The Gallup Daily (National)
Clinton 46, Obama 45
Obama 45, McCain 44... Clinton 46, McCain 44
Rasmussen Reports (National)
Obama 45, Clinton 43
McCain 48, Obama 41... McCain 49, Clinton 42
Article
Favorable / Unfavorable
McCain: 56 / 40
Clinton: 45 / 53
Obama: 47 / 51
By Mark Blumenthal on April 19, 2008 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
A new Newsweek poll gives Barack Obama a 54%-35% lead over Hillary Clinton among Democratic voters (story here, detailed results here, and thanks to Newsweek and their pollster, Princeton Survey Research Associates International, for a full and complete disclosure of the details of their survey. A model others should be encouraged to follow.)
The Newsweek poll raised a few eyebrows for its 19 point Obama lead, considerably more than other recent polls, and beyond the 10.4 point Obama lead in our trend estimator. However, a closer look at recent data shows that Newsweek is not far from other recent data. Newsweek is the 6th poll in April with Obama at or above 50%, while five April polls put him below 50%. With Clinton, Newsweek is the 4th April poll putting her at or below 40%, while eight polls have her above 40%. So Newsweek shows a larger Obama lead than others, but it is not as far out of line as may first appear. (Note in the counts of polls above, we only count independent samples of the Gallup daily tracker, so dont' count each of their daily results as new polls.)
As you can see from the plots below, we've not seen many recent outliers in the national Democratic nomination polling, and the new Newsweek is well within the 95% confidence interval.
All that said, our trend estimate for the race puts Obama at 50.2% and Clinton at 39.8%, a significant gain for Obama during the month of April. Since late March, Clinton has suffered a somewhat greater downward slope while Obama's gains have been a bit more shallow, implying a slight gain among undecided voters.
The Newsweek poll also has some interesting internal results. As with virtually all this year's polling, Obama has a substantial lead among Independents who will vote in the Democratic primary or who lean Democratic: 61% to 28% for Clinton. What is a key to Obama's strength in the Newsweek poll is he ALSO leads among self-declared Democrats 51% to 38%, a group Clinton has won in most contests. If real (and I want to see more data before I accept this change) then Obama may be winning the consensus among party rank and file that will be key to persuading Superdelegates to move strongly in his direction. So long as he trails among the strongest party identifiers, that case is less persuasive. Pennsylvania provides a new test of this possible change in support. (Obama continues to trail in our Pennsylvania estimates, so it is unlikely he has so far persuaded a majority of Democratic identifiers there, though stay tuned for Tuesday's exit polls.)
The other important shifts in this national Newsweek poll is that Obama leads among men 57%-31% but also among women 52%-38%. Again this would represent an important gain among women.
The age gradient in Obama support has been interesting all year. In the Newsweek poll, he wins 18-39 year olds by 62%-28%, as usual, but also wins 40-59 year olds by 54-36%. In past exit polls, his "break even point" has varied among age groups from as low as 40 (i.e. losing all groups over 40 years old) to as high as 59 (only losing those over 60 years old.). More astonishing here is he gains a plurality of those over 60, 47%-41%, which if true would be his best performance among older voters all year.
The area of the Newsweek poll where Obama still suffers is among working class or poor whites, where he trails badly, 35%-54%. In contrast he leads 52%-35% among upper and middle class whites. That class divide remains a critical issue for his campaign.
A caution here as well. In any poll with such high overall support, the support almost has to reach across many subgroups (not quite as a mathematical certainty, but as a strong empirical regularity.) So we should be careful not to accept the depth of Obama's support among Democrats, women and those over 40 years old until we have more evidence from additional polling. In the exit polls this year, where we see big Obama wins (VA, MD, WI) we also saw him making strong inroads among these groups. But with the margin he achieved in these states, it would have been hard NOT to have done well across groups. Be careful of the cause and effect attributions here. It is a challenging state like Pennsylvania that can reveal how deeply into the various demographic groups Obama has managed to extend his appeal. But with those cautions, Newsweek's poll shows some evidence that the national Democratic constituency is moving in his direction across a number of groups.
If these changes are real, we'll see new polling that reflects it. If just a favorable poll (though not an outlier!) then new polling will show that these groups are not quite as enthusiastic for Obama as the current poll suggested.
Cross posted at PoliticalArithmetik.com
By Charles Franklin on April 19, 2008 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
Zogby/Newsmax
Pennsylvania
4/17 through 4/18, n=608 likely Democratic primary voters
Clinton 47, Obama 42
By Mark Blumenthal on April 19, 2008 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Newsweek
Survey of 1,356 adults, 1,209 registered voters, 586 registered voters that identify or lean Democratic, interviews conducted 4/16-17 (article, results).
National
Among Registered Voters:
Vote Preference:
Obama 48, McCain 44
Clinton 47, McCain 43
Gore 49, McCain 46
Favorable/Unfavorable:
Obama 57/36
Clinton 49/47
McCain 52/42
Among Registered/Dem-Dem Leaners:
Obama 54, Clinton 35 ("Most like to see as Democratic nominee")
By Mark Blumenthal on April 19, 2008 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Back in September, Eric Dienstfrey, ever the model employee, asked politely if he might be able to take a week off in April for the Passover holiday and to attend to a family obligation.
I said: "April? Please. That should be an easy month." And in a managerial move that was not the most far sighted, I told him it would be fine to take off the week off starting on April 18.
Good planning, huh?
And of course, had I thought about it for a minute, I would have remembered that I would be likely to have travel plans of my own for Passover (which begins tomorrow night), especially given that April 20 is also my parent's 50th wedding anniversary...and my wife's birthday.
So this is a long way of saying that Eric will be off for the next week and in about 15 minutes I'll going offline to enjoy all the pleasures of a six hour drive from Washington, DC to Cleveland Ohio. As such, updates will certainly be infrequent for the rest of the day and over the weekend. Knowing how closely everyone (including yours truly) is following the Pennsylvania primary, I will post and update as often as I can.
Meanwhile, for those alert readers who often email us with the latest survey, please feel free to post comments to this post today with links to any new polls (just remember, no more than 2-3 links per comment or it won't publish).
And finally, if you happen to be dining in Breezewood, PA later tonight and see a guy trying to concentrate on his laptop while his wife and two young kids eat, well, that will probably be me.
[Typos and grammar repaired - and if you see more of such errors than usual this week, you will know another reason we value Eric]
By Mark Blumenthal on April 18, 2008 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
There is a lot of interest in the differences among pollsters, and especially what effect they have on the perception of the race. Here at Pollster, the interest is specifically on the question of whether individual pollsters drive our results, and if so by how much.
So here is a quick look at those effects in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary.
The chart above shows the trend estimates that result from dropping each pollster in turn, and reestimating the trend without that pollster. This is a specific test of how much it matters whether we include a particular pollster or not.
Over the 15 pollsters we have represented in Pennsylvania, the estimates excluding each one for Clinton range from 46.6% to 48.3. The estimate with all pollsters included is 47.4% for Clinton.
For Obama, the estimates range from 41.2% to 42.5%, with the estimate for all pollsters at 42.0%.
The upshot is that pollsters do matter, but none drive the results by very much. A 1.7% range on Clinton and a 1.3% range on Obama for the trend estimate is very small compared to the range we see across the raw poll results. Another example of the greater stability of the trend estimators we use compared to the substantial variability across polls.
We can look at the effects of each pollster by comparing the trend estimate without that pollster to the estimate with them. The higher the effect, the more that pollster drives our trend estimate up for that candidate. Negative effects means the pollster drives our estimate down. Again, this is compared to the trend with and without the individual pollster.
The two charts below show these effects for Clinton and for Obama.
For Clinton, SurveyUSA has the highest positive impact on our trend estimate, followed by Rasmussen. At the opposite end, PPP has the largest negative effect on our trend, with Zogby/Newsmax the next largest negative effect. Other pollsters are clustered rather closely around zero.
And it is important to note that even the four largest positive and negative effects are all less that 1 percentage point.
For Obama's trend, Quinnipiac shows the largest positive effect, followed by Zogby and PPP with near identical effects. On the negative end, SurveyUSA has the most negative effect of Obama trend. Again, none of these effects is as much as one percentage point, and SurveyUSA's is less that half a percentage point. Other pollsters have less impact.
We can also look at the joint effects. These are the same as seen individually above but plotted against one another.
Pollsters do matter, and outliers matter even more. But the net effect of any individual pollster on our trend estimates in Pennsylvania are modest, especially when viewed in comparison to the wide range of raw poll results for each candidate. Another advantage of combining information across polls rather than pick single polls we "like".
Cross posted at PoliticalArithmetik.com
By Charles Franklin on April 18, 2008 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Here is an update on the Pennsylvania Trend Estimates for both the standard estimator and the more sensitive one.
The difference is small: 0.3 for Clinton and 0.8 for Obama. But hey, it can be a game of inches. Either way it looks like about a 5 point margin right now.
(See earlier posts for details on the standard and sensitive estimate. The sensitive is about twice as responsive to the data, but tends to chase ghosts.)
Cross posted at PoliticalArithmetik.com
By Charles Franklin on April 18, 2008 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Rasmussen Reports
National
Obama 46, Clinton 41
McCain 48, Obama 42... McCain 50, Clinton 41
Article
Favorable / Unfavorable