Pollster.com

March 28, 2008

"Outliers" for 3-28

By Mark Blumenthal

Kathy Frankovic explains the utility of panel-back surveys for measuring change, and shares more data on their follow-up survey on Obama's speech on race.

Jennifer Agiesta digs deeper into the recent national surveys and sees "potential negatives on both Democratic candidates... percolating beneath the stable horse-race numbers."

Frank Newport sees potential positive and negative for Democrats in the Gallup "defector" data.

Hart and McInturff explain what pollsters mean by "oversample."

Mark Mellman wonders if the reduced press coverage of the Iraq war explains Americans' "more benign picture of the situation" there.

David Hill uses poll data on Americans leaving "the faith of their youth" to argue that Barack Obama should leave his church.

Todd Domke proposes a cross between "a pollster's focus group, Lincoln-Douglas-style debate, jury trial, and a secret ballot" to resolve the Florida/Michigan impasse.

Gary Andres sees "some positive views" about George Bush beyond his job approval numbers.

Ken Walsh sees the same in some polling from GOP Pollster Ed Goeas.

Marc Ambinder plugs some numbers into Jay Cost's popular vote projection spreadsheet.

By Mark Blumenthal on March 28, 2008 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Bradley" Still in the Race?

By Mark Blumenthal

Mickey Kaus has been arguing over the last week that the greater emphasis on racial issues in the Clinton-Obama nomination contest may have caused a return of the so-called Bradley-Wilder effect. The term refers to a pattern observed in the 1980s and early 1990s when the white opponents of African American candidates would do better on election day than indicated in pre-election polls (explained in more detail here, links to other sources here). Kaus thinks we may have evidence of a re-emergence of Bradley-Wilder in the results from the Gallup Daily and the Rasmussen Reports automated tracking surveys. Last Sunday, he wrote:

Gallup's national tracking poll has Obama retaking the lead over Hillary after bottoming out on the day of his big race speech. Rasmussen's robo-poll, on the other hand, shows Obama losing ground since last Tuesday. True, even Rasmussen doesn't seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on his survey's 6-point shift. But isn't this week's primary race exactly the sort of environment--i.e.., the issue of race is in the air--when robo-polling is supposed to have an advantage over the conventional human telephone polling used by Gallup? Voters wary of looking like bigots to a live operator--'and why didn't you like Obama's plea for mutual for understanding that all the editorial pages liked?'--might lie about their opinions, a phenomenon known as the Bradley Effect. But they might be more willing to tell the truth to a machine. ...

On Tuesday, I noted that the overall results from Gallup and Rasmussen were not that different when looking at data collected from March 14 (the day the Wright story broke) through the previous day:

• Live Interviewer Gallup Daily: Clinton +2 (47% to 45)
• Automated Rasmussen Reports: Obama +1 (45% to 44%)

Kaus updated his original post and responded that we should be focusing on the trends:

[I]f you look at the trend since Obama's 3/18 speech--which is what arguably charged the campaign with high-minded condemnation of racism and MSM sympathy for Obama of the sort that might produce a Bradley Effect--Obama gains 6 points in Gallup and loses 6 in Rasmussen through last Friday (and he's since lost one more on Rasmussen). That seems like a non-small difference. ...

He has continued to note the difference:

[3/25] Obama has now lost a net of 8 points on Rasmussen since the 18th, and 11 points since the 14th. On Gallup, he's gained several points.

[Yesterday] Bradley still in the race: Gallup (telephone poll) and Rasmussen (robo-poll) continue to diverge.

I have been puzzling over the trend and thought it would be helpful to post a chart of the data in question. In the chart below (click for a larger pop-up version), Kaus is focusing on the trends since the Obama/Wright speech on March 18. The dates on the chart are end-dates for each survey release. Keep in mind that Gallup reports a three-day rolling average, and Rasmussen reports a rolling four-day average, so the trend line reactions would theoretically lag slightly behind events.

If you overlook today's release, the chart does show a largely divergent trend, though most of the difference occurs in the three to four days after the speech. However, if you step back and look at the complete time series, the Gallup and Rasmussen lines are no more divergent now than they have been all along. In fact, if you remove three days of live-interviewer Gallup data -- the March 16-18 release which had Clinton (the white candidate) leading by seven points -- the divergent trend largely disappears.

Yes, for the last week, Obama has done better in the Rasmussen (automated) survey than the Gallup (live interviewer) data, but the difference is on the same scale as similar gaps since January that have see-sawed back and forth, favoring neither candidate consistently. So call me crazy, but I just don't see compelling evidence of a return of the Bradley-Wilder effect in these data, especially keeping in mind the potential for random variation in the trends.

One interesting pattern here -- and to be honest, I'm not sure what to make of it -- involves large gaps opposite of what we would expect from the Bradley-Wilder effect throughout much of January and again briefly centered on February 5/6 and March 18: At those times, the white candidate (Clinton) does better on the live-interviewer (Gallup) surveys than on the automated (Rasmussen) surveys. Also, as the charts below demonstrate, most of that difference occurs in the percentage supporting Clinton, not the percentage supporting Obama.

The difference in January may have had something to do with how the two surveys asked about other candidates still in the race, and the gaps afterward purely random, although that's a pure guess. Anyone have any better theories?

By Mark Blumenthal on March 28, 2008 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Guest Pollster: Presidential Net Promoters

By Guest Pollster

[Today's Guest Pollster contribution comes from Alex Lundry, research director at the Republican polling firm, TargetPoint Consulting.]

TargetPoint Consulting recently partnered with the Cook Political Report and RT Strategies, adding a new political research question called the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to their most recent national omnibus survey (March 6-9, N=802). This measure, adapted from the world of consumer research, attempts to measure voter enthusiasm and passion for a candidate. The results provide some new understanding to how the general election for President could shape up given either an Obama or Clinton candidacy.

First introduced by Frederick Reichheld in the Harvard Business Review and since popularized in his book, "The Ultimate Question," the NPS is used in the business world as a customer satisfaction metric, measuring a customer's likelihood to recommend a product, brand or company to someone else. This captures a number of difficult-to-quantify emotions, attitudes and preferences, by posing it as a recommendation. A recommendation is the ultimate endorsement, showing just how passionately you feel about a particular company or product. A recommendation means putting your own reputation on the line; an indication of loyalty, passion, and even the latent potential for word of mouth buzz.

The question is simple:

On a 0 to 10 scale, with 0 being "not at all likely" and 10 being "extremely likely," how likely is it that you would recommend voting for [INSERT CANDIDATE NAME] in the next election to a friend or colleague?

The NPS is calculated by subtracting the number of detractors (ratings of 0-6) from the number of promoters (ratings of 9 and 10). In the business world, +16 is the median score of more than 400 companies across 28 industries; CostCo has one of the highest known scores at +81. (See the NPS website for more details and similar statistics).

Studies have shown a direct and significant correlation between a business' score and company growth - specifically, a 7 point increase in overall NPS or a 2 point reduction in the percentage of detractors can each account for one percent of positive growth, thus indicating the potential electoral consequences of this measure once adapted to political polling.

To be fair, the NPS is not without it's own set of detractors and it's validity in the political world remains to be seen. For now we can only speculate about any correlation with electoral outcomes. Nonetheless, there is some promising historical data: TargetPoint began tracking the NPS on a generic congressional ballot in September of 2005 through August of 2006 and the results did seem to forebode the Republican fall from favor and the impending Democratic advances of that November. During that time the GOP NPS had a distinctively downward slope, falling from a high of +56 to a low of +11; meanwhile, the generic Democratic NPS trended upwards from a low of +32 to a high of +56.

But what about this year's election? In an Obama/McCain match-up McCain leads 45-43, but the NPS indicate some form of an "enthusiasm advantage" for Obama: among Obama voters, the NPS is +28 (53% promoters minus 25% detractors); while 48% of McCain voters are promoters and 31% detractors for a NPS of +17. Hence an Obama advantage of 11 points.

The Clinton/McCain ballot (McCain leads 47-45) again shows a Democrat enthusiasm advantage, though a slightly smaller one of 8 points (McCain: 44% promoter, 33% detractor, +11 NPS; Clinton: 48% promoter, 29% detractor, +19 NPS).

Though there is little surface difference between the candidates, deeper analysis indicates two critical demographic differences: enthusiasm among youth and Independent voters. The NPS among Independents voting for Obama (+30) is a stunning forty-nine points higher than the score among Independent McCain voters (-19). Interestingly, McCain actually wins Independents against both Clinton and Obama, but his Indy voters are much less enthusiastic than either Obama's or Clinton's. Clinton's NPS among her independent voters is also negative (-5), and a full 45 points short of Obama's. It appears that a Clinton candidacy would remove any passion or enthusiasm among Democrat-voting Independents.

Finally, we see nearly identical performance among 18-40 year olds. McCain's NPS among this age group is +7 and -5 against Obama and Clinton respectively; Clinton actually performs worse than McCain here, with a negative score of -13, while Obama dominates at +32. Again, we are left wondering what would happen to this youth enthusiasm should Clinton become the nominee.

Keep in mind that these are scores among people already voting for that particular candidate. While a vote is still all that matters on Election Day, a recommendation driven campaign can produce new votes faster, cheaper and in a more trustworthy and impactful way than traditional campaign appeals of advertising, direct mail and robo-calls.

By Guest Pollster on March 28, 2008 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: The Daily Rasmussen

By Eric Dienstfrey

Rasmussen Reports

National
Obama 46, Clinton 44
McCain 49, Obama 42... McCain 49, Clinton 41

Favorable / Unfavorable
McCain: 54 / 43
Clinton: 45 / 53
Obama: 49 / 49

Also
Gore Not Answer to Dem Divide

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 28, 2008 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

POLL: The Daily Gallup

By Eric Dienstfrey

Gallup Poll

National
Obama 50, Clinton 42
McCain 46, Obama 44, McCain 48, Clinton 44

Also
Economic Anxiety Surges in Past Year
Slight Downtick in Economic Pessimism

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 28, 2008 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

NAES 2000 Data on Primary Defectors

By Mark Blumenthal

Brian Schaffer, who on Wednesday reminded us of some Pew Research Center results from March 2000 on defectors from presidential candidates supported in primaries, has done one better. He went back to the data from the Annenberg National Election Study (NAES) in 2000 and checked the defection rates of supporters of John McCain and Bill Bradlee during the fall campaign:

How common were defections? Fairly common, actually. Even in October, only 49% of former McCain voters intended to vote for Bush and 29% were planning on casting their ballot for Gore (in March of 2000, a Pew Survey reported that 51% of McCain supporters planned to vote for Gore). McCain supporters were also far more likely to be undecided late in the race as 11% of this group reported that they still did not know who they intended to vote for.

Former Bradley supporters were also divided. While 52% of this group planned on voting for Gore, another 28% intended to vote for Bush.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both former Bradley and former McCain supporters appeared more likely to prefer 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader. About 10% of Bradley supporters and 7% of McCain supporters expressed their intent to vote for Nader.

Schaffner also notes that since "since turnout in primaries is usually far less than it is in general elections," the defectors made for relatively small portion of those that ultimately supported Bush or Gore:

Based on this survey, former McCain voters accounted for 4% of those who intended to vote for Gore while former Bradley supporters accounted for 2.6% of those who voted for Bush. (Interestingly, citizens who voted for Gore in the primaries accounted for 1.8% of those who intended to vote for Bush and Bush primary supporters were 1% of those who intended to vote for Gore).

Of course, as both Schaffner and many of our readers point out, 2000 is not 2008. Both party primaries were wrapped up fairly quickly. How big a factor defections will be in 2008 may depend on how long it takes to resolve the Democratic nomination fight.

By Mark Blumenthal on March 28, 2008 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

POLL: ARG Pennsylvania Dems

By Eric Dienstfrey

American Research Group

Pennsylvania
Clinton 52, Obama 39

By Eric Dienstfrey on March 28, 2008 11:07 AM |