Pollster.com

October 19, 2007

24% Leftovers

By Mark Blumenthal

Clinton pollster Mark Penn claims, at a reporter breakfast, "I think you’re going to see as much as 24% of Republican women defect and make a major difference nationwide in terms of, I think, the emotional element of potentially having the first woman nominee."**

Obama pollster Joel Benenson (once a principal in Penn's firm) quickly responds with a memo calling Penn's claim "entirely baseless and refuted by a number of public polls."

The Washington Post's Jon Cohen provides some context, including the finding that a 24 percent showing among Republican women "would significantly outperform any Democratic candidate since 1972."

Mark Penn then blogs back: An unspecified internal poll shows Clinton's support increasing "to 13 percent" among Republican women, while undecided "surged to 11 percent, so a total of 24 percent would either vote for her or consider voting for her."

Ben Smith, who followed the story all day, concludes: "if we can get Joel Benenson and [Edwards pollster] Harrison Hickman blogs, this could get fun." Amen brother. Or maybe just occasional "Guest Pollster" gigs at a certain poll obsessed web site?

First Read reports a memo by Biden campaign manager Luis Navarro that cites recent polling to claim his candidate is sneaking up on Bill Richardson.

Marc Ambinder shares a memo from McCain advisor Rick Davis that "pours water on Giuliani's electability argument…or tries to anyway."

And in other news…

Frank Newport reviews "where things stand" in campaign 2008.

Gary Langer looks at the President's ratings and tells us "where he's at."

Kathy Frankovic considers Al Gore and the way perceptions can change as former presidents and vice presidents shift from political figures to "elder statesment" and back again.

Mark Mellman shares results showing Americans "overwhelmingly oppose key elements of the Bush administration's surveillance agenda."

David Hill argues that, despite "growing evidence that the Democratic Party will expand its majorities in both the House and Senate," voters will resist one-party control by the Democrats.

Evan Tracey reports that two thirds of the television ads of the Democratic presidential candidates have focused on health care and Iraq.

As for the boy from Cleveland, to quote Ebby Calvin LaLoosh in Bull Durham, "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."

**The quotation comes from Ben Smith's blog and now reflects his "slightly corrected" version that is "slightly more hedged." The original version read: "You're going to see 24 percent of Republican women voters defect because of the emotional element of having a woman nominee." Thanks to reader rilkefan for the edit.

By Mark Blumenthal on October 19, 2007 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: CBS Republican Primary

By Eric Dienstfrey

Additional results from the most recent CBS News national survey (story, results) of 1,282 adults (conducted 10/12 through 10/16) finds:

• Among 372 likely Republican primary voters asked to choose among five candidates, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani leads former Sen. Fred Thompson (29% to 21%) in a national primary; Sen. John McCain trails at 18%, former Gov. Mitt Romney at 12%, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee at 4%.

• 27% of likely Republican primary voters would "definitely" vote for Giuliani if he is the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2008; 36% would "consider" voting for him, 11% "definitely would not" vote for him.

By Eric Dienstfrey on October 19, 2007 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

October 18, 2007

A Pollster Grinch Effect?

By Mark Blumenthal

While pondering some new poll results from Iowa last night, MyDD's Jon Singer asked some good questions:

How do you come up with a turnout model when you don't know what day the caucuses are going to be held? Specifically, does anyone actually believe that turnout for a Thursday night January 3 caucus, when many voters just won't have the time to take two hours to participate, would be the same as the turnout on a Saturday afternoon January 5 caucus, when significantly fewer voters will be working or have just gotten off of work? Might not the turnout also be different were the Democratic caucuses to be held on Tuesday night January 14, which Ben Smith says is a possibility?

It could be the case that the sentiments of voters 1 through 125,000 are not terribly different from those of voters 125,001 through 150,000 or 175,000 or 200,000. But then again, it also could be the case that those going to caucus for the first time ever or even the first time in many years are a whole lot different from those who are already pretty determined to keep up their streak of making it to the caucuses every four years.

So do we need to consider a "pollster Grinch Effect? Does uncertainty surrounding the date of the Iowa caucuses make it even more difficult for pollsters to identify and sample "likely caucus goers?" Yes and yes, but...

While Singer is asking all the right questions, he is probably giving pollsters too much credit for our ability to divine likely caucus goers with laser-like precision, regardless of our assumption about the level of turnout. A public opinion poll is basically a blunt instrument when it comes to "modeling" likely caucus participants. The primary measures that most public pollsters use to select likely caucus goers are self-reports of interest in the caucus, and intent to participate and (in a few cases) self-reports of past participation. Unfortunately, respondents notoriously overstate their intent to vote. Most want to show an interest in doing their civic duty, especially when asked by a stranger on the telephone. So rather than take responses at face value, most pollsters use several different questions in combination to try to narrow their "likely voter" subgroup to some reasonable number.

A few public polls in Iowa have sampled from lists of registered voter lists, a procedure that at least provides an accurate way to screen out non-registrants and sort out those registered as Democrats, Republicans or with no affiliation. But as ABC's Gary Langer points out, those lists only eliminate the roughly 17% of the adult population that is either not registered or identified as "inactive" voters by Iowa's Secretary of State. The record of actual party affiliation is helpful to pollsters but not a conclusive indicator of their caucus of choice, since Iowa voters can register or declare their party affiliation on caucus night.

Only one or two public Iowa polls have used actual vote history to select their respondents, and -- except for the recent polls conducted for the One Campaign -- none have used past caucus participation to select their likely caucus-goer samples.

So the bottom line is that even if we knew exactly how many voters planned to participate, modeling the likely caucus goers comes down to methodology decisions that amount to an educated guess, at best. And even then, we have very little idea how many Iowans will participate. Consider the estimated turnout from past years (from an offline source: Rhodes Cook's invaluable Race for the Presidency: Winning the 2004 Nomination):

Look closely at the contested Democratic races, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004. "Estimated" turnout varied enormously, from an estimated 60,000 to 124,000. And as we learned last week, some have expressed doubt about the 2004 estimate, since caucus organizers ran out of sign-in sheets and failed to record name and address information for nearly twenty thousand participants.

And finally, we have to consider that every campaign is doing everything it can to identify and, ultimately, turn out voters who are not typical caucus goers. Some are devoting literally millions of dollars to microtargeting, field staff and various forms of "voter contact" to alter the turnout in their favor.

So - before we contemplate the Grinch Effect - what level of turnout is likely in 2008? Who knows?

What this means for the polls we plot and obsess over is that they are, at best, blunt measures of voter preferences based in Iowa, and no two pollsters define "likely caucus goers" alike. They do give us a decent sense of trends - who is gaining or falling -- especially for surveys done by the same pollster using a constant methodology. However, the "point estimate" for any candidate on any one poll has a lot of room for error, the kind that has absolutely nothing to do with the statistical "margin of error."

By Mark Blumenthal on October 18, 2007 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

GUEST POLLSTER: SCHIP - Gallup Responds

By Guest Pollster

[This Guest Pollster's Corner contribution comes from Lydia Saad, Senior Editor of The Gallup Poll, responding to criticism posted earlier today by Alan I. Abramowitz.]

Alan, I see your point about how Gallup's question explaining the difference between Bush's income threshold and the Democrats' threshold could have confused respondents. You overlook the fact that we set up the question with this introduction to the series: "As you may know, Congress is considering a bill that would increase the number of children eligible for government subsidized health insurance, but the Democrats in Congress and President Bush disagree on how much to increase the program." But your point is well-taken.

However, our question measuring concern about the Democrats' bill being a step toward socialized medicine isn't "biased" -- it was intentionally written to convey Bush's counterargument. That was the intent -- to test the strength of socialized medicine as a counterargument. And indeed we found a slim majority willing to say they are concerned. We didn't conclude from this that Americans think the bill WILL lead to socialized medicine. As you note, we merely said that Americans are sympathetic to the argument: "Americans are also generally sympathetic to Bush's concern about the program leading to socialized medicine."

It is always a challenge to write clear and balanced questions about complex policy issues. Along those lines, I would go further than your critique of Gallup, and submit that all of the public polling on SCHIP I've seen thus far can be criticized in one regard or another. Yesterday I saw this question by CNN which seems to suggest that SCHIP is a new $35 billion program for children in middle income families, and that Bush opposes the program. I see what CNN was trying to do (isolate the question to the program expansion) but their wording just doesn't succeed at accurately describing what the veto/override conflict is all about.

26A. As you may know, President Bush vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would create a program to spend 35 billion dollars to provide health insurance to some children in middle-income families. Do you think Congress should vote to create that program by overriding Bush's veto, or do you think Congress should vote to block that program by sustaining Bush's veto?

The ABC question you applaud is another reasonable attempt, but still conveys the sense that the policy choice is between supporting the Democrats' plan and not providing any insurance coverage for "millions of low-income children." And since they ask if Congress should vote to override Bush's veto, they should have a follow-up asking what should happen if that override fails: i.e. Now that Bush has vetoed the bill, should the Democrats and Republicans in Congress work together to pass a new compromise bill, or should they let the program expire?

Otherwise we are just falling into the same political traps the Democrats and Republicans are setting for each other, and not really finding out what kind of government sponsored children's health care coverage Americans want for the country.

Americans probably don't have a great command of the details of the SCHIP debate, but half say they are paying very or somewhat close attention to it. That's about the midpoint for public attention to policy-debates in Washington. Americans clearly have some opinions worth tapping, and the challenge is to probe further for a more thorough and accurate understanding of whether Americans would rather have the existing program that covers families earning up to twice the poverty level, or whether the program should be expanded to include families earning more than that. Separately, we can find out who Americans would blame if the program expires: Bush for vetoing the congressional bill, or the Democrats for not being willing to pass a compromise bill.

None of the polling I've seen thus far -- neither on a question by question basis, nor in its totality -- answers those questions for me.

Lydia Saad

Senior Editor, The Gallup Poll

By Guest Pollster on October 18, 2007 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: CNU Virginia Senate

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new Christopher Newport University's Center for Public Policy statewide survey of 700 registered voters in Virginia (conducted 9/27 through 10/1) finds:

• 55% approve of the job Gov. Tim Kaine is doing; 25% disapprove, 10% are mixed.

• Former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner leads both Republican Rep. Tom Davis and former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore (51% to 27% each) in statewide general election match-ups for U.S. Senate.

By Eric Dienstfrey on October 18, 2007 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: CBS Bush, SCHIP

By Eric Dienstfrey

A new CBS News national survey (story, results) of 1,282 adults nationwide (conducted 10/12 through 10/16) finds:

• 30% approve of the way George Bush is handling his job as president; 61% disapprove.

• 81% favor expanding a governmend program that "provides health insurance for some children in low-income families;