The second part of my 3-part post-mortem on the polls and the 2012 election. See yesterday’s Part I here. IV. Likely vs. Registered Voters A. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Screen Near the heart of every major polling controversy this year was the issue of sampling and likely-voter screens. Polls traditionally report results among either “all adults” (whether or not registered to | Read More »
By request, I’ve decided to take a look at just what kind of electorate the Public Policy Polling screening of Likely Voters seems to be predicting. To do this I will use recent PPP polls from two states: California, which went for Barack Obama heavily, and West Virginia, where Obama’s popularity has never been that hot.
So Newsweek put out a new Generic Ballot. The magazine’s polling had drawn notice before in my House projection reports (this week’s edition coming later today), but this new one just seems completely out of line: Democrats +5 among Registered Voters. That filtering is expected to lean to the left after the 2008 anomaly, but this is ridiculous.
Scientific polling, based on the laws of probability and the compounding of likelihoods, is a mathematical activity. It’s all about the numbers. Without the numbers no poll has meaning. That’s why I highlight key facts like Margins of Error. Your typical internal poll release is very low on numbers and instead is a one page memo. Those releases can be based on sound polling practices, | Read More »
This new poll of the California races by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and American Viewpoint for USC and the LA Times has been discussed from one side of the Internet to the other, and back again. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let it go without chiming in, now would I? Of course not. So let’s dig in.
It’s already bad enough for Democrat Robin Carnahan that she hasn’t led a poll this year, but since primaries Republican Roy Blunt’s lead has been growing. In the likely voter polls he now leads by 6, 7, and now 10 in the latest Rasmussen.
SurveyUSA is no fly-by-night operation in polling. They’ve been around a while, they have a reputation, and a great many newspapers seem use them to poll local House races. So we can’t dismiss their continuing series of polls which look very good for Republicans, including this new Kentucky Senate poll for the Louisville Courier-Journal with Republican Randal Paul seeming to overwhelm Democrat Jack Conway.
It seems like most of the third party and independent spoilers this year are harming Democrats, but the Constitution Party’s Tom Tancredo is clearly hurting Republican Dan Maes in the Colorado Governor’s race, currently throwing the lead to Democrat John Hickenlooper. But two new polls on that race, from Magellan Strategies via Real Clear Politics and Rasmussen Reports are so different that I think we | Read More »
I’ve had my ups and downs with Gallup (one might say the relationship is like the plot of the Gallup generic ballot itself!), but since they’ve been solidly running registered voter surveys again, the numbers have looked reasonable. But now they’re shocking us from the other direction by showing the Republicans having their largest ever lead in the generic ballot survey, showing a larger edge | Read More »
The Florida primaries are today, but I’m not posting on them today. That way I have time to address – by popular demand* – all the new generic ballot polls, and see where the Swingometer is landing lately. As always, I’m using the trusty Real Clear Politics archives to find the polls. So let’s go.
From Unlikely Voter: I theorized before that Pat Quinn would drag down Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois, with a rout for Governor having reverse coattails for Senate, and now Public Policy Polling seems to show the effects I predicted. A bad candidate for governor in a negative wave year is a terrible situation for a party to have, but that’s the Democrats in Illinois today.
Some may have questioned why, in my new Senate projection, I had Florida at a 55% chance to win for Republican Marco Rubio, when much of the polling has shown newly minted independent Charlie Crist with tiny leads. It’s because I saw this new poll from Mason Dixon which not only covered the primary the Democrats are holding, but the consequences of that primary on | Read More »
With the help of the Real Clear Politics, here are the last few polls of the Kentucky Senate race. PPP: Randal Paul +1. RR: Paul +25. SUSA: Paul +6. RR: Paul +8, Paul +7. And now we have PPP: Tie. Why is PPP running so much further toward Jack Conway than the other two pollsters?
Are we tired of Pennsylvania yet? Of course not! Specifically we now check in on the Governor’s race. Rasmussen has released the first poll since the primary, but I will compare that with the last pre-primary Quinnipiac poll anyway. Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato were obvious likely nominees. I believe we have as much to learn about Rasmussen’s distinctive modeling as we do about the | Read More »
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