Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Relax. It’s the pre-Debate openmindedness. Voters who have “Decided” are reconsidering their minds. They are waiting for the debates. Everything hangs on the Debates.

ALdous.

Woody, the number for the Time Sept 21-23 poll that you give is fake (though this is not your fault since you were looking at a site which altered the data using a very questionable methodology which is easy to uncover when you compare that site’s numbers with Time’s own reports of the poll).

Whether you look at registered or likely voters, the real Time poll (not the one altered by pollingreport.com) shows Bush with a current six point lead.

As for the other three polls you mention, those are all polls which originally showed little or no post-convention bounce for Bush. Perhaps they’re right and Bush’s bounce was smaller than thought. The point is that you can’t point to polls which showed no margin of separation to begin with and say, “Look, Kerry is closing!”

I think the race is narrowing, actually (based on other polling data) but each of those other three polls you mention (now get this) actually show Bush widening, not losing, his lead since the post-convention period (though by a statistically insignificant margin).

I’ll break it down. The first number will be the poll’s first post-convention number. The second will be their most recent number. Tell me if these polls show a closing race.

Zogby: Bush 46, Kerry 44 (9/2)
Bush 47, Kerry 44 (9/19)

FOX: Bush 47, Kerry 45 (9/8)
Bush 45, Kerry 43 (9/22)

WSJ/NBC: This one is trickier because they didn’t have a poll right after the convention. So let’s just look a their last two.

Bush 47, Kerry 45 (8/25)
Bush 50, Kerry 46 (9/19)

In every single one of these polls (except the Time) Bush has either maintained or actually widened his lead since the time when other polls first registered a post-convention bounce.

I’ve been studying the polls in depth recently, and it’s pretty interesting. I suspect that the race could very well draw to a statistical dead heat in the national numbers. The problem for Kerry, however, is that the state polls are the ones that really matter now, and on that front Kerry is in SERIOUS trouble.

Aldous:

I agree that the debates ARe definitely important. I see Bush with a distinctive lead right now, and his campaign is “managing” the news cycles more than Kerry’s. Kerry has been more reactive, though of late has tried to ratchet things up a bit.

Kerry needs to win the debates solidly in my opinion. There are many—most in fact—on both sides who will not change their vote even if their candidate stood on stage slackjawed and gaping, wordless with spittle drooling out of their mouth. But for those undecided, I believe Kerry needs to decisively show why he is fit for the Presidency.

Just like in a boxing match, where the contender has to beat—not TIE—- the champ, so too does Kerry need to beat the incumbent. Should be fun.

I will watch the debates.
I do believe that they matter. They matter to me anyway.
Yes, they rehearse and put on a show.

Paraphrasing now..
I have been told to read what Kerry has posted on his website … that watching him doesn’t matter.

Sounds to me like some Dems are worried he will blow it big time.

If people don’t watch, or don’t change their views, and they don’t matter anyway …. WHY do they have them??
Can’t be to win the ratings race.

Funny thing about polls, sometimes they are dead wrong.

I’ve been talking to friends in Ohio, many of them staunch Republicans. None of them plan to vote for Bush. The polls indicate otherwise. I guess we’ll know in November.

The polls are questionable. 1) A difference of 2-4 points is usually within the statistical margin of error. 2) I question what a likely voter is? A likely voter to one pollster may not be to another. 3) What are the questions that are being asked? Loaded questions can throw the whole poll off in favor of Bush or Kerry. 4) What about the voters that the pollsters can’t call because they just have a cell phone (no land line)?

“I’m not voting for Bush, I’m voting against kerry.”
That is what alot of the people around MO. have been telling me lately. (especially on military bases) They know Bush isn’t doing us any good, but they know kerry would be alot worse.

Polls are fixed. Questions are worded to support whatever agenda the polling group supports. I don’t pay attention to them. I ask around in different areas, try to get different feelings and the such. But so far it seems just like 2000 all over again, the rural areas are going with Bush and the urban areas are going with kerry and the freebies promised to them.

The polls are unstable because people’s opinions are changing. We can all find anecdotal information to prove our points, but we shall soon see whom the American voters want in office. This race seems more acrimonious than usual. The level of actual hatred seems high.

I appeal to all sides to accept without complaint the verdict of the people in November. There will be time enough for bitching later, but right after the election it is more important to be an American than a Republican or a Democrat. The President will find himself in the middle of a war in Iraq and he will need to achieve reasonable success. In the worst-case scenarios, a U.S. defeat in Iraq, we will face new and growing terrorist threats in the U.S. We would pay dearly for the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.” This scenario cannot happen militarily. The terrorists can win only by breaking our will so that we cut and run. On November 3, let’s make sure we show them that this won’t happen.

Martin,

The numbers I gave are from the 2-way comparison, without Nader. The six point lead is from the three-way comparison. (The two-way comparison doesn’t seem to be in that Time article, but I doubt the folks at Pollingreport just made it up.) Regardless, the Time article that you linked supports my main contention that Bush is losing ground. Look at the headline: Bush lead narrows to 6% among likely voters, according to new TIME poll. Explain to me again how I have been duped?

As for the states, if you look battleground state polls at RealClear Politics, they show Kerry leading in every state that Gore won except for Iowa.

To put this altogether, it looks like if the election were held tomorrow Bush would win the popular vote by 2-6% and the electoral college by about 20 votes. Kerry has five weeks to turn that around.

Woody, I honestly can’t figure out what you’re talking about. The pollingreport.com numbers do not even include head-to-head polling by Time (and I don’t believe Time even does head-to-head polling).

No, pollingreport.com has actually pushed undecided voters into Kerry’s column according to which way they lean—but they also have a separate undecided column! This is bizzare.

They’ve actually CHANGED the result of a poll by overlaying a separate methodology of their own on it to fib the results.

They’ve actually CHANGED the result of a poll by overlaying a separate methodology of their own on it to fib the results.

Much as Gore tried to do in Florida, yes?

Martin,

Chill out. All they did was include the leaners. Here is their explanation:

NOTE: Time magazine typically reports Time Poll election trial heat results without leaners. So that they are consistent with how most national poll results are reported, the Time Poll trial heats on PollingReport.com are shown with leaners included (when available).

The undecided column must be people who weren’t “leaning” either way.

I think it is a bit paranoid to see this all as a plot against Bush. Their three-way results are only one percent off from what Time published.

I’m totally chill, Woody. I never said it was a plot for or against Bush—just that they were changing and mysteriously misrepresenting the results of the Time poll. It seems to me that if Time wanted to include leaners (as some polls do) they would have already done so (and perhaps have some very good reasons not to according to the questions they ask or their sampling). Also, and this is just quibbling, the difference between four and six is two, not one. In an election as close as this, such hair-splitting matters :).

As a sometime statistician, I’m fascinated by polls, but I’d be wary of them in a race like this in which the voting electorate is hard to predict.

Short story: polls are based largely on making an educated guess as to who’s likely to vote, and what factors determine who someone will vote for. And like most guesses, even educated ones, they are often wrong. A study of 2002 polls suggested ” one should only conclude that a poll is pointing to an election winner when the lead exceeds two times the margin of error.”, which is probably usually around 3-4 percent. By that metric the race overall, and certainly the electoral college, are certainly still tossups, and have been all summer.

Polls - my question is: How many people look at the polls and vote for the one that looks like he may win?
People want to say they voted for the winner.
Maybe they should do a poll on that.
There has to be some.

rjt,

I question what a likely voter is? A likely voter to one pollster may not be to another.

From ten days ago: Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe Other Gallup Polls As Well

Because the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat.

If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000.

No offense to any of you guys but if Bush wins the election and a mushroom cloud appears over New York sometime later, I have every intention of saying, “I told you so!!!”.

Aldous.

No, Aldous. You’ve got the wrong election. That was Johnson v Goldwater.

Actually, the Gallup poll DOESN’T assume party identification and weigh accordingly. So it’s wrong to say that they’re using a model based on 40% Republicans and 33% Democrats. They’re one of the polls (like Newsweek and ABC/Washington Post) that weighs for gender, race and age alone. So if they call a broad sampling of adults distributed across the country and more self-identify as being of one party, it’s assumed that this reflects the electorate’s move toward the party of the candidate they prefer.

Other polls (like Rasmussen and Zogby) assume that
if they get a sudden spike of respondents saying they’re Republicans, that this an abberation—so they weigh those for Bush less than they weigh those for Kerry. In effect, the inflexability of their methodologies keep things close no matter what voters are actually saying.

Either approach has its downsides, which is why polling isn’t a exact science. But I think there are strong reasons to believe the non party-weighted polls since their swing for Bush corresponded with an actual event—the Republican Convention.

At a certain point, you have to wonder why ALL non party-affiliation manipulated polls have consistently found so many Bush-voters—and why this happened right after the convention.

When does it become implausible to believe that this is just a coincidience and mistake being replicated by everybody?

I don’t know what fail-safes somebody like Zogby builds into his method (since he keeps a tight lid on his proprietary model and won’t share his internal numbers). But there must be something— otherwise if Zogby polled 1000 people and 300 said they were voting Independent, 695 said they were Republicans voting for Bush and 5 said they were Democrats voting for Kerry, Zogby could weigh those 5 Democrats at 34% and say the race was a statistical dead heat!

Polls are dangerously self referential. It’s a pure argument from popularity.

What’s important is that Bush is fighting an uphill battle against the realities on the ground in Iraq. The question is whether they overtake him now, or later.

Martin,

You need to look at what I wrote again

Their three-way results are only one percent off from what Time published.

PR had

B K N
48 43 5

The article you linked has

B K N
48 42 5

Hence, the business with the leaners that you deem such a fraud only amounts to a 1% difference.

Okay, I see what you mean now, Woody.

I checked those realclearpolitics battleground numbers, and they were quite interesting.

According to the average of all polls, of the states Gore won in 00, Bush is now leading in Iowa and Wisconsin and is tied in Minnesota.

Kerry, however, leads in 0 states which Bush won in 2000.

Where Kerry leads, he leads by a thinner margin than Gore’s victory (often MUCH thinner margin) in every state except Washington and Oregon (and in Oregon Kerry leads Bush by only .7 percent, a bare .2 improvement over Gore).

Where Bush leads, he has extended his lead, often signficantly so, over the 00 margin in all states except Colorado, WV and NH (where he’s tied with his 00 number). And the average still shows him up by seven points in Colorado.

I’m far from thinking that Bush has this in the bag—but I’m dubious of the idea that the situation on the ground in Iraq will help Kerry. Bush has weathered far more difficult phases in Iraq than now—and unlike before, now he’s fighting back against the media and Kerry campaign’s effort to shape the public perception of Iraq as a defeat for American arms.

Woody, we can all point to our polls where they have the results we like.

To contradict your euphoria though I have to bring up the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted over the weekend.

Among likely voters:
Bush at 52%
Kerry at 44%

Among registered voters its:
Bush at 53%
Kerry at 42%

This is remarkably consistent to the CNN/Gallop Poll taken during Sept 1st - 3rd which suggests that Kerry’s latest attack plan of negativity isn’t working.

CNN/Gallup Poll
Bush at 52%
Kerry at 45%

A good rule of thumb is to take all the poll results from all the polls and average them out. That is the closest thing to reality you will get from polls. Turn-out and the electoral college will determine this election again, but as someone suggested above, Kerry isn’t leading in any of the states Bush won in 2000, but Bush is leading or tied in several Gore won. Look for Bush to pick up Wisconsin and possibly Minnesota and New Jersey.

Euphoria? Just not ready to jump off a bridge.

Agree that you can slice and dice these numbers in a lot of different ways.

The Gallup poll wasn’t available yet when I posted this morning. It does show the race tighter than it was two weeks ago.

Aldaron,

Euphoria? Just not ready to jump off a bridge.

You can slice and dice these things however you want, but I tried to account for all of the recent polls listed at Polling Report. The Gallup poll wasn’t there yet when I posted this morning. It does show the race tighter than it was two weeks ago.