Tag Archives: Gallup

Obama.com: New Paradigm in Non-White Voter Participation Propels Obama IPO

The Gallup organization’s long awaited switch to the more accurate “Likely Voter” screen from the “Registered Voter” screen created a lot of fanfare but for many of the wrong reasons. President Obama whose job approval had been mired below 50% (awful for an incumbent this late in the game) received a 5-point bump to 53% in Gallup’s latest survey. This is hugely important because “a president usually pulls in a vote share roughly equal to his job approval rating.” This led to laudatory headlines like: “Obama’s First Term Approval Ratings Now Equal Clinton and Reagan.”  You can just feel that Reagan ’84 landslide coming for Obama can’t you?  Unfortunately for President Obama and his supporters, Alan Abramowitz at the Huffington Post dug into the numbers and found some unusual changes to the racial make-up of the poll the occurred during this switch:

Evidence from Gallup’s weekly presidential approval results indicates that the racial makeup of its tracking poll changed dramatically between the final week of September and first week of October — a change that coincides with the beginning of Gallup’s reporting of likely voter results in the presidential election. Although Gallup does not report the racial composition of its tracking poll sample in its weekly presidential approval results, we can estimate the racial makeup of the sample by extrapolating from the reported approval rating of the president among whites, nonwhites and all adults. The estimated nonwhite percentage of the sample for the past five weeks was as follows:

Gallup: % of Non-White Voters Surveyed

Changes in poll re-weighting like the above are what drive sharp criticisms from Republicans who, absent reasonable justifications by the polling organizations for such moves, allege bias when incompetence or unseriousness may be the more accurate aspersion. The race alterations specifically to Gallup’s polling assumptions have two fatal flaws: first, they fail to account for the missing White vote from 2008 and second, the steep increase in non-White participation maps out to a chart only a late-90s “dot com” CEO could love.

The Missing White Voter

The near-constant focus on the rise in non-White percentage of the electoral make-up ignores the fact that 1.7 million White voters stayed home in 2008. I addressed this issue at length in “The Reality of 2012 Voter Turnout: The White Voter” where we saw that in the 2008 election a -1.1% election-over-election drop in White participation led to an electorate make-up comprising record high levels of non-Whites totaling 23.7%. This drop in White participation was due various reasons — apathy towards Obama’s opponent, disinterest in expected loss, bad campaign message etc. The thrust of the argument was that while Obama campaign officials argue aggressively for polls with a racial composition at meaningfully greater minority levels than the 2008 historic turnout, there is another side of that coin and it works heavily against the turnout models of both the Obama campaign and of the vast majority of polls being published.

Gallup today, however, proceeds to publish a survey the Obama campaign could wish for only in their wildest dreams. In their survey, the non-White percentage of the electorate comprised 30.6% of the entire poll — a 6.6% increase over the record 2008 level (and 4.9% jump week-over-week).  This increase comes in the face of steep drops in enthusiasm among Hispanics and Asians as well as a reduced (albeit small) drop in enthusiasm/support among Blacks. The decreased enthusiasm invariably translates into a decreased propensity to vote.  In 2008 Obama had countless advantages — historic candidate, bad economy/financial crises, Bush fatigue, and an ill-financed opponent — that not only do not exist today but actively work against him — bad economy, chronic unemployment even worse among minorities, well-funded opponent and energized voters antagonistic towards Obama. Yet Gallup finds minority interest, voter registration and enthusiasm dramatically superior to 2008 when every measurable aspect is worse?  Impossible, unrealistic and unworthy of a serious organization.

The Non-White “hockey stick”

But ignoring the missing White  vote is not the only problem with Gallup’s implausibly high 30.6% non-White voter participation. How does Gallup’s 30.6% non-White participation fit in with recent historical trends?

Below we have the non-White percentage of vote in each Presidential election since 1988 according to the Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, May 2010.  From left-to-right there is a steady increase in minority participation especially since 1992.

Non-White % of Vote 1988 - 2008

The change in Non-White participation election-over-election beginning in 1992 has averaged a 1.7 percentage point (ppt) increase over those five elections which includes 2008′s historic jump of 2.9ppt over the 2004 level.

Gallup’s assumption today, however, is that in 2012 the non-White percentage will jump 6.9ppt over 2008′s historic level despite all of the disadvantages previously outlined.

1998 “Dot Com” CEOs would be proud of whichever salesman sold that “hockey-stick” 2012 change in non-White voter participation to the Gallup organization. The absurdity of the dramatic increase in non-White participation in the Likely Voter screen is compounded because of this demographic’s historic reticence to participate anywhere near near such levels. Gallup better get that “Obama.com” IPO sold before November 6 because underneath this absurd racial make-up is a dwindling support for Obama among White voters likely to doom his re-election chances.  And if Obama has any more debates like his last, he’ll make the Facebook IPO look like the homerun of the century.

Although the sharp increase in Non-White participation helps goose up Obama’s job approval today to a stellar 53% (52.5% actually) it only achieves this because the non-White demographic approves of President Obama at a 77% level in the Gallup survey, largely consistent with historical trends and independent surveys. The White demographic approves of President Obama only at a 41% level — bad, and possibly fatal. Because the above outlined changes are wholly unjustifiable, all they serve to do is mask the reality that President Obama’s job approval remains below 50% which imperils any incumbent’s re-election. If we adjust the non-White participation to more acceptable levels (76/24 White/non-white split used in nearly every national poll), Obama’s job approval drops back below the 50% threshold his campaign is desperate to avoid.

Gallup does a great disservice to polling with changes like those outlined above. Although the racial re-weightings are nearly impossible to justify I’m sure Gallup has their reasons. If nothing else they should buoy the Obama supporters  because otherwise Obama supporters may become even less enthusiastic come election day and not even show up.

Gallup Poll to Show Romney, Obama Tied Among Likely Voters

Hat-tip: commenter Greymarch:

Gallup National Poll Tied at 47 and How Undecideds Will Vote

Gallup runs a 7-day rolling average poll for the national election which helps smooth out any one day anomalies.  But with the Presidential debate being such a seminal event, Gallup split their 7-day poll into pre- and post- debate results and the post-debate results are very bad for President Obama.

Registered voters’ preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday’s presidential debate. In the three days prior to the debate, Barack Obama had a five-percentage-point edge among registered voters.

Comparison of Registered Voters' Presidential Preferences, Before and After First Presidential Debate, 2012

There are a number of reasons why this is horrible for Obama rather than Romney:

First and foremost, Undecideds break 65-85% for the challenger as elections draw to a close absent a disqualifying event for the challenger. Here is a study by lefty blog MyDD showing 72% of Undecideds break for the challenger in prior Presidential elections.  Here was their view in October 2004:

There have been four incumbent presidential elections in the past quarter-century. If we take an average of the final surveys conducted by the three major networks and their partners, we find that in three of these the incumbent fell short of or merely matched his final poll number, while exceeding it only once, and then by just a single point (Ronald Reagan). On average, the incumbent comes in half a point below his final poll result.

Year  Incumbent  Final Poll %  Actual Vote %
1996  Clinton	   51	       49
1992  Bush	   37	       37
1984  Reagan	   58	       59
1980  Carter	   42	       41

The numbers for challengers look quite different. In every case, the challenger(s) — I include Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 — exceed their final poll result by at least 2 points, and the average gain is 4 points. In 1980, Ronald Reagan received 51 percent, fully 6 percentage points above his final poll results. Looking at just Gallup, Mystery Pollster delivers even more bad news for incumbent Presidents:[T]he final Gallup projections (sans undecided) show an intriguing pattern: In the presidential elections since 1956 that featured an incumbent, Gallup’s final projection of the incumbent’s vote exceeded the incumbent’s actual vote six of eight times. The only exceptions were Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George H.W. Bush in 1992, and then by only 0.2% and 0.7% respectively. On average, Gallup’s projection of the incumbent’s vote has averaged 1.3 percentage points greater than the actual result.

This was all in the lead up to incumbent George W Bush’s re-election and as we have shown, Undecideds decisively broke for John Kerry.  The difference in that election was Bush banked an unusually large and unprecedented turnout from his partisans which is what Obama is trying to replicate.

Undecideds break for the challenger for a number of reasons but mostly it has to do with the incumbent which is why Obama’s support hasn’t (and won’t) change. Obama has been the President for four years and he spent two years running for President (we really need to shorten that cycle) so the public knows everything it needs to know about who Obama is, who Obama was, and who Obama will be if given a second term.  And the American public is willing to fire him evidenced by his sub-50% support.

The thing about Obama’s support level is it has been at this level throughout the general election and it never moves. This is because the public has assessed his performance and found him wanting.  They’re willing to fire Obama and until the recent debate they weren’t willing to hire Mitt Romney. Romney’s strong debate performance was the first time Romney really “made the sale” to the public and they have been buying what he is selling ever since.  The key will be to sustain that momentum through election day.

In a 47 to 47 dead-heat election that leaves 6% up for grabs but if 2% go to third parties, that really leaves only 4%. That’s not a lot of votes to gain or in Obama’s case, not a lot of votes you need to make certain don’t show up since they are most likely going to your challenger.  Although Obama mostly cannot “win” those votes he can fight hard to convince them not to vote for Romney (i.e. stay home).  That is why he puts forth no vision for the future via a 2nd term agenda and just attacks, attacks, attacks Romney.  He’s not going to persuade anyone not already in his camp and needs those remaining people to simply not vote or vote 3rd party.

Mitt Romney needs to continue “making the sale” since the transaction isn’t complete until election day, but as it stands the momentum and history is strongly on his side and against the incumbent, especially in a 47 to 47 election with less than a month left.

Making the Case Against Polls Over-Sampling Democrats — Today’s Must Read

Time after time we see polls with funny results invariably in favor of President Obama and get our panties in a bunch that the results have no value while Obama advocates masquerading as journalists trumpet the results as confirming the inevitability of Obama winning this election .

But what is our reason for holding on to this belief when poll after poll says we are losing, even if ever-so-slightly? Jay Cost smartly made the quantitative case. Today I am going to make the substantive case.

First is the set-up: Barack Obama’s 2008 performance.  As we have outlined countless times, in November 2008 the Democrat turnout machine had a banner day when actual voters at the polling booths out numbered Republicans by 7 percentage points (note other exits have it as high as 8-points).  The representative electorate self-identified as the following: Democrats: 39%, Republicans: 32%, Independents: 29% or D +7. Very impressive following 2004 when the split between the parties was dead even (37 to 37).

In 2008, ahead of the election, Rasmussen Reports, who the Left loves to decry as partisan, had party affiliation at Dems +7, Dem: 41, Rep 34, Ind 25 — just as it was on election day. Others showed similar but greater Democrat advantages than what showed up on election day. For example, the generic ballot according to Pew Research showed Democrats with a +10 point advantage 38 to 28 . The generic ballot from Gallup had Democrats +12, 53 to 41.

There were many factors that gave Democrats such an advantage: historic viable candidate (Obama), war fatigue, financial meltdown, divisive incumbent, and inept opponent (McCain — good biography, bad candidate) all factored into a strong Democrat performance in 2008. Today none of those advantages are there for Obama and many of those are now largely working against Obama: 8%+ unemployment, sub-2% GDP, 23 million unemployed, Arab Spring blowing up, historic vote is yesterday’s news.

All of this adds up to a steep change in his own base’s enthusiasm which means Obama’s huge advantages at the voting booth in 2008 will be greatly diminished in 2012, the only question is by how much.  This is why President Obama has spent his entire campaign and Convention on hot-button cultural issues to fire up his base (Quite honestly can anyone outline his 2nd term agenda?).  His coalition for victory in 2008 relied heavily on voters who typically do not show up on election day like they did in 2008. The problem today is that survey after survey comes to the same conclusion:”Democratic Voting Enthusiasm Down Sharply From 2004, 2008.” This is why I title some blog posts: “What happens if Obama’s voters don’t show up?” The simple truth is that the pendulum of party affiliation has swung back from the strong showing in 2008 to a more balanced electorate in 2012.  This is what you see in the weekly generic tracking poll from Rasmussen Reports where either party has a 1-2 point advantage  depending on the week.  President Obama got a bump from his Convention so a 2-point advantage for Republicans shifted to a 2-point advantage for Democrats last week (it’s first lead since January).  The overall trend is unchanged — a very closely divided electorate.

This closely divided electorate is in no way shape or form represented in the relentless drumbeat of polls we get today from NBC, CNN, Fox News, Quinnipiac, ABC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Marist, etc.

But what happens when you re-weight polls to reflect the last election when all the current data tells you voter preference has sharply changed?  You get stories like this one in 2010:

NEWSWEEK Poll: Democrats May Not Be Headed for Midterm Bloodbath

Obama’s approval continues to slide, but Bush’s legacy still haunts the GOP.

As Democrats prepare for considerable losses in the November elections, there’s reason to believe the party in power may not be headed for the bloodbath it might expect. According to a new NEWSWEEK Poll, President Obama’s approval rating—47 percent—indicates that the party is better off this year than Republicans were in 2006, when the GOP lost 30 House seats, and than the Democrats were in 1994, when they lost 52 House seats. Obama’s approval has fallen 1 percentage point since the last NEWSWEEK survey in June, but the White House has gained ground on several specific issues, specifically his handling of the economy, which has risen to 40 percent (from 38 percent) over the past two months.

Newsweek found a  45-45 tie  for Congressional preference ahead of the 2010 mid-terms. But when you look at the party vote breakdown, Democrats are winning 90% of the Democratic vote and Republicans are winning 94% of the Republican vote BUT Independents favor Republicans by 12 points: 45 to 33 – sound familiar?  It’s impossible to have a tied race when both sides lock up their bases and one side is winning Independents decisively.  So Newsweek re-weighted this poll to reflect the 2008 party identification for Democrats with a 7-point advantage to create a tied race ahead of what became a historic bloodbath at the Federal and State level the likes of which Republicans had never seen before.

This is exactly what is happening today.

In yesterday’s NBC/WSJ/Marist poll Romney led with Independents in both Ohio and Virginia but was losing decisively in both polls. We see this in nearly every state poll.  In the ABC/Washington Post national poll on September 11 Romney led Independents by 11-points but by oversampling Democrats they made the race virtually tied. In the CNN/ORC September 10 poll Romney led among Independents by 14-points but was losing the top-line result by 6-points. These are not surveys of the electorate, they are advocacy pieces pushing an agenda.

Te reality is very simple.  Major blocs of Obama voters are less enthusiastic and increasingly unlikely to show up at the polls in anywhere near the fashion they did in 2008.  This is true for Hispanics and the youth vote while the African-American vote has largely returned to historic voting patterns (90% support for Democrats). At the same time Republicans are greatly enthusiastic about voting in no small part due to the divisiveness of President Obama. The generic Congressional ballots and party affiliation surveys reflect a near 50/50 divided electorate between the parties more reminiscent of 2004 than 2008. Today’s polling, however, for whatever their stated reasons may be continue to report polls more representative of the 2008 electorate than anyone can reasonably argue will be the case. All the “micro-targeting” in the world won’t make up for a 5-6 percentage point shift in the electorate.

In 2008 you had a greatly fired up Democrat Party show up at the polls in droves while Republicans were dejected over a disappointing candidate and horrible confluence of events in the Fall of 2008.  Today Barack Obama has to own the failed economy, the dissatisfaction with his signature achievement Obamacare and meet a rejuvenated Republican Party.  The electorate in November 2012 will look dramatically different than current polling indicates which will leave more than a few “independent” journalists wiping away tears with printouts of these worthless polls.

Giving Obama Every State Where Job Approval is 47 Percent or Higher

Tom Bevan over at Real Clear politics takes Gallup’s job approval rating for Obama and overlays it on the electoral map giving Obama every state where his approval is 47% or higher.  Considering job approval % has an incredible correlation to actual vote total, surprises ensue:

 

What Happens if Obama’s Voters Don’t Show Up?

Over the weeks we have seen many posts identifying the enthusiasm gap among Obama voters.  We saw where Obama made his extra-Constitutional immigration ploy to recapture Hispanic enthusiasm which appears to be back-firing. The President also has problems with the youth vote and also a reversion to enthusiasm norm among African-Americans from 2008 heights.

The USA Today/Gallup survey of registered voters showed Obama with a 2-point lead.  However, within those results, swing state voters maintain an enthusiasm gap that may make all the difference in November:

The June swing-states poll showed 47% of registered voters across the 12 swing states backing President Barack Obama for president and 45% backing the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. However, voters in swing states who support Romney for president are more likely than those backing Obama to say they feel “extremely enthusiastic” about voting — 31% to 23%. The same pattern is seen by party, with 32% of Republicans in the swing states and 25% of Democrats reporting extreme enthusiasm.

The 8-point enthusiasm lead for Romney shrinks to 4-points when aggregating “Extremely Enthusiastic” and “Very Enthusiastic” voters but in a tight election, that may be all the difference Romney needs:

Voter Enthusiasm Extremely Very Total
Barack Obama voters 23% 24% 47%
Mitt Romney voters 31% 20% 51%

The “Extremely Enthusiastic” segment is even more interesting in that these results are a 5-point bump for Romney versus a Spring survey by Gallup/USA Today and a 3-point drop for Obama despite his pandering on HHS mandates, immigration, student loans, and now middle class tax policy.

Obama +2 in Actual Battleground States

USA Today and Gallup jointly polled the Presidential race both nationwide and just the Battlegrounds. Unlike the CNN 15-state cut that included too many GOP states making the poll of little value,this survey of 12-states includes only two states outside my battleground but both are at least worthy of discussion. The 12-state survey included:  Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and North Carolina.  Interestingly these were the exact states mentioned in my very first post. While I would dismiss both New Mexico and North Carolina, each at least has a basis for broader election discussions and likely cancels one another out from the overall margin.  According to the write-up in USA Today:

In the 12 battleground states, the race is all but tied. Obama leads Romney 47%-45% among 1,200 registered voters in the poll June 22-29 — a tick closer than Obama’s 48%-44% lead among 2,404 voters in the rest of the USA over the same period. The swing states survey focuses on a dozen states that aren’t firmly aligned with either Democrats or Republicans. That puts them in a position to tip the outcome in the Electoral College.  The states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Ad barrage

More than three of four voters in the battlegrounds say they’ve seen campaign ads on TV over the past month. They’re more likely to recall the negative ones, which have included a barrage attacking the president’s stewardship of the economy and depicting Romney as a heartless corporate executive. Nearly two-thirds have seen negative ads about Romney and almost seven in 10 negative ones about Obama.

Last week alone, the presidential candidates and outside groups supporting them spent nearly $15 million on advertising in the Sunshine State and other battlegrounds, according to data from the ad-tracking firm SMG Delta as reported by NBC. The Romney campaign bought $4.3 million in ads, and the conservative super PAC Americans for Prosperity another $2.6 million. The Obama campaign bought $6.5 million and the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action $1.4 million.

It’s about to get even more intense: The two sides are poised to spend $100 million on ads over the next month, The Washington Post calculates. Since advertising began for the general election, Romney and his allies have spent $85 million on TV spots, according to NBC/SMG Delta. Obama and his supporters have spent $110 million.

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Who Killed the 2007 Immigration Reform Bill? Senator Barack Obama

Despite being the President who has deported the most illegal aliens in history–a policy hugely unpopular with Hispanics–Barack Obama is the strong preference among Hispanics in the 2012 election. They may not be overly enthusiastic about Obama but they aren’t running to Mitt Romney yet either. however, despite Barack Obama’s statements to the contrary, he has not always supported comprehensive immigration reform.  In fact, he worked vigorously to kill it in 2007.  Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal recounts how Obama injected himself into the 2007 legislative sausage making and jumped on a “poison pill” amendment that killed immigration reform:

The short story is that the immigration bill was the work of a small, bipartisan group of senators. Late in the game, Mr. Obama joined the process, where he asked for (and received) changes in the bill. Yet when the legislation moved forward, Mr. Obama backed a series of poison-pill amendments. One was pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) to weaken the guest-worker program. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) was outraged because he knew this amendment was really organized labor’s effort to kill the immigration bill, not to help workers. “Who is the senator from North Dakota trying to fool?” Mr. Kennedy snapped from the Senate floor.

Mr. Obama voted “yea” on the Dorgan amendment. We know he knew it was a deal-killer because several senators had said so (Sen. Jim DeMint, who had voted “nay” on an earlier version, switched his vote for precisely that reason). Thus Mr. Obama pulled off a trifecta: appeasing Big Labor while telling Latinos he supported the bill and blaming Republicans for its failure…What makes Mr. Obama’s 2007 Senate vote so galling—and different from that of others who voted the same way—was that his support for the poison pills betrayed the bipartisan group of senators who had let him in on the writing of the bill.

By no means was the death of immigration reform done at the hands of only the then-Senator from Illinois.  But he was a principal in the unraveling of the most successful effort to that point. Having not lifted a finger on behalf of Hispanics since entering the White House while achieving record-breaking deportations, Hispanics have a lot to think about in November before backing the immigration reform killer again.

Demographic Watch: Everyone (and None are Good for Obama … Really)

While nearly every post in this blog will be about the Battleground States, when I see something uniquely impacting the election outcome  or on slow Battleground state news days (like today), it’s helpful to see what’s going on underneath some of the national poll numbers. The incomparable Charlie Cook digs down deep into six full weeks of Gallup tracking data and unearths more than a few takeaways that should send shivers down the spines of the over-confident campaign in the Windy City:

Gallup has now finished its first six full weeks of tracking surveys for the 2012 presidential campaign, interviewing 20,565 registered voters. Yes, you guessed it: President Obama and Mitt Romney are tied, 46 percent to 46 percent.  On the surface, the race looks tight. But voter enthusiasm numbers are a headache for the president’s reelection team (emphasis added). This week, Gallup released six full weeks of results. The first half of these were interviews between April 11 and May 6; the second half were from May 7 through May 27.

2008 versus 2012

Although polling was consistent between genders across the two time frames sampled (Romney +8 among men, Obama +7/8 among women), things begin to unravel for the President when you compare these results to his 2008 margins.:

[I]n 2008, the exit polls showed that Obama edged Sen. John McCain by 1 point among men, 49 percent to 48 percent. Among women, he beat McCain by a whopping 13 points, 56 percent to 43 percent.

This is a -9 point swing with men and a -5/6 point swing among women. Those are horrific margin erosions to the President’s re-elect chances.

Independents split down the middle; Romney edged Obama by 1 point in the front half, 43 percent to 42 percent, and by 2 points in the second, 43 percent to 41 percent… [In] 2008 Obama carried the independent vote by 8 percentage points, 52 percent to 44 percent, and the overall election by 7 points.

A -9/10 point swing among Independents. Ouch!

African Americans too?  Yep

Obama is winning the African-American vote by gargantuan proportions: 90 percent to 5 percent in the first half of the survey and 88 percent to 6 percent in the second, not far off his 2008 showing (95 percent to 4 percent).

Wait, “not far”?  I love Charlie Cook but come on. This is a -6 point swing among African Americans.  That is HUGE.

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