Not to be outdone by the ludicrous NBC/WSJ/Marist Battleground State polls from last week, ABC/Washington Post reveal their national poll today showing President Obama with a 3-point lead 49 to 46. Mitt Romney leads among Independents by 6 points (48 to 42) and locks down his base more so than Obama — Reps support Romney 93 to 7 while Dems support Obama 91 to 8. Yet Romney trails by 3. How? Incredibly, they polled 9% more Democrats than Republicans. This is not a new phenomenon as I outlined in mid-September in the post “Obama’s National Lead Based Entirely on Over-Sampling Democrats.” Today’s ABC/Washington Post poll is the crowning achievement this cycle in unrealistic national polls only 3 weeks out from the election. But these types of advocacy “polling games” are nothing new.
The party identification in the survey is D +9 (Dem 35, Rep 26, Ind 33). This compares to 2008 when party ID was D +7 (Dem 39, Rep 32, Ind 29) and 2004 when party ID split evenly (Dem 37, Rep 37, Ind 26). Making matters even worse, in their poll just over two weeks ago that survey had a party ID of D +3 (Dem 33, Rep 30, Ind 33). Did the public tune in to Barack Obama’s debate performance and just have a groundswell of love for Democrat passivity and listlessness and embrace the Donkey Party? According to the Washington Post, pre-Debate the race was 48 to 46 in favor of Obama. Post-debate the race is 49 to 46 in favor of Obama. Must have been an uneventful debate right? Here is over-the-top liberal Democrat Andrew Sullivan’s blog yesterday on post debate polls:
If anyone thought that the feisty Biden debate undid the massive damage the president did to himself in the first debate, the news isn’t great. Biden does seem to have reversed the speed of Obama’s free-fall but not the decline itself. Romney’s debate obliteration of Obama – something that, in my view, irreparably damages a sitting president – does not seem to be a bounce, but a resilient jump. It’s not going away by itself. That is: not a bounce.
Sullivan also provides a devastating chart showing the post-debate Romney surge in polls (red line) and Obama free fall (blue line):
But today the Washington Post and ABC see fit to publish a poll with Democrat affiliation 9 percentage points greater than Republicans. This blog has hammered the issue of party ID time and again. Basically there is a zero percent change the Democrat’s advantage at the polls in 2012 will be superior to their advantage in 2008. Here is what I wrote on October 1st when critiquing the large disparities in party identification:
In 2008 seven percent more Democrats than Republicans identified themselves as such on election day, well above the historic average of 3%. This was a big change from 2004 when party identification was evenly split between the Democrats and Republicans. But there were many reasons for the strong Democrat turnout that do not exist today. The top of the ticket was a historic candidate (first Black President), America had war and Bush fatigue, the financial meltdown created an anti-Republican wave, and his opponent wasn’t the strongest (good biography, bad and underfunded candidate). These factors led to a strong Democrat self-identification advantage at the voting booth in 2008. But in the 2012 election, none of the advantages outlined above are there for Obama and many of those factors are now largely working against the President: 8%+ unemployment for three years, sub-2% GDP, 23 million unemployed, Arab Spring blowing up and casting the historic vote in 2008 is yesterday’s news. Additionally the Romney campaign ground game has exceeded the McCain campaign across many metrics as much as 10- to 15-fold. Despite the stark changes in each of these factors, polling outfits thus far have consistently sampled an election turnout often greater than candidate Obama’s 2008 best-in-a-generation advantage.
Over the last month we have seen:
- Democrat enthusiasm down 10% from 4 years ago while enthusiasm among Republicans is up 10% over the same period
- This is translating into early vote trend in 2012 strongly favoring Republicans which is offsetting a huge Obama 2008 advantage
- Enthusiasm for Obama among seniors, youth and hispanics is meaningfully lower than 2008
- Enthusiasm for Obama is down among African-Americans
- Enthusiasm for Obama is down among Jewish voters
- Republicans have dramatically cut into and at times surpassed Democrats 2008 voter registration advantage
Interestingly many of these above trends actually show up in the ABC/Washington Post poll. President Obama’s support among Non-Whites is a surprisingly low 73%. His support is typically closer to 80% so this drop of is a major red flag in the President’s re-election efforts. But this is where the Democrat over-sampling comes in to save the President. I went to great lengths to demonstrate that these polls that over-sample Democrats are not simply over-sampling generic Democrats, these polls very specifically over-sample White Democrats. And in this survey we see Barack Obama’s support among White voters at 43%, the same level he achieved in 2008. If that percentage was accurate Obama would almost certainly be re-elected. Unfortunately for him that support level is not accurate based on the unrealistic disparity in party identification and the over-sampling of Democrats masks what is far more likely support for Obama among Whites closer to 36 or 37% as I explained in the previous post here.
Despite the mountain of evidence above completely undermining the unrealistic voter turnout models presented by ABC, the Washington Post and others, major news organizations pass off these unserious polls as credible when neither sense nor reason supports such claims. Today’s disaster is only the latest example of major news organizations weakening the public’s trust by publishing fantastical polls whose sole purpose is to advocate for one candidate over the other.
18 Comments
It is almost unbelievable that anyone would come out with a D+9 national poll at this point, or that anyone would write about it as if it had any relationship to reality. I simply have no words to describe the depths to which some pollsters and some ‘journalists’ have sunk this year.
I hope the Romney campaign keeps score and remembers the open advocacy. These media outlets will want access and Romney shouldn’t give it to them. They will threaten with excessively critical coverage of his Administration but who cares. They are dying mediums already. Hopefully a Romney Administration helps them on their way.
I completely agree.
Also they were going to be excessively critical anyway.
I too don’t get the point of using BS D+infinity polls this late in the game.
For their own credibility, their final poll HAS to be somewhere in the ballpark of the result, so they’ll have to use a proper sample and give believable numbers. This will almost certainly result in a “swing” back to Romney in the final week of the campaign, giving Romney a major boost in the final days.
Plus of course being so blatantly biased only invites the sort of scrutiny that the poll can’t withstand. If they’d used a more reasonable D+5 say, and got a tie, they’d get their spin of “Obama halts Romney’s momentum” without the negative blowback.
How do you feel about the Rasmussen Obama post debate bounces in Iowa +5, Colorado +4, New Hampshire +3, Wisconsin +2. (Romney was leading pre-debate in Rasmussen in Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire…I’m also referring only to Obama’s numbers…not compared to Romney). I’d be really interested in your thoughts. Sorry…mistake in the previous post…
Well as I said before, the post-debate period has sorted out the genuine pollsters from the partisan flacks.
Genuine pollsters, no matter what their turnout model, all showed a decent bounce to Romney, a fair bit of which has stuck. We can disagree on their turnout models and methodology, but they’re being honest in showing a movement to RR.
The flacks all cranked up their D+ oversampling to hide the bounce.
We now know who to trust.
Also, party ID don’t add up to 100. It adds up to 94. Hmmm.
The missing % are Other and Don’t know
Previous poll, it added up 96. What gives?
Rounding errors?
If they had a lot of different catagories (Solid Dem, Likely Dem, Lean Dem, Ind-Dem, Ind, etc, etc) the rounding errors could add up?
6 percent though? Don’t they suppose to rescale it?
There is one more category as other being 5 percent. Still?
The biggest disappointment is that RCP is using this poll in it’s averages. Shame.
If we drop it to 3 then where would race be?…romney up 3?
Correct. If we use rounded #s Romney is up by the exact figures they use in the poll only they are reversed. Romney leads 49 to 46. But if we don’t round to whole numbers Romney is up closer to 2 point 48.55 to 46.48.
well thats pretty much where gallup and rassmussen has it..49-47 romney
I usually go to RCP first for the polling, and then just click on the link to look at the internals. For this one, I was reading through it like a lame joke I knew was going to happen…. wait for it…. wait for it… ah, not let down, +9 Democrat. Buried the lede.
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