010

PRINCETON, NJ — Roughly a year before the 2010 midterm elections, Gallup finds the Republican and Democratic Parties nearly tied in the congressional ballot preferences of registered voters. Forty-six percent of registered voters say they would vote for the Democrat and 44% say the Republican when asked which party’s candidate they would support for Congress, if the election were held today.

The interesting part of this article is in what it lacks: to wit, any good news for Democrats. Gallup pointed out the registered/likely voter differential, the fact that historical trends are arguing for serious Republican gains next year if this keeps up, and even that the public despises the job that Congress is doing (which also is notably lacking in good news for Democrats, although it tries to give a little).  No doubt there will be people out there that will try to explain why all of this shows how horrible things are for the GOP right now; which is fine.  We all need more comedy in our lives.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • Robert A. Hahn

    Racism, too.

  • janis

    And global climate change. And speaking of which, Idaho schoolkids are enjoying their earliest snow day in recorded history and Colorado ski resorts are opening at their earliest in forty years.

    Bring on that cap and tax, Dems. See how popular you are THEN.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    All the screaming over high gas prices last year should have given them a clue.

  • texas214

    the CBO and all other “scoring” groups on the cost of the Cap and Tax will have to adjust for colder weather and higher energy use. But hey who cares it’ll just raise more money for additional Liberal policies (sarc.).

  • http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/blog/loren_heal Socrates

    And a few bloggers.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    “Republicans and Democrats are just alike!”

  • janis

    They just sail blithely on their way, like so many little unarmed rowboats off the coast of Somalia looking for a swell place to have a picnic….

    … and can’t for the life of them figure out who those swarthy gentlemen are who insist on taking away their stuff.

  • http://online.logcabin.org/about/ suzieQ

    What about Gallup or Real Clear Politics? Are these polls trustworthy?

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Gallup and RCP are still useful, in their way.

    RCP does not do its own polls – it compiles the averages of all the major ones – including Rasmussen, Gallup, ABC/Washington Post, etc. In fact, RCP does a great breakdown of all the gory details, keeps histories, and all that. Fun for number junkies like myself.

    Gallup is useful, because it’s in general only moderately left-biased and represents the poll most uninformed take as the most authoritative. In general, nowadays the ‘great unwashed’ are somewhat onto the major media, and so polls that contain the name ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN have some influence but not that much.

    So Gallup is the ‘pollster of record’, that even lefties will accept. And if you are sucking wind on Gallup, you are REALLY sucking wind in reality (which would be ‘whatever Rasmussen says’).

    So, take it for what it’s worth, but this is my input.

  • Aaron Gardner

    He has the generic congressional ballot at +4 R. At 43% , that is the highest the Republicans have reached in 2 1/2 years.

    DOOM.

  • http://online.logcabin.org/about/ suzieQ

    I’m becoming more and more of a numbers junkie. I’m still in college, (political Science major), and our statistics professor has shown a number of tricks you can do with numbers to support just about anything. It’s made me much more skeptical of polling.

  • IJB

    The interesting thing about the ’94 election is how *few* of the mainstream polls actually had the GOP ahead on the Generic Congressional Ballot question.

    I think one poll (don’t remember which) did have R+5 going into the 1994 election.

    But all the other polls had it basically “tied” – somewhere between R+2 and D+2 (roughly) – and I think most were more like D+2.

    So if Gallup is showing D+2 (among just Registered Voters), it means that if the election were held *right now*, the GOP would likely take the House. (Because, among other things, the ‘Undecideds’ would break towards challengers, which means 46D-44R would likely end up being a 50-50 or even 49D-51R election result – and that’s still just among *Registered Voters*!).

    Translation: Moe is absolutely correct – There is *NO* good news for Dems in this poll result! :)

  • The_Gadfly

    neither of them are intrinsically bad, it’s what you do with them that matters. If you ask a question for which you are actually seeking an answer and then evaluate the poll honestly, it is an invaluable tool. The problem comes when you take the poll expecting a particular outcome because you’ve already decided what the outcome should be. Most political polls these days seem to fall into the latter category. People are getting tired of that.

  • Richard Mullins

    46/46 is a nice way of saying that your message is failing. I kind didn’t think Gallop would have these numbers so early, I was figuring that it would take some time. So things are really getting bad for them.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    RCP as an aggregator of third party polls is fine.

    RCP as a producer of ‘averages’ should be ignored. Their averages are nonsense. They combine unrelated numbers in mathematically unjustified ways, and should be ignored.

  • Scope

    Interesting article at American Thinker today, questioning the validity of a poll done by Gallup, as to weather a majority support Obamacare. I believe we all know that you can change the outcome of a poll, just by including/not including one word, or the wrong word. Still, as has been said elsewhere on here, for Gallup to declare the R’s and the D’s so close, you can probably believe that the R’s are doing much better than the D’s, and have real reason for hope to bring about good change, more so than the pocket type.

  • Scope

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/pollsters_push_people_to_accep.html

  • The_Rebel

    If you average many biased polls with one or two accurate polls, you still get a biased average poll. Utterly useless.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    They’re averaging polls with different sample bases, different sampling sizes, different sampling methods, different question lists, and different questioning methods.

    RCP averages are garbage in, garbage out, even if every constituent poll were trustworthy.

  • Spartan4Life

    The problem is not the Dems. The problem is our team is a bunch of buffoons.

    They might read these polls but they don’t understand them. Never have, never will. There are very few movement conservatives actually in the government and the ones that are there(Pence, Ryan, Demint, etc.) have virtually no power.

    I have never been more downhearted about the future of America than I am right now.

  • Aaron Gardner

    To win, you must first believe you can.

    Keep the faith, and the spartan spirit.

  • Spartan4Life

    Only my leaders are acting like Frenchmen!

    They remind me of the Earl of Bruce’s father in Braveheart. Old, warty politicians scheming to get a piece of the pie.

  • DONTTREADONME

    especially when it comes to having to deal with the Republican party. One minute you think they will do something principled the next you are sold out to the liberal and the Democrats in the name of bipartisanship.

  • janis

    be tricking Somali pirates and telling Obama what a putz he was at the UN thingy. We should be so lucky to have leaders acting like Frenchmen!

    Sweet Lord in Heaven, who’d a thought those words would ever have my name on them!

  • Spartan4Life

    Comparing them to GOP leadership was a low blow.

  • Spartan4Life

    What is so sad is that of all my conservative friends, I have held out the longest for the GOP. Most of them gave up years ago.

  • DONTTREADONME

    thats precisely why I told the NRSC today, when they called for campaign donations, I am waiting to see how the Rs vote on the health care bills in both house and senate. All vote No, I will donate any vote yes, and I will save my money for individual campaigns. I rewarded the NRCC with a donation when they all voted no on the porkulus. My money usually talks much more loudly then my letters, apparently. I like you, have not much confidence in the Senate Rs especially when Erick gets inside info that they are caving.

  • penguin2

    We used to dutifully dole out our donations to the titled organizations and yet continued to see our concerns ignored. Then the Dems swept to power and finally, one had to ask what is wrong with this picture. Now, our monies can be targeted to the candidates we really believe will represent us.

    I look at it this way; we can’t be any worse off to give it to a Conservative candidate, even if they lose, when we were losing with the others anyway.

  • Aaron Gardner
  • sarge324

    i feel its going to be a good in 2010.we will take some seats back and level playing feild.