Pollster.com

July 8, 2007 - July 14, 2007

July 14, 2007

The President as Respondent

In case you missed it, here what President George W. Bush told ten conservative journalists yesterday about polls on his performance in Iraq as reported by the National Review (via Sullivan):

He explained "that last fall, if I had been part of this polling, if they had called upstairs and said, do you approve of Iraq I would have been on the 66 percent who said, 'No I don't approve.' That's why I made the decision I made. To get in a position where I would be able to say 'Yes, I approve.'"

By Mark Blumenthal on July 14, 2007 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

July 13, 2007

The pollsters at the Washington Post, Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, have a blog we managed to overlook called "Behind the Numbers." Recent posts drill deeper into the recent Post surveys of political independents.

Kathy Frankovic mines the Roper iPoll database and finds "2,377 public polling questions that include the name "Hillary Clinton" or "Hillary Rodham Clinton," and declares her "the most asked-about woman of all time."

Gary Langer mulls the "career low" job ratings posted recently by President Bush and concludes: "in terms of public opinion, this president's problems are all about Iraq; his approval rating and views of whether the war was worth fighting have correlated since April 2003 at a near-perfect .93."

Huffington Post's Tom Edsall digs deeper into both sides of the law suit between Clinton pollster Mark Penn and a group of former employees: "Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuits themselves reveal the corporate underbelly of Penn, Schoen and Berland, a company that celebrated the dissolution of its partnership with spying, double-crosses, back-biting, broken promises, and bitter legal accusations."

Survey Sampling International (SSI) mourns the passing of its founder, Tom Danbury, who passed away this week at the age of 71: "Mr. Danbury is credited with a number of innovations for the market research industry and he, in fact, founded the first commercial sampling company."

By Mark Blumenthal on July 13, 2007 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Newsweek National Survey

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Newsweek national survey (story, results) of 1,001 adults (conducted 7/12) finds:

29% approve of the job George Bush is doing as president; 64% disapprove.

22% think Bush's "'surge' plan increasing U.S. troops in Iraq" has been a success; 64% say failure.

41% are willing to give Bush "nine more months before any cutbacks in U.S. troop levels are made;" 54% are not willing.

By Eric Dienstfrey on July 13, 2007 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cell Phones and Political Surveys: Part II

By Mark Blumenthal

Two weeks ago, I took a long look at the cell-phone only problem and whether the absence of those without landline phones is affecting survey results. Today, I want to conclude with a look at how pollsters conduct surveys via cell phone. Like Part I, this article is long, even by Pollster.com standards. So it continues after the jump.

Continue reading "Cell Phones and Political Surveys: Part II"

By Mark Blumenthal on July 13, 2007 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: AP/Ipsos Bush Approval

By Eric Dienstfrey

As noted in the Charles Franklin analysis below, an AP economics story reports that a new AP/Ipsos poll puts the Bush job approval rating a "33% in July." Pollster.com sources say more will be coming from AP later this afternoon and we will update this post with more results as they come.

UPDATE: The national survey (story, results) of 1,004 adults (conducted 7/9 through 7/11) finds:

33% approve of the way George Bush is handling his job as president; 65% disapprove.

24% approve of the way Congress is handling its job; 70% disapprove.

26% say things in this country are heading in the right direction; 69% say they are off on the wrong track.

By Eric Dienstfrey on July 13, 2007 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush Approval: Harris: 26%, Trend:27.2%, But...

By Charles Franklin

A new Harris Interactive poll taken 7/6-9/07 finds approval of President Bush at 26%, with disapproval at 73%. With the addition of this poll, the trend estimate stands at 27.2% approval. The Harris polls is in line with a recent Newsweek at 26%, CBS at 27% and Gallup at 29%. As can seen from the residual plot below, it is also well within the range of expected variation for polls around the trend estimate.

The "But..." in the title of the post is because it appears there is a new AP/Ipsos poll with approval of Bush at 33%. An AP article on economic confidence mentions this approval result, but so far I've not seen an official release of presidential approval from the new AP/Ipsos poll. Because the AP/Ipsos approval number is not yet "official" (in my book at least) I will not do a post on it yet.

However, it would be deceptive to pretend I am unaware of that result. So, the "But..." is that this AP poll should be officially released by AP soon. When that happens, and assuming the correct number actually is 33% (I assume it will be, since it was cited by an AP reporter, but you never know for sure until the release is out), then the trend estimate WITH AP will be 27.8%, rather than 27.2% with only the new Harris. BUT since AP decided to use the number in a story prior to releasing the official result, it is not yet certain (to me) that this will be their result. (Perhaps final processing of the new AP/Ipsos approval poll is not yet final, and a different result appears. But if so, I am surprised it was allowed to be used in a story.)

The bottom line is that either way approval continues in the upper 20s, and that certainly remains bad for the administration.

With the Harris poll (but NOT AP) there are not concerns in the diagnostics below, and the recent polling continues to follow the trend as we would expect.

Cross-posted at Political Arithmetik.

By Charles Franklin on July 13, 2007 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: ARG National Primary

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new American Research Group national survey of likely primary voters (conducted 7/6 through 7/12) finds:

Among 600 Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Barack Obama (38% to 25%) in a national primary; former Sen. John Edwards trails at 16%.

Among 600 Republicans, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani leads former Sen. Fred Thompson (30% to 17%) in a national primary; Sen. John McCain trails at 14%, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Gov. Mitt Romney both at 10%.

By Eric Dienstfrey on July 13, 2007 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: Gallup 08, Immigration, Sicko

By Eric Dienstfrey

Additional analysis from recent Gallup national surveys find:

Among 916 registered voters, Sen. Hillary Clinton runs at 45%, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 39%, Mayor Michael Bloomberg at 12% in a three-way general election match-up; 13% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats support Bloomberg (conducted 7/6 through 7/8).

58% of Americans say "immigrants to the United States" are making the country's crime situation worse; 4% say better. 46% say they are making the country's economy in general worse; 28% say better (conducted 6/4 through 6/24).

Gallup's Yasmin Vossoughian looks at public opinion on the state of health care in Cuba, France, Canada, and the United States in response to the data in Michael Moore's film health-care themed film, Sicko.

By Eric Dienstfrey on July 13, 2007 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)