Look, I understand how collective liberal neurosis can overtake us given the results in 2000 and 2004, but I am delighted that the right wingers are promoting these close poll numbers. Why? Because it will keep our feet to the fire! Barack was in NH today warning his supporters not to become too complacent, to work hard every day and get out and VOTE! If we believe we are so far ahead that nothing can stop us, that may breed complacency, and you know what that means. So, let Drudge et al. try to spin this as a horserace, because if anything it will make Obama supporters more motivated to do what MUST be done to win this election... get out an vote!!!

Dear Newsweek:

After the election is behind us, you will need to give serious discussion to the very sorry state of your polling. Here is yet another example of a poll MAKING news rather than REPORTING it.

Here is the bottom line in your most recent poll:

Bush: 48%  Kerry: 44% in a 3 way race
Bush: 48%  Kerry: 45% in a 2 way race

among REGISTERED VOTERS. Add to that a MOE of +/- 4% and a number of issues emerge, not the least of which are these facts:

1. This is a statistical TIE
   
2. Bush, the incumbent is still way below 50%
   
3. Bush's number is his ceiling, Kerry's number is his floor based upon all past incumbent elections
   
4. LV models are biased, RV models this year are probably significantly more accurate because of the increase in voter registration, greater intensity of voter interest, the likely participation of significantly younger voters who favor Kerry, and other non-measurable factors such as cell phone use, etc.

These polling data, even taken at their most favorable for Bush, do NOT begin to justify such a conclusion. The MSNBC headline terms it a "boost for Bush." In other words, either the writer of these poll results does not understand the statistics involved, OR you are under contractual obligations to publish pro-Bush results.

Furthermore, a brief inspection of your internals shows approximately 3% more Republicans than Democrats in your sample, which flies in the face of exit polling data for the last two decades showing approximately a 4% Democratic advantage!

This is beyond sorry reporting, it is irresponsible. I am glad I recently cancelled my Newsweek subscription that I had maintained for well over 10 years.

Sincerely yours,

I know I was less than thrilled with Zogby's tracking poll number from this morning giving Chimpy +4 over our JFK. Rasmussen's results I disregard. I waited patiently for the Washington Post daily tracking poll that yesterday had Chimpy and JFK tied. Here's today's result:

LV: 48   48   Tie

RV: 47   48   Kerry +1

So, there is no trend going on here, Kerry actually the Washington Post tracking poll.

Now, GO OUT AND WORK HARD FOR JFK THIS WEEKEND!

I'm heading to New Hampshire...

Remember the incumbent 50% rule: average all the polls and Bush is still way under 50% (of both RVs and LVs). If this trend continues as we get closer to election day, he does not have a chance at winning.

Check out these two interesting analyses for the details:

http://www.pollingreport.com/incumbent.htm

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8694

You don't see this major poll (devoid of statistical chicanery) being advanced in the media today. Why? Because Kerry is actually AHEAD. The media has to set up the scenario that Bush is ahead so in the next month when the polls "tighten up" they will have more of a story. Edward R. Murrow....WHERE ARE YOU????

CBS News/New York Times Poll Has It Close to Even!

Well, that is if you weight their data to conform to the 4 point Democratic party ID lead which we have good reason to believe is the underlying distribution in the voting electorate. As many have already heard, the new CBS News/New York Times poll, conducted September 12-16, gives Bush an 8 point lead (50-42) among RVs--but also gives the Republicans a 4 point edge on party ID. Reweight their data to conform to an underlying Democratic 4 point edge (using the 39D/35R/26I distribution from the 2000 exit poll) and you get a nearly even race, 47 Bush/46 Kerry.

Nearly even. That goes along with the the 46-46 tie in the Pew Research Center poll (which gave the Democrats a 4 point edge on party ID without weighting) and the 48-48 tie in the Gallup poll (once weighted to reflect an underlying Democratic 4 point edge). Not to mention the two other recent national polls (Harris, Democracy Corps) that show the race within one point.

Perhaps all this is just a coincidence, but the pattern seems striking. Once you adjust for the apparent overrepresentation of Republican identifiers in some samples, the polls all seem to be saying the same thing: the race is a tie or very close to it.

Note: this entry has been revised from the original to correct the CBS reweighted horse race from 46-46 (original) to 47-46 (corrected).
Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 10:34 PM | link | Comments (25)

Gallup Strikes Again!

Here are Bush's leads in the three national polls released before Gallup's current poll (no RV data available for DCorps and Harris; Pew and Harris matchups include Nader):

Democracy Corps, September 12-14 RVs: +1
Pew Research Center, September 11-14 RVs: tied
Harris Interactive: September 9-13 LVs: -1

Looks like a tie ball game, right? But according to the Gallup poll conducted September 13-15 and released today, Bush is up......13???

Let's just say I'm just a wee bit skeptical of this one. First, Gallup's poll only includes one day (the 15th) these three other polls do not, so it can't be Gallup's survey dates that explain the big Bush lead.

Second, this 13 point lead is an LV figure and, as I've repeatedly emphasized, Gallup's LV screening procedure produces completely untrustworthy measures of voter sentiment this far in advance of the election. Here is a summary of the case against Gallup's LV data:

Sampling likely voters is a technique Gallup developed to measure voter sentiment on the eve of an election and predict the outcome, not to track voter sentiment weeks and months before the actual election. There is simply no evidence, and no good reason to believe, that it works well for the latter purpose. In fact, the evidence and compelling arguments are on the other side: that the registered voters are the more reliable guage of voter sentiment during the course of the campaign.

Here's why. Gallup decides who likely voters are based on 7 questions about their interest in voting, attention to the campaign and knowledge about how to vote (e.g., where their polling place is located). The interested/attentive/knowledgeable voters are designated "likely" and the rest are thrown out of the sample. But as a campaign progresses, the level of interest among voters tends to change, particularly among those with partisan inclinations whose interest level will rise when their party seems to be mobilized and doing well and fall when it is not. Because of this, partisans of the mobilized party (lately, Republicans) tend to be screened into the likely voter sample and partisans of the demobilized party (lately, Democrats) tend to get screened out. But tomorrow, of course, the Democrats could surge, in which case their partisans may be the ones over-represented in likely voter samples.

That suggests the uncomfortable possibility that observed changes in the sentiments of "likely voters" represent not actual changes in voter sentiment, but rather changes in the composition of likely voter samples as political enthusiasm waxes and wanes among the different parties' supporters. And that is exactly what political scientists Robert Erikson, Costas Panagopoulos, and Christopher Wlezien find in their analysis of Gallup's 2000 RV/LV data in their forthcoming paper, "Likely (and Unlikely) Voters and the Assessment of Campaign Dynamics" in Public Opinion Quarterly: "shifts in voter classification as likely or unlikely account for more observed change in the preferences of likely voters than do actual changes in voters' candidate preferences."

That means that, instead of giving you a better picture of voter sentiment and how it is changing than conventional registered voter data, likely voter data give you a worse one since true changes in voter sentiment are swamped by changes in who is classified as a likely voter.

I think the case against the Gallup LV data looks rock solid. In my view, it's time for them to drop reporting these data because they are highly likely to give an inaccurate picture of the state of the race and, by doing so--especially given the high profile of Gallup's polls--unfairly pump up one side of the race and demoralize the other. That doesn't seem acceptable to me.

Of course they'll reply: well, our data work so well right before the election, they must be the best data to use all the time. But, for the reasons outlined above, that reasoning is completely specious. And then there's this: the LV data haven't been working so well lately even right before the actual election. In 3 of the last 4 presidential elections (including the last one), Gallup's final RV reading was actually closer to the final result than their final LV reading!

As I say, maybe it's time for a rethink down at Gallup HQ.

Throwing out the Gallup LV data, then, let's move on to their RV result: an 8 point Bush lead. Obviously pretty far off the results of the other contemporaneous polls summarized above, but....could be I suppose.

But then there's this: the Gallup internals show Kerry with a 7 point lead among independent RVs. Huh? Kerry's losing by 8 points overall, yet leading among indenpedents by 7. How is that possible? Only if there are substantially more Republicans than Democrats in the sample.

That suggests that reweighting the sample to reflect the 2000 exit poll distribution (39D/35R/26I) would give a different result. It does: the race then becomes dead-even, instead of an 8 point Bush lead. (Note: Steve Soto of The Left Coaster got Gallup to give him their party ID distributions for this poll and confirms a 5 point Republican party ID advantage in their RV sample.)

One final note: I mentioned the Pew Research Center poll had the race dead-even just like the reweighted Gallup data. And what was Pew's party ID distribution in their RV sample? You guessed it: a 4 point lead (37-33) for the Democrats, just like in the 2000 exits.

I think we've finally found out how to make these polls get along!
Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 07:22 PM | link | Comments (44)

Here is the text of Kerry's speech from the Senate floor about two years ago (October 9, 2002) where he states his position on Iraq before the war began:

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/kerry-iraq.html

Note especially the sections highlighted in blue.  Here is Kerry's position today:

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/national_security/iraq.html

Did Kerry "flip-flop" in his position on Iraq?  No.  In fact, he has been completely consistent.  His position is the same now as it was then.  He stated the conditions under which he would not support the President's military actions.  Those conditions have been met - the President failed to take Kerry's advice, and because of that, we are sinking $200 billion into Iraq and 1,000 of our troops have died.  Kerry opposes Bush's approach in Iraq, but he said he would oppose it before Bush began the war, and Kerry has the same plan now that he had before the war.  Kerry has been completely consistency.  What am I missing?!

If you want to know Kerry's positions, you have to read original documents.

What If the Polls Are Wrong?

Election Surveys That Screen Out
'Unlikely' Voters Might Be Outdated
September 17, 2004

Presidential elections are poll-driven. The candidate ahead in the surveys usually gets better coverage, and the results energize supporters. The one behind often comes across as doing little right, and campaigns and constituencies lose confidence.

But what if the polls are wrong, and we aren't surveying the real likely electorate?

This might be more than an academic issue. A number of polls this presidential race show a gap in the preferences of registered voters vs. likely voters. In these models, the president usually does better with likely voters, the figure most news organizations emphasize. To get to likely voters, all polling organizations use what is called a "screen," asking questions to determine who is likely to actually turn out on election day.

These screens differ greatly, as there is no consensus among experts on what works best. "This is an art, not a science," says Peter Hart, the prominent Democratic polltaker who has helped conduct The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey for 15 years.

This controversy will be fueled by today's just-released Gallup poll that shows George Bush with a 13-point lead over John Kerry. That is at variance with other surveys this week, which suggest a tight race with a much smaller Bush tilt. But the likely voters margin also is considerably larger than the eight-point advantage in Gallup's registered voters in this survey. The likely voters match-up invariably gets more attention.

Gallup explains it has what it considers a time-tested formula for determining most likely voters. It asks eight questions, such as current intensity of interest, past voting behavior and interest, and whether you know where your voting place is.

"We've discovered that if we ask a set of more indirect questions, we can better predict who is or is not likely to vote," Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, has said.

But there is reason to suspect those criteria are outdated, especially in an election where both sides say the intensity level is much higher than four years ago and get-out-the-vote organizations are considerably better than ever -- few people on Nov. 2 will be in the dark on where the voting polls are.

"A formula that made sense years ago may not recognize all the changes in society," notes Mr. Hart. "It gives more credence to past behavior and too little to current interest."

"For low-turnout elections those old models work well," suggests Bill McInturff, a Republican, and the other WSJ/NBC News pollster. "But in today's presidential election those models tend to [tilt to] a little older, a little more white, a little more affluent and a little more Republican voters. They may miss some of the extraordinary activity going on in African-American and Latino communities."

The registered-likely voters dichotomy also is evident in some of Gallup's state surveys including last week's Ohio results." Among registered voters in the Buckeye State, Bush-Cheney had a 48%-to- 47% edge, a dead heat. Among likely voters, however, this poll had the Republicans up 52%-44%; that garnered all the attention, followed by a spate of stories suggesting this key battleground state was moving to the president.

Curiously, the Gallup poll in the similar state of Pennsylvania at the same time showed a virtually even race among both registered and likely voters. And occasionally, the screen favors the Democrats; a Marist survey this week of New York state showed Sen. Kerry 11 points ahead among likely voters, but only seven points ahead among registered voters.

But most of the time the screen for likely voters tilts Republican. In 2000, Gallup's election eve survey showed George Bush ahead by two points among its likely voters; he trailed Al Gore by a point among registered voters, very close to the final outcome.

In 2000, the next to last WSJ/NBC poll before the election showed Republicans doing three points better among likely voters than registered voters. The election eve survey showed Bush up three points among likely voters, but failed to tally registered voters and didn't predict Al Gore's victory in the popular vote.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News have settled on one question to screen likely turnout. Registered voters are asked their interest level in the election on a scale of 1-10, and those that respond 9 or 10 are considered likely voters.

Both camps expect an increase in the 105 million Americans who voted last time; the Bush camp looks for abut 111-112 million while the Kerry campaign projects 116-118 million; nobody can be sure exactly who those additional voters might be.

The probable outlook: Polls will vary and conflict if this race remains tight. Also, poll watchers must remember that the best survey has a three or four-point margin of error; that means if it shows the race even, one or the other candidate actually could be up by a half-dozen. Here's a final guide: if almost all the election eve polls show one candidate up four or five points or more, take it to the bank. But if most show the race within a couple of points, plan on staying up late election night.

Bush-leading polls got you down?
Are you blaming Kerry for screwing this campaign up royally?
Can't believe he's down by 11 points?

Check out polls from 2000...

(ABC News tracking poll)
Bush, 48 percent
Gore, 45 percent
Nader, 3 percent
Buchanan, 1 percent
Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 1,280 LV, MoE 3 percentage points

(CNN-USA Today-Gallup tracking poll)
Bush, 47 percent
Gore, 43 percent
Nader, 5 percent
Buchanan, less than percent
Nov. 1-Nov. 3, 2,222 LV, MoE 2 percentage points

(MSNBC-Reuters-Zogby tracking poll)
Bush, 46 percent
Gore, 42 percent
Nader, 6 percent
Buchanan, 1 percent
Oct. 31-Nov. 3, 1,206 LV, MoE 3 percentage points

(Voter.com Battleground tracking poll)
Bush, 46 percent
Gore, 37 percent
Nader, 5 percent
Buchanan, 1 percent
Oct. 30-Nov. 2, about 1,000 LV, MoE 3 percentage points

And CNN tracking poll gave Bush an 11 pt lead on 10/27/2000

http://www.fieldturf.com/index.cfm?pageView=readFeature&featureID=11