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May 4, 2007

POLL: Diageo/Hotline National Survey

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Diageo/Hotline national survey (release, results) of 801 registered voters (conducted 4/26 through 4/30) finds:

• 35% approve of the job Bush is doing as president; 62% disapprove.

• General election match-ups are as follows (significant leads marked with *)
  
  Giuliani 47%, Clinton 43%
  Giuliani 39%, Obama 48% *
  Giuliani 41%, Edwards 47%
  McCain 45%, Clinton 45%
  McCain 37%, Obama 48% *
  McCain 37%, Edwards 48% *

By Eric Dienstfrey on May 4, 2007 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Did Giuliani Win the Debate?

By Mark Blumenthal

The only instant reaction survey done immediately after last night's MSNBC/Politco Republican debate came from automated polltaker SurveyUSA. Their release tells us, without equivocation, that Rudy Giuliani "convincingly won" the debate, because when asked, 30% of respondents picked him as the winner compared to 17% for McCain and single digits for other candidates. We linked to it, as did many other prominent blog sites. Mickey Kaus noticed, and asked a good question:

Most commentators I've seen or heard thought Rudy Giuliani did badly in Thursday night's debate (except my mother, who said he "makes a very good impression.") I didn't think Giuliani did well either. So how did he decisively win that Survey USA poll cited on The Corner? Part of the answer is that Survey USA polled only California debate watchers. A mere 45% of whom were Republican. 53% of whom were pro-choice. That's not the national Republican primary electorate.

No, it's not, but an even bigger issue is the fundamental weakness of "instant reaction" polls of this sort in judging winners and losers.

A more general problem with using a survey to declare a debate "winner" is agreeing on the criteria. What does it mean to "win?" Is it enough to make a "good impression," or is the winner the one who picks up the most new supporters? Is it about the impression made on those watching the entire debate or on the much larger numbers who catch snippets in the news coverage that follows? Is any coverage good coverage (think Gravel)? Do we only care about Republican primary voters and caucus goers, or is it still important to "win" a larger constituency. I could go on, but the various commentators seem to apply different criteria.

What SurveyUSA did was straightforward enough. They called a random sample of households in California last night, and asked those who answered the phone whether they watched the debate and, if so (13% said yes), asked who "won the debate?" It is hard to argue with their presentation of the results. Giuliani was certainly the runaway choice as "winner" among those who told SurveyUSA they watched it.

The problem with that approach, however, is that debates usually serve to reinforce existing impressions. If you tuned in to last night's debate feeling like a supporter of one of the candidates, the odds are pretty good that if pressed, you would say that your candidate won. If most of the California voters that watched the debate were already Giuliani supporters, then most will likely tell us that their candidate won.

To test which candidate changed the most minds, we really need to do what pollsters call a "panel-back" survey. They start with a very large random sample of all adults or voters (perhaps as many as 2000) and call several days before the debate to ask about vote preference and views of the candidates. Immediately after the debate, they call back and ask the same respondents (or as many as they can reach), who "won?" More important, they also repeat the same vote and favorable ratings questions asked during the first interview. Thus, with all the data in hand, the pollster can see which candidate (if any) was judged a "winner" most often by those who were initially undecided or supporting other candidates. They can easily see which candidates actually improved their standing as a result of the debate.

Both the Gallup Organization and CBS News take exactly that approach to polling around debates and presidential addresses, something I wrote about many times during the 2004 campaign (see especially this post).

Unfortunately, the SurveyUSA poll provides only a quick snapshot of the impressions among those who happened to be home in California last night, but we know nothing about how respondents felt about the candidates before the debate. However, we can at least compare the "who won" response among likely Republican primary voters to those interviewed by SurveyUSA and other pollsters in recent weeks, as in the following table:

First, notice that the percentage who judged Giuliani the winner is slightly smaller among likely Republican primary voters (30%, as above) than among all debate viewers (33%, omitted from table). But notice that the percentage judging Giuliani the winner is smaller than Giuliani's support in other recent polls by SurveyUSA (43%), the Mellman Group (36%), the Field Poll (36%) and PPIC (33%). Probably more important, 40% told SurveyUSA they thought Romney or one of the candidates other than Giuliani and McCain "won" the debate last night. That is much higher than the lower tier candidates received on the other recent surveys.

The comparison is far from conclusive. The sample sizes are all small, and we have no way of knowing whether the sample of self-described debate watchers was skewed to supporters of particular candidates. However, the data we have suggests that if anything, the real winners were probably the lower tier candidates who got a boost in exposure and recognition.

Also, put me down as skeptical that 13% of California's adult population watched the debate last night. After last weeks' Democratic debate, Nielsen reported that 2.26 million Americans watched the debate. If we assume those were mostly adults, it amounts to roughly one percent of the roughly 219 million adults in television households nationally. Perhaps this week's audience was bigger in California, but I doubt it was thirteen times bigger. The 13% number is more likely is a combination of three factors: Debate viewers were disproportionate among those who were (a) at home last night and (b) willing to complete the interview. Also, consider the potential for (c) measurement error -- some probably said they watched when then did not.

Typos corrected.

Update: Jay Leve, the founder and CEO of SurveyUSA, responds in the comments section.

SurveyUSA thanks Mark Blumenthal for his observations. SurveyUSA will use the "panel back" approach before and after the next nationally televised debate. Those who want to suggest other ways that SurveyUSA could improve speech-reaction and debate-reaction polls are invited to do so.

Leve is obviously reading, so if you have a suggestion, please leave a comment. And please bear with us if our software tells you your comment is "waiting for approval." We have not not changed our comment policy, but have been working on some site upgrades that are behaving strangely. We will try to approve any such comments promptly.

Update II (5/6): I had not seen it until just now, but TNR's John Judis used the SurveyUSA data noted the same way I did on Friday and reached a similar conclusion:

If one assumes that "who won" tabulations are going to roughly resemble voters preferences, any sharp divergence becomes significant. By that count, Romney was the clear winner last night.

By Mark Blumenthal on May 4, 2007 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (57) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Gallup Hillary Analysis

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Gallop Gallup Poll analysis looking at what's behind Americans' views of Sen. Hillary Clinton (conducted 4/23 through 4/26 of 1,0007 adults) finds:

• 52%/45% now have unfavorable view of Clinton; 58%/40% favorable in February 2007.

• Among those with a positive opinion of Clinton (45%), her strength/stamina is cited as the number one reason, followed by intelligence.

• Among those with a negative opinion of Clinton (52%), her liberal/political views are cited as the number one reason, followed by distrust.

By Eric Dienstfrey on May 4, 2007 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Rasmussen Round-Up

By Eric Dienstfrey

New Rasmussen Reports automated surveys find:

• Among 800 likely voters, 22% believe Bush "knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance;" 55% believe he did not (conducted 4/30 through 5/1).

• Among 1,000 adults, 40% said Congress subpoenaed Condaleezza Rice to "embarrass the administration;" 39% said to gather information (conducted 4/28 through 4/29).

• Among 15,000 adults interviewed from 4/1 through 4/30, a "new low" of 31.0% now say they belong to the Republican party (down from 37.3% in November 2004).

By Eric Dienstfrey on May 4, 2007 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tag Clouds for the Republican Debate

By Mark Blumenthal

Having posted a set of tag clouds last week on the Democrats comments during last weeks' MSNBC debate, we naturally wanted to do the same for last night's Republican debate. So we once again turned to Janet Harris (president of the media analysis firm, Upstream Analysis), who kindly sent over another set created using the free site TagCrowd and the transcript of the debate provided by the Federal News Service.

For those who missed last week's post, each graphic below displays the 50 words used most often by each candidate during his answers to last night's debate, with the type size varying according to its frequency of usage. The larger the type size, the more often each candidate used that word. The clouds omit common words like "and," "of," "the" and (relevant to Giuliani) "new."

A few minor changes from last week, mostly by popular demand: The clouds now also display the count for each word (in parentheses). As you will see the, size of each displayed word is partly a function of the number of words spoken by each candidate. In other words, the scale is not constant across candidates. Also each Cloud now automatically groups similar words (e.g., learn, learns, learned, learning are all grouped under "learning"), but for some reason it doesn't do this for America/American. Janet also excluded references to the moderator ("Chris").

As she did for the Democratic tag clouds, Janet created a PDF version suitable for printing.

Keep in mind with that each candidate answered different questions, so the words they used varied accordingly. With that huge caveat, here are a few observations, mostly from Janet:

• You can clearly see areas of emphasis for some candidates: New York for Rudy Giuliani (the program filtered out "New"), the border fence for Duncan Hunter, jobs and faith for Mike Huckabee, and for John McCain, references to president and Iraq, Iran, war, weapons and security.
• Mitt Romney, like John Edwards last week, shows clear emphasis of simple language and man-of-the-people rhetoric: America(n), values, nation, church, faith.
• Contrast Romney to the cloud of negativity from Ron Paul: bad, critical, fight, interfere, ought, poor, rid, secrecy, war.
• Abortion was most prominent for Romney and Giuliani (as well as "pro-choice" for Romney), that is probably a function of those candidates being asked about that issue more than the others.

Last week, your comments, questions and interpretations were as interesting as the clouds themselves. Once again, please, have at it...

Correction: Representative Tom Tancredo originally labeled as Governor Tancredo.

Update: Hotline On Call has posted the number of questions each Republican recieved and the total amount of time for which they spoke.

By Mark Blumenthal on May 4, 2007 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)<