Bouncing Polls
Mark Blumenthal | September 8, 2008
Topics: Bounce , Bump , Conventions , John McCain , Panel-back survey , Sarah Palin
As is obvious by our traffic, the news over the last 24 hours and the pace of new national polls dropping this afternoon, interest in political poll numbers is right now as high as it gets. Today's "cable catnip" from USA Today/Gallup (as our friends at First Read called it) have everyone pondering all of the usual polling controversies, including likely voter models, party weighting, weekend interviewing and the like. So our cup runneth over.
Here are a few quick thoughts:
- The post from Charles Franklin this afternoon, if you haven't read it yet, is as good a review anywhere about what we can say about the national trend on the basis of all of the data available. Charles promises updates as more polls become available, so stay tuned.
- Although most of the new polls out today are based on interviews conducted entirely after "the completion of the GOP convention," (as Gallup put it), we should remember that the Republican convention dominated the news on Friday and, to a lesser extent, continued to do so for much of the weekend. I was as guilty as anyone last week in leaping to analyze polls conducted over the weekend between the two conventions, but I know a few pollsters that would urge us to avoid characterizing public opinion at all in the period when conventions dominate news coverage. We may well see some of the bounce fade as we get new polls with data collected from Sunday night forward.
- Today's polls clearly show a "bounce" favoring the McCain-Palin ticket, but what does it mean and more important, will it persist? Looking back at the historical data, we see that some convention bounces persist and some do not. The sample size of polling on past conventions seasons is just too small to be able to predict how much of what we are seeing today will persist and for how long.
- Of the polls out today, one of the more interesting is the just released CBS News survey re-interviewed with 655 registered voters first polled before the conventions in mid-August. This "panel-back" design allows the pollsters to determine which respondents changed their vote preference:
McCain's move ahead of Obama can be traced in part to movement among previously undecided voters. In this survey, CBS News re-interviewed respondents to a CBS News/New York Times poll taken in mid-August. While many previously undecided voters remain undecided, more of those re-interviewed have moved towards McCain than Obama.
Again, all caveats above apply. Like the other surveys, the new CBS poll called from Friday through Sunday evening. Still, if I am reading this paragraph correctly, the CBS pollsters are telling us that most of the "bounce" they measured occurred among undecided voters. Undecided voters tend to be less attentive to news -- as should be obvious -- are more apt to move around in response to events in the news.
By Mark Blumenthal | September 8, 2008 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments
Obama's GOTV will be registering hundreds of thousands more voters before the election, and will then have them do absentee ballots so that there will already be perhaps a million or so votes in important states before 11/4 even gets here. This is going to be Kennedy/Nixon or Bush/Gore all over again,unless something comes up that is a bombshell.
I had the opportunity to do some door to door campaigning for both the Obama and McCain campaign and found Obama's organization to blow McCain's campaign away. This exceptional organization will yield more votes than the Dean machine, but it is dangerous for the campaign to rely solely on a huge turnout. My one criticism of the campaign was that they were not contesting some of the rural counties in Ohio, writing them off a red counties. Now I do not have endless experience campaigning, but I do know that you can't win votes where you don't contest. It might also be a good idea to do more appearances in rural Ohio towns that are open to the public instead of carefully selected venues. This race is too close to let those votes go uncontested.
Does it not make sense to focus your GOTV efforts where the resources to net voters gained is the greatest? Focusing in rural areas as opposed to heavily populated urban areas would of course be a mistake, and not even Republicans do this.
Of coruse if the resources were there, they should cover it all. Certainly taking people out of states like New Mexico, Iowa and some other states and putting them in Colorado, Ohio and Virginia (for Obama) would make sense. I would even suggest pulling out of Florida despite the polling.
I heard that Kerry's GOTV efforts in Ohio were laughable compared to Bush's. Something like a bunch of disorganized granola types in very casual clothes knocking on doors, vs. more clean cut and organized folks for Bush.
I also canvased for one of the Dem's that took a Republican House seat in 2006 (first time ever), and I was struck by how the group that showed up was largely either older ex-hippie or down-and-out post-grad. The people running the campaign were very good, just the volunteers were not representative even of the majority of Democrats. I hope that Obama can change this dynamic.
How is it that the election is being swayed so forcefully by someone nobody ever heard of 10 days ago? What criteria are the people polled (the pollants?) using to make up their mind who to vote for?
Voters would have to have been living in caves for the past 25 years to not know the difference between the policies of Democrats vs Republicans. And yet in election after election the fate of the country is in the hand of "undecideds". Who are these people who can't quite tell the difference between the parties, the people who find themselves in the voting booth before they decide?
In this context I find Palin's effect extremely interesting. She is polarizing, giving no quarter in her rhetoric. That she "woke up" the undecideds and pushed them towards McCain must mean the undecideds are mostly influenced by whoever puts on the best, most entertaining, show. The show with the flashiest rhetoric. They obviously aren't deciding based on ideology, otherwise they wouldn't be undecided.
How can America survive in the face of such ignorance?
egc
Exactly. The know-nothing party flashes something shiny in the faces of the know-nothing voters and they reflexively move toward it.
R's have no explanation for why the most educated and informed voters tend to vote D.
If Obama secretly learns to bowl in the next few weeks, he's a lock.
It's so much harder to get people to love a candidate than it is to get them to hate a candidate. Democrats aren't nearly as good at playing the hate game as Republicans, and this is why the Republicans have done so well since Nixon.
I do see signs of that the Obama campaign is working on the offense more so now than it was before. He prefers a positive message, and unfortunately human nature doesn't reward this in great numbers. How many of the world's heroes never commanded an army at war? Not many. It's just that hard to play the high road in politics.
Brambster,
I do agree with you that in certain situations, it is a huge waste of resources to send volunteers out to areas with no support, but work under the assumption that because this rural area voted for Bush in the last two elections, they will vote for McCain does not make sense to me. Mainly because Obama is no John Kerry or Al Gore and these are the areas in Ohio that are being hit hardest by the economic policies of President Bush. Even if Obama was making a coherent, compelling message, it would not matter because they are ignoring the area. Whether most will admit it or not, both campaigns platforms are a referendum of President Bush.
It is funny to me that John McCain's campaign has been able to run as an "alternate" to the corrupt practices in Washington. Nevermind, that the Republicans are the one in power. Unfortunately, for Barack Obama, the selection of Biden did not help his argument that his campaign is all that different than John McCain. McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time and Biden did 70%. Those figures don't exactly lend itself to the idea that either candidate will change the political landscape. I'll repeat it again, at the very least, Obama should have selected a VP in a battleground state that will solidify that state. Ted Strickland or Joe Biden...Ohio or Delaware?
egc wrote:
"How can America survive in the face of such ignorance?"
Yes, so if you are wondering about the health of your grandchildren, you should continue worrying. The answer is that America can't survive, in any recognizable form, in the face of this level of know-nothings.
"How can America survive in the face of such ignorance?""...most educated and informed voters tend to vote D"
"Yes, so if you are wondering about the health of your grandchildren, you should continue worrying."
How can America survive in the face of such arrogance?
I have supported Obama since before he announced his presidency and I felt back then (as I do now) that he is simply "going to win". I think he has the intelligence and the charisma to do it. Right now, Obama is sitting at about 260 Electoral votes (243 if you don't count Michigan). Despite all the hoopla about Pennsylvania and Michigan, I can't find more than a single poll that has shown him behind in either state for months.
He is so very close to winning this election that it's almost impossible for me to believe that he could lose it in the end. If that happens and if he manages to let McCain take this election; then I will go on record saying that it's Obama's fault. It's his to lose. He made a clear mistake not picking Hillary. Any clear thinking person knows that she would've made it impossible to govern; but who cares? If he doesn't win in the first place, what difference would that make?
It's all down to the debates now. Forget the ground game or Palin or anything else. If he can't knock it out of the park in those debates against McCain, he's finished. He knows his weaknesses. Obama is a laywer and a Harvard grad. If he can't step up his game before that first debate and pull this thing off, then (again) I will sleep easy as an Obama true believer that he lost the election himself.
@PoliticallyGrounded:
You do realize that Biden essentially locked up Pennsylvania because he grew up in Scranton. The 70% thing really doesn't matter either because if you do the math there are really no dems even under 50%. Voting with Bush can mean supporting childhood cancer research. Because Bush supports it doesn't mean its a bad idea, it either means that it an absurdly terrible idea or its so obviously good that even GWB could figure it out.
@PoliticallyGrounded
I wouldn't necessarily trust that figure of 70%. Some places are very choosey about how they identify liberalness, conservativeness, party support and presidential support in congressional votes. For instance, the National Journal always seems to find the Democratic nominees to be the "most liberal" by playing this game", including Obama, but other places have found Obama to be a mainstream Democrat in his votes.
According to a recent Pollster posting, Biden supported Bush under 40% of the time this year, same as the Democrat's average and Obama as well. McCain however showed his "maverick" side by actually increasing his agreement with Bush while his entire party was shying away from him.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/coleman_maverick_or_mcsame.php
I think the moral of the story is that if you ever hear a stat from a Republican, you know it is false. If it comes from a Democrat, it is probably false, though not always.
egc52556: "How can America survive in the face of such ignorance?"
freddy: "How can America survive in the face of such arrogance?"
egc52556 again: freddy, to what else, besides ignorance, do you attribute the phenomenon of undecideds who suddenly break for a candidate... a candidate who did only one thing differently: picked a running mate?
I agree with Basil. Obama should secretly learn to bowl and at the right time show what a good learner he is. As an entertaining break from pounding the issues.
"How can America survive in the face of such ignorance?"
Ignorance indeed. This is not a problem limited to America, it happens in other countries, though
in less proportion and with less impact.
If America squander this opportunity for a real change, which Obama brings, it could be toast for
a very long time (may be 100+ years like McBush said as stayin in Iraq), and may be loosing its
leadership and role model attributes --- remember it has happened in the past (remember, Egypt,
Macedonia, Roman empire etc.). Beware and think about the future and people should just stop
voting base on silly sentiments and biases that does not produce good results (economy, sound
health... which are the prequisite to remaining powerful). Weak economy will make America to be
less able to defend itself --- can't some people see the connections?
Anyway your destinty in your own hands.
I have to agree with Abbey: America is an empire in decline. The British and Roman Empires fell because they overreached and their colonies broke away. In Rome, people stopped caring about keeping the Empire up and running.
So now in America, a majority or near-majority seem to be not very concerned with issues (war, health care, economy, environment, energy) and more concerned with religion. It looks like millions of people are very concerned with the religious characteristics of leaders, but not concerned with job performance. From what I've seen, these are overwhelmingly Republican voters.
So unless a god or goddess (or helpful alien) descends from the heavens in the next few years -- highly unlikely, IMO -- America will either become Balkanized or will become a third-world country. China and India will take our place, and America is unlikely to survive until its tricentennial.
Ironically, it means jobs will start coming back here when China and India find it cheaper to export their labor to America.
I recall that during the Obama/Clinton primaries, Clinton regularly out-performed with voters that made up their mind just before the primary. I strongly suspect that this will be the case with Obama/McCain to McCain's benefit. Obama is the newer face and people tend to go with the better known/incumbent in greater numbers on election day when they are undecided. I believe that this has been mentioned here before, though not necessarily outside of the incumbent context.
So on election day, I wouldn't be surprise to see a 60/40 or even 65/35 split for McCain in undecideds.
However, there is a decent chance that Obama will have advantages in turnout that negates this effect, or even nets it to his advantage. His GOTV efforts are known to be very good, and also widespread. He was the candidate primarily pushed for voter registration when running against Hillary. The AA vote is also likely to help in states like VA and NC which haven't been pushed in prior elections like other states such as PA and OH.
It would be great to know if there was a good way of measuring what the turnout might be based on comparisons of enthusiasm or other factors such as race in past elections.
Posted on September 8, 2008 7:50 PM