This morning, CBS and the New York Times announced excitedly that their new swing-state poll (conducted by Quinnipiac University) in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey showed a substantial margin for Barack Obama in all three. The problem: The poll’s results are preposterous. We know this not because it shows Obama leading but because its “internals” are hilariously out of whack in relation to vote totals in 2008 and 2010. For example: The poll has the president winning among independent voters in Pennsylvania by 22 points, 58-36. It is difficult to find state-by-state exit poll data from 2008, but in that triumphant year for Obama, he won independent voters nationwide by 6. 2008 exit polls had Obama winning by about the same margin in Pennsylvania—but in 2010, exit-poll data found Republicans winning the independent vote nationwide by 18 points. Could that have simply swung back all the way to 2008 numbers in Pennsylvania? All but impossible.
The poll itself reports that Democrats outnumber Republicans in Florida by nine points. In 2008, when Obama won the state by 2.5 points, the Democratic advantage was 4 points. Do we really think there are more Democrats in Florida in 2012 than there were in 2008? Even more telling, those polled say they voted for Obama by a margin of 13 points in Florida. Same for Ohio’s sample. Obama won Ohio by 4; those polled today say they went for him by a margin of 15 points. I could go on and on, and have on Twitter (@jpodhoretz, if you want to look). The data are so off-base that it might make you wonder why CBS and the Times didn’t trash the poll and start over.
So why didn’t they? Five theories (after the jump).
1. They like the result. This is what most conservatives will say and think. The poll is skewed because the liberal media want it skewed, and they do thinks to make it come out that way. Let’s give them credit for professionalism and skip this one, because it cannot be verified.
2. Polling is expensive. Media organizations aren’t rich the way they used to be, and they don’t have the luxury of ditching a bad poll that is simply the result of statistical noise and other difficulties.
3. They blew the sample for other reasons. Let’s say you want a poll to provide a decent measure of opinion among minorities, who skew overwhelmingly Democratic. A successful random sample will not give you sufficient numbers of minority voters to demonstrate anything. So you have to “weight” your sample. How you “weight” is where polling becomes less of a science and more of an art—and a pollster’s sense of the composition of the electorate will only be proven correct by the result in November. But in a relatively small sample of voters—and samples have been shrinking over the years as people are less patient with unsolicited phone calls—weighting minorities may have the result of skewing a poll’s results in the direction of Democrats. The only pollster in 2012 for whom that has not been consistently true is Scott Rasmussen.
4. They polled on the wrong days. There are well-known polling problems in summertime—since people travel a lot—and on weekends—when certain sectors of voters might be attending church or church functions rather than being around a phone. All of this tends to make it more likely pollsters will be talking to people who spend inordinate amounts of time at home, and thus provide a false portrait of the electorate.
5. Polling is dying. I alluded earlier to difficulties in getting people to talk on the phone. There’s also the rise in cellphone usage and in general, the greater fluidity of the American public, which is simply not as housebound as it was when Gallup figured out most of what we know about how polling should work in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. All of this represents a logistical nightmare for the polling business, which must therefore resort either to far more expensive ways of finding the right people to sample (which media organizations are increasingly unwilling to pay for) or to more “weighting,” which just turns pollsters into people who guess things, and whose guesses are as susceptible to biases and opinions as anyone else’s.
None of this, by the way, should make Mitt Romney dismiss this poll’s results. If he were really in command in this race, he would be doing better despite the structural advantages the Q poll and others present to Democrats. Basically, there’s no evidence he’s making the sale.
59-41% Romney will landslide this election. Obama takes 7-9 states…if he has a good day. n nThank goodness
John, thank you for looking into these polls. My first thought when I came across them was that they had to have been skewed and either over sampled or over weighted Democratic responses. Another tale tell sign is the behavior of the Obama campaign and the president himself. If he were actually ahead in these states, he wouldn't be throwing the kitchen sink at Romney. Also, I think you are right that Romney is not making the sale right now. While he is trying, he is doing it with one arm tied behind his back. He can't spend on the level of Obama right now, not until after the convention. I also think that voters aren't really open to hearing his sales pitch right now. They are busy doing other summer things. Around the time of the convention and when the general election is officially underway is when I expect those disaffected with Obama, but not terribly committed in the race, to open their ears and minds to Romney. If things stay as they are today, he should be able to close the sale on his current message. I hope I'm right.
jesus, John, you were doing so well, right up until the end. It's a minor matter of algebra and long division to reweight this to whatever model of the electorate you like, with the one guarantee being that downweighting the Democrats in the sample will make Romney look better. Weighted reasonably, it looks like this is evidence Romney *is* making the sale.
Agree completely, Charles. John made plenty of sense until the last paragraph of his post, which basically discounts his entire previous argument. Anyway, we already know the election is going to be close. If you skew your poll sampling, you can make it look however you like.
I have another theory. The country has officially gone mad and will, in fact, elect Obama in a landslide. They did not elect a moderate Republican "maverick" war hero against a radical community organizer whose spiritual advisor for 20 years (and even on his campaign at the outset) said "God Damn America" and such. Any country that could do that–not to mention voting for defeat in Iraq in 2006 which GWB bravely ignored–has gone off the rails–that or there are now more takers than makers and whether people are crazy or not, they have the habits and incentives that make them ineluctably Democrats.
I won't be convinced one way or the other until November 7th. But this was stated as "evidence".
"Let’s give them credit for professionalism and skip this one, because it cannot be verified." n nThis argument is incredibly weak. Many things in life cannot be "verified"—-but we can still make very reasonable guesses. The majority of pollsters seem to be very secular and left of center. They personally want Obama to win! It is therefore important to discourage conservatives. There is no other rational conclusion one can reach. How is it professional to overweigh the sample with Democrats?
I see what you are saying, but do these polls discourage conservatives or energize them? In my case it is the latter.
Again, the head to head is not the important piece of information in polling at this point in time. What should be considered more is the trend. If the Q poll, with its bias, shows movement toward one candidate or away from another, or movement in both directions, that's how we can guage the state of the race. I would point out that the Q poll is similar to other polls in OH, Penn, MI, WI showing some movement toward Obama, but nothing significant. You should expect this as Obama has carpet bombed Camp Romney in each state, and Romney has not had the ability to respond inkind and won't until after the election. What this tells me is Obama is convincing 2008 Obama voters to reconsider before finally jumping ship. This is natural because you would assume that 2008 Obama voters don't hate the man, but they don't think he's done a good job either. When Romney gets to make his case as well as Obama, that is when we might see the race turn.
Gallup 12 swing state approval ratings out today for Obama range from 44% to 47%. Hard to see him outperforming his job approval by much.
I think the key for Romney "making the sale" is that it is impossible by news stories (due to their bias, where, for instance, it is reported that Romney made another gaffe and what a pathetic trip he made, etc.). As soccer is saying, starting with the convention, when, hopefully, the slanted news will at least show a moment of Romney speaking will people find themselves comfortable voting for Romney. The good news seems to be that Obama isn't gaining in the meantime when he does have such a money advantage and his anti-Romney ads in Ohio air in every single commercial break, sometimes even one Obama ad after another after another (and the public, thanks to slanted MSM stories, doesn't even know that every word in Obama's ads is a lie). n nBesides, I think people sort of do want to like Romney. I find that people are more amused by Romney's money (his wife has a couple of cadillacs, etc.) than they are as resentful as Obama wants them to be. How many people in America really despise Trump, Gates, Romney?
The liberal media polls were definitively wrong in Wisconsin which was assumed to be close up until the day of the voting when Governor Walker won by a solid 7%. Yet, beforehand, the liberal media polls screamed day after day that the recall election would be close.
Obama is still polling better than he should, especially given his horrible record; however, I refuse to give any credence to a poll that is weighed so in favor of Democrats. Frankly, I'm surprised The New York & CBS even bothers with these polls b/c people these days are smarter (except the Obama zombies) and aren't buying these phoney polls…
Regardless of WHY the polls are screwed up, they still ARE screwed up, and that simply reinforces the idea that there is little reason to believe the MSM any more. The negative feedback loop operating on their trust issues will re-enforce their financial death spirals. I wish we had a viable media but we don't, and they are NOT better than nothing, so au revoir. Maybe something more worthy of consumers' time and attention will replace them. Let's hope so.