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August 28, 2008

The Myth of "Obama Fatigue"

By David Moore

By David Moore on August 28, 2008 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

August 24, 2008

How Pollsters Affect Poll Results

By Charles Franklin

Who does the poll affects the results. Some. These are called "house effects" because they are systematic effects due to survey "house" or polling organization. It is perhaps easy to think of these effects as "bias" but that is misleading. The differences are due to a variety of factors that represent reasonable differences in practice from one organization to another.

For example, how you phrase a question can affect the results, and an organization usually asks the question the same way in all their surveys. This creates a house effect. Another source is how the organization treats "don't know" or "undecided" responses. Some push hard for a position even if the respondent is reluctant to give one. Other pollsters take "undecided" at face value and don't push. The latter get higher rates of undecided, but more important they get lower levels of support for both candidates as a result of not pushing for how respondents lean. And organizations differ in whether they typically interview adults, registered voters or likely voters. The differences across those three groups produce differences in results. Which is right? It depends on what you are trying to estimate-- opinion of the population, of people who can easily vote if the choose to do so or of the probable electorate. Not to mention the vagaries of identifying who is really likely to vote. Finally, survey mode may matter. Is the survey conducted by random digit dialing (RDD) with live interviewers, by RDD with recorded interviews ("interactive voice response" or IVR), or by internet using panels of volunteers who are statistically adjusted in some way to make inferences about the population.

Given all these and many other possible sources of house effects, it is perhaps surprising the net effects are as small as they are. They are often statistically significant, but rarely are they notably large.

The chart above shows the house effect for each polling organization that has conducted at least five national polls on the Obama-McCain match-up since 2007. The dots are the estimated house effects and the blue lines extend out to a 95% confidence interval around the effects.

The largest pro-Obama house effect is that of Harris Interactive, at just over 4 points. The poll most favorable to McCain is Rasmussen's Tracking poll at just less than -3 points. Everyone else falls between these extremes.

Now let's put this in context. We are looking at effects on the difference between the candidates, so that +4 from Harris is equivalent to two points high on Obama and two points low on McCain. Taking half the estimated effect above gives the average effect per candidate. The average effects are at most 2 points per candidate. Not trivial, but not huge.

Estimating the house effect is not hard. But knowing where "zero" should be is very hard. A house effect of zero is saying the pollster perfectly matches some standard. The ideal standard, of course, is the actual election outcome. But we don't know that now, only after the fact in November. So the standard used here is the house effect relative to our Pollster Trend Estimate. If a pollster consistently runs 2 points above our trend, their house effect would be +2.

The house effects are calculated so that the average house effect is zero. This doesn't depend on how many polls a pollster conducts. And it doesn't mean the pollster closest to zero is the "best". It just means their results track our trend estimate on average. That can also happen if a pollster gyrates considerably above and below our trend, but balances out. A nicer result is a poll that closely follows the trend. But either pattern could produce a house effect near zero. For example, Democracy Corps and Zogby have very similar house effects near -1. But look at their plots below and you see that Democracy Corps has followed our trend quite closely, though about a point below the trend. Zogby has also been on average a point below trend, but his polls have shown large variation around the trend, with some polls as near-outliers above while others are near outliers below the trend. The net effect is the same as for Democracy Corps, but the variability of Zogby's results is much higher.

Incidentally, the Democracy Corps poll is conducted by the Democratic firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Reserch in collaboration with Democratic strategist James Carville. Yet the poll has a negative house effect of -1. Does this mean the Democracy Corps poll is biased against Obama? No. It means they use a likey voter sample, which typically produces modestly more pro-Republican responses than do registered voter or adult samples. Assuming that the house effect necessarily reflects a partisan bias is a major mistake.

How can you use these house effects? Take a pollster's latest results and subtract the house effect from their reported Obama minus McCain difference. That puts their results in the same terms as all others, centered on the Pollster.com Trend Estimate. This is especially useful if you are comparing results from two pollsters with different house effects. Removing those house differences makes their results more comparable.

What impact do house effects have on our Pollster.com Trend Estimate? A little. Our estimator is designed to resist big effects of any single pollster, but it isn't infallible, especially when some pollsters do far more polls than others or when one pollster dominates during some small period of time. We can estimate house effects, adjust for these, and reestimate our trend with house effects removed. The result runs through the center of the polls, but doesn't allow the number of polls done by an organization to be as influential.

The results are shown in the chart below. The blue line is our standard estimator and the red line is the estimate with house effects removed. Without house effects the current trend stands at +2.0 while ignoring house effects produces an estimate of +1.7. A little different, but given the range of variability across polls and the uncertainty as to where the race "really" stands, this is not a big effect.























The impact of house effects isn't always this small. Looking back along the trend we see that the red and blue lines diverged by as much as 1 point in late June, an effect due significantly to the large number of Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls during that time and few polls with positive house effects in that period. A smaller but still notable divergence occurred in late February and early March.

The bottom line is that there are real and measurable differences between polling organizations, but the magnitude of these effects is considerably less than some commentary would suggest. Many of the house effect estimates above are not statistically different from zero. Even ignoring that, the range of effects is rather small, though of course in a tight race the differences may be politically important. Finally, the effects on our Pollster.com Trend Estimate is detectable but does not lead to large distortions, even if we can see some noticeable differences at some times.

The charts below move though all the pollsters and plots their poll results compared to the standard trend and the trend removing house effects. Pollsters with fewer than 5 polls are all lumped together as "Other" pollsters. Once they get to our minimum number of polls, we'll have house effects for them too.

By Charles Franklin on August 24, 2008 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

August 14, 2008

How We Choose Polls to Plot: Part IV

By Charles Franklin

[This is Part IV of the recent discussion betwen Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklen called "How We Choose Polls to Plot." For previous posts in the discussion see parts I, II, and III].

"What happens if you leave out 'x'?" is probably the single most asked question at Pollster.com. Everyone has their favorite pollster to hate, and wonders if only that one were removed would the results be closer to the truth. It is a really good question because it goes to the heart of the robustness of our trend estimates and the role of one (or a couple) of pollsters in shaping the conventional wisdom of what "the polls show". The former issue is statistical, the later goes to how shared understandings are constructed. If our estimators are highly sensitive to any one pollster then we have a statistical problem. If one pollster unduly influences shared perceptions, then we better hope they are "right".

Today's question from Mark (and many readers) is what role the tracking polls play in our estimates. This is an issue Mark and I debated quite a lot during the winter when Gallup and Rasmussen began their daily tracking polls. Because they produce so many numbers, including all their data runs the risk that these two dominate our trend estimate to an unacceptable degree. But do they exert that much influence-- there is the question.

And just to be contrarian, take note of the opposite problem: data are valuable. You should never want to ignore information. In that sense excluding data from prolific sources is a mistake unless the data are biased in some uncorrectable way.

The first decision we reached in January was that we would only include each INDEPENDENT sample from tracking polls. This was an easy call. Rolling samples are great for daily updates but Thursday's poll isn't independent of Wednesday's because they both contain Tuesday's and Wednesday's results, if it is a three-day track. In that sense, there isn't as much new information as it seems. So we take only the independent results: Mon-Tues-Wed, Thur-Fri-Sat, Sun-Mon-Tues and so on for a three day tracker. This means we are only including independent data collections, and cuts down on the number of entries in our data that come from any single tracking poll.

Despite this, we get a lot of data in the national track from two primary sources: Rasmussen accounts for 63 of 286 data points in our national trend data. Gallup's tracker provides 41 more. (We keep Gallup's USAToday polls separate from the tracker.) And a third source, The Economist/YouGov's internet poll accounts for 24 data points. (Full Disclosure: YouGov/Polimetrix Pollster.com and supports our work here.) The next most common pollster is Zogby with only 12. So let's take a look at the influence of these top-three pollsters in terms of data. Together they account for 128 of 286 data points, or 45% of our national data.

Let's begin with recognizing that every data point MUST have some influence on our trend estimator. If it didn't then the trend would not be responding to the data! So in that simple sense, the Rasmussen, Gallup and YouGov data must play some role in determining the value of our trend estimate. That really isn't the issue that concerns people. The question is whether these three pollsters DISTORT the trends we would otherwise estimate from all other sources. It would be fine if Rasmussen or Gallup or YouGov had a huge influence on our estimate so long as their trends were exactly in line with everyone else's trends. The concern arises when there is the possibility that one of these is both influential AND out of line with the rest of the world.

We need to look at three things: the overall trend with all pollsters included, the trend only for a single pollster, and finally the trend we'd estimate if we excluded this pollster. If a pollster is different from others, that's a concern. But if they don't substantially change the trend estimate, then we aren't that worried. But if they are different AND shift the trend, then we have to worry.

So let's look at the data. The chart below plots the overall trend (the blue line), the trend for each of the three most prolific pollsters (solid red), and the trend estimate if we exclude that pollster (dashed red line). A fourth plot shows what happens if we exclude all three prolific pollsters and rely only on the 28 different pollsters who've done 12 or fewer polls each (dashed blue).

Over all our polls, we estimate an Obama advantage over McCain of 3.4 points (as of early morning on 8/14). If we exclude Gallup, the trend estimate is 3.2. If we exclude Rasmussen, the estimate is 4.5. If we exclude YouGov the estimate is 3.3. And if we omit all three (and 45% of our data) the trend estimate is 5.1. So it DOES matter which of these we include. By as little as 0.1 points or as much as 1.7 points.

The most striking thing to me about these figures is that all three tracking polls trend a bit below the overall trend, which is why omitting them all produces the biggest change in the current trend estimate. Gallup is only a bit below trend, YouGov a bit more in May but less recently. Rasmussen stands out as the most consistently below trend, with convergence only in June for a while.

At first glance, the worst thing about Rasmussen is that his trend seems much more sharply downward since late June than either other frequent pollster (both Gallup and YouGov see flat or rising Obama margins in that time.) The dashed line without Rasmussen looks flat or possibly rising slighting, while including Rasmussen with all others produces a modest downward slope recently. So is Rasmussen determining our current trend's tendency to be moving down? This is especially relevant given the upward moves by Gallup and YouGov.

The bottom right panel of the figure offers some reassurance. While Rasmussen does look different from Gallup or YouGov, when we take all three tracking polls out, the dashed blue line in the bottom right figure trends slightly down, approximately in parallel with the overall trend estimate using all the polls. To be sure, omitting the tracking polls does produce a higher current trend estimate: 5.1 vs 3.4 for all polls. Clearly the tracking polls are showing a lower margin and that is reflected here. But from my point of view, the happy news is that the trend with or without the three trackers moves in pretty much the same way over the year. Granted some minor differences, both curves move up and down at about the same time and the gap between the solid and dashed blue lines is roughly equal over time. This suggests that the effects of the three trackers may be to lower the estimated Obama margin over McCain, but they don't distort the dynamics of the race. When trends are up or trends are down, they are reflected in both the with and without tracker estimates.

It is reassuring that both the Gallup and YouGov trackers have very little influence on the overall trend estimate. Including or excluding either of these polls has very little effect on the trend estimate.

A final point is what this says about the validity of the polls. If Gallup and YouGov are flat or slightly up, and Rasmussen is sharply down, how are we to know which is "right"? The data here say a bit of both are right. Gallup and YouGov do somewhat better jobs tracking the overall trend than does Rasmussen. But the recent decline in Obama support, even though modest, is not captured by Gallup or YouGov. Rasmussen clearly overstates the decline (compared to other polling) but the consensus of the 158 polls NOT from these three sources is that there has been a little downturn in Obama's lead since late June.

It is easy to exaggerate how large these differences are, especially in light of the intrinsically hard problem of knowing what "the truth" is at any moment. The chart below compares the trend estimates we would get from dropping each of the 31 different pollsters in our our data. Two things stand out. Dropping any single pollster has very little effect on the trend estimate, with one exception. Omitting Rasmussen, who is both the most prolific pollster and the one with considerably more variation than others, does make a noticeable difference in the trend estimate. But the reassuring element of this graph is that even the line omitting Rasmussen still falls within the 95% confidence interval around our overall trend estimate. While there was a time in March when the "without Rasmussen" line moves just outside the 95% confidence interval, this is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, including now, the trend without Rasmussen is NOT significantly different from the trend over all pollsters (or the trend omitting any individual pollster.)

So what do we conclude from this exercise? I'd say that any individual pollster can have important effects on our trend estimate under the right circumstances. Concentrating a lot of unusual polls in a short time span can shift our estimates. But I am encouraged that while there are important differences in Gallup, Rasmussen and YouGov trends, none of them seem to outright dominate our trend estimates. Even Rasmussen's effects look less important when we see what all the non-tracking polls are showing. We might worry about what the right level of support is, but the shape of the trends looks pretty robust no matter who is included or excluded. While there are differences of as much as 1.7 points in the estimated margin, it is worth taking a deep breath and appreciating the margin of error in these and all other estimates of candidate support right now. The current confidence interval covers an range from +1.1 to + 5.2. That 4.1 point range looks pretty large compared to a 1.7 point difference among estimators. Meanwhile, individual polls range over a MUCH wider spread- over at least 10 points and often more. The trend estimate manages to narrow that range of uncertainty by more that 50%. A good achievement. But not one that is precise to tenths of a percentage point, nor one that is immune to some effects of individual pollsters.

By Charles Franklin on August 14, 2008 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

August 13, 2008

Obama's Dog Days of Summer?

By Steve Lombardo

The first two weeks of August have not been good for Barack Obama. As we said last week, McCain's "Celebrity" ad--along with his campaign's subsequent attacks on Obama--blunted any momentum Obama may have gotten from his overseas trip and kept this thing close. Given that all of the internals (right direction/wrong track, generic congressional ballot and party ID) and the Illinois senator's huge "intensity gap" support an Obama/Democrat blowout, it is astounding that he is underperforming as much as he is. The electorate, of course, is still in flux, as a large segment of voters is still undecided (or switchable); it is clear, however, that Barack Obama has not come nearly far enough to close the sale on this election.

It is worth repeating what we said last week: the McCain attacks on Obama are working. And when you look at how long it took Obama's team to respond to the "Celebrity" spot (nearly two weeks) you can't help but be reminded of John Kerry in the summer of 2004. Voters don't just look at the candidates and their issue positions, they look at how the candidates run their campaigns and make decisions, and Obama has looked awfully soft in his response to this charge. Combine this with his tepid statements on the Russia-Georgia crisis and you have the makings of a legitimate campaign swoon. Plain and simple, the McCain team has been winning the earned media battle for the last two weeks.

This is a difficult election to classify because there is no incumbent president or vice president in the race, but it might be helpful to look at past elections to give us some guidance. While there are multiple ways to categorize elections, in every presidential election the two sides try to make the election hinge on some mix of referendum and personality (including the policies the candidate stands for). The winning campaign is the one that better succeeds in establishing its frame and making the case for it.

Some elections are more of a referendum and some are more about personality/issues. For example, 1980 and 1992 were clearly referendum elections. In both cases the electorate decided that things were bad and the alternative was acceptable (Reagan in '80 and Clinton in '92). In each case the referendum on the current administration worked for the challenger. In 2004 the direction of the country was poor but voters decided that the alternative (Kerry) was not acceptable. Kerry's referendum on Bush failed.

This year is clearly a referendum on Bush and the direction of the country and, as we have said before, if Obama is viewed as acceptable to a majority of voters he will win this election. Whichever side does a better job of framing the debate will win. Right now McCain is doing a good job of framing the debate as "this guy (Obama) isn't ready to lead." Obama's basic change thematic might be enough on its own because things are seen as so bad, but to improve his "referendum" position he needs to do a better job of tying Bush and McCain together.

So, at its core, this election is about Obama's ability to make this a referendum and him the acceptable alternative to the current course. Therefore, a McCain strategy to make Obama unacceptable is his only winning course of action. Any other strategy would be political malpractice. Contrast ads work. Anyone who says McCain has gone too negative too early has never been involved in a political campaign. In 2004, the Bush team started running attack ads against Kerry in March. Of course, that year there was a Democratic nominee much sooner but it shows that it makes sense to start defining your opponent in July and August.

Gaps Galore

According to a July Wall Street Journal poll there is both a "generation gap" and an "intensity gap" in the 2008 Presidential race. We have seen this in our own polling and in polling by other media outlets, as well. In this particular WSJ survey Obama leads McCain among 18-34 year olds by 24 points (55% to 31%). Among those 65 years of age and older McCain led Obama by 10 points (51% to 41%). There is also an enthusiasm or intensity gap between Obama's and McCain's vote with almost half (44%) of Obama voters saying they are enthusiastic about their candidate and only 14% of McCain voters saying the same. Inevitably, then, we have some questions that will be answered come November:

1. What percentage of the 2008 electorate will be 18-29 year olds? If their raw vote totals are up but their share of the electorate remains the same then the impact is less. According to the VNS and NES exit polls, in 2000 and 2004 they represented approximately 17% of the vote. Yes, the raw vote total for 18-29 year olds increased significantly in 2004 but so did other age cohorts. If the 2008 youth vote share increases (to say 20%) and Obama improves upon the Kerry vote among this cohort (54%) then he will be tough to beat. If, however, the percentage of 18-29 year olds remains at about 17% and Obama does only marginally better than Kerry did with this group (let's say he wins that share of the electorate with around 56-58%) then I don't see the youth vote having as much of an impact. (An aside: according to Pollster.com contributor Charles Franklin, who uses more reliable Census CPS turnout data, the young did actually increase their share of the electorate, but not by an impactful margin. As he says, "Perhaps we will indeed see another rise, as we did in 2004. But unless something truly unprecedented occurs, no one can win on the young alone.")
2. How much of the intensity/enthusiasm gap is due to Obama's overwhelming lead among 18-34 year olds? There is no doubt that the enthusiasm level among McCain's core vote needs to improve-and Obama's lead here is an important ingredient for driving likely voters--but I am not sure that the enthusiasm difference isn't being artificially inflated by the youth vote (a cohort that doesn't historically vote in overwhelming numbers). Again, time will tell.

National Horserace Observations

As the below chart indicates, the race remains close. From a macro level, Obama was poised to blow this race open in mid- to late-June when most polls had him up by double-digits. Since that time we have seen the gap close. Also, take a look at the numbers in March when the Reverend Wright story broke. Yes, Obama was still engaged in a primary battle and Clinton voters were not likely in the fold yet, but clearly that news story was a staggering blow and it showed up in his head-to-head numbers with McCain.

By Steve Lombardo on August 13, 2008 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

August 7, 2008

Party ID: The Case for Weights and Historical Margins

By Kristen Soltis

[Editor's Note: We are pleased to add yet another contributor to the Pollster.com lineup. Kristen Soltis is currently the Director of Policy Research for The Winston Group, a Republican affiliated public opinion research and strategic consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Welcome Kristen!]

The debate over party ID and whether or not weighting for party ID is appropriate has raged on for years, with a very thorough treatment by Mark Blumenthal and others that raises good questions about whether or not party ID is stable at the individual level. Recent media polls with wide ranging spreads between Republicans and Democrats make it all the more appropriate to bring this debate back.

Those on the side favoring weighting say that it is important to compare "apples to apples", to see if more people actually are voting for Obama than last month, or if we just happened to get a sample more favorable to him. On the other side, you have folks who view partisan identification as a question response, not a demographic group, and view weighting by party as methodologically unsound.

Though it's controversial, I believe that weighting for party ID is appropriate if done in a manner consistent with historical norms. I fall into the camp that believes party ID is far more static - that voters can change their preferences and the intensity of their partisanship often, but do not as frequently take the step of giving themselves a new party with which to identify. To me, party ID falls somewhere in between "demographic fact" and "variable question response". Preventing wildly fluctuating data outside historical norms provides a better picture of what real movement is occurring in the electorate on questions like the ballot test.

On Election Day, the partisan makeup of the electorate is rarely dramatically different from the election four years prior, and the exit polls from the last twenty years corroborate this. The National Election Study at the University of Michigan back in the 1960s showed party ID was stable at the individual level, but some have dismissed this as an example that works today. So let's take a look at more modern day politics, with a time frame of last twenty years (presidential elections since 1988). Washingtonpost.com has a great, simple table of this exit poll data.

In 1988, Democrats had a three-point party ID advantage over Republicans (38-35). In 1992, Democrats still had a three-point party ID advantage over Republicans (38-35). In 1996, that advantage increased to four - a shift of one point (39-35). In 2000, Democrats were steady, up by four (39-35), and in 2004 they dropped to even (37-37).

During presidential years, over the last five presidential elections, the biggest party ID gap was four points, and the greatest swing was four points as well.

Arguments can certainly be made that in this environment, Democrats should be expected to have a huge partisan shift in their favor. But note that in 2006, when Democrats clearly found enormous success at the ballot box, that the advantage in party ID was only three points (38-35). Polls leading up to the election showed party ID gaps as big as eleven points (Newsweek's poll on Oct 5-6, 2006), rarely showing party ID gaps of less than +5 for the Democrats.

On Election Day, as measured by the exit polls, the party ID divide was just three points.

Just because people are voting Democratic doesn't mean they are becoming Democrats.

Truth be told, the decision to use weights for party ID has everything to do with whether or not a pollster views party ID as a "response" or a "demographic", and when it is a fairly stable characteristic of the electorate, I feel comfortable placing it on the spectrum closer to "demographic". It's not perfect, to be sure, but I'd rather compare surveys month to month and observe movement by comparing apples to apples.

However, whether or not weighting is used, the partisan makeup of a poll must factor into the understanding of whether the poll is presenting a realistic piece of information. I certainly don't believe all polls must weight for party ID in order to be useful. But regardless of whether the party ID is organic or weighted, it should still look reasonable.

So let's take a current example that I have trouble with. As "bambi" noted in the comments (taking quite a bit of heat, and with some calculations that I do disagree with) just this morning about the most recent CBS poll, after weighting for demographics, the difference between Republicans and Democrats nearly doubles. While the unweighted sample has 317 Republicans and 381 Democrats (out of 1034 adults), the weighted sample has 284 Republicans and 406 Democrats. This changes the spread from a 6 point spread (31-37) to a 12 point spread (27-39).
Truth be told, if a poll shows a six-point party ID spread, I wouldn't immediately dismiss it. Furthermore, the CBS poll is of adults, not registered or likely voters, so that gives it freedom in my opinion to veer a bit outside the norms. I'm not dogmatically tied to historical precedent, though I think it's very instructive in determining what is "reasonable".

But a twelve point spread? Whether this is a blip or what consistently turns up in the numbers, I have incredible difficulty believing that a margin of that magnitude is an accurate reflection of the electorate. A six-point lead is within the realm of possibility given a really great year for Democrats. But a twelve-point spread is simply outside the bounds of history, given that in twenty years of political change and history, the greatest margin has been four.

By Kristen Soltis on August 7, 2008 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

August 6, 2008

Panagakis: Response to Moore - Part II

By Guest Pollster

Nick Panagakis is president of Market Shares Corporation, a marketing and public opinion research firm headquartered in Arlington Heights, Ill.

This post is the forth installment of a dialogue between pollsters David Moore and Nick Panagakis about the best way to measure and report how many voters are "undecided." See their earlier installments here, here and here.

I agree with much of what David Moore says in his response, including percentage undecided that seems too low as is currently being reported. Where we differ is on terminology. The potential for mind-changing is a lot less than you think.

Yes we are "interested in portraying what the electorate is thinking today". Now that general election national polling is underway, we will be interested in finding (needless to say) whether voters did change their minds about the candidate(s) since the last poll asking how they would vote "if the election were held today".

My issue is about reporting results with low conventional undecideds followed by a large number in the 20%+ range who could still change their minds. It's enough to give readers and viewers whiplash.

In my last post on this subject I hypothesized that such high numbers are not "indecision" as implied by "could change their minds". I said some voters willing to decide on a candidate in a poll won't rule out the possibility that some incident or candidate disclosure, however remote, could lead them to vote otherwise.

The ABC Polling Unit provides some validation of this. Their polls have been asking this question of decided voters since 2004: "Would you definitely vote for ___ or is there a chance you could change your mind and vote for someone else?" This has been asked three times since May this year and eight times in 2004, from June 20 to September 26. This year, "could change your mind" has ranged from 25% to 29%, similar to response levels seen in current polls, dissimilar wording not withstanding. In 2004, "could change your mind" was 28% in the June 20 poll then steadily declined to 16% in late September.

But unlike other polls, ABC then probed potential mind-changers by asking "Is there a good chance you'll change your mind, or would you say it's pretty unlikely?" So far this year, about half say "pretty unlikely" as did respondents in June, 2004 polls. July to September 2004 showed another pattern. 'Pretty unlikely" voters began to consistently outnumber "good chance" of mind-changing voters by a ratio of 2 to 1. This could mean that two-thirds of possible mind-changing voters in current polls, if asked their chances of doing so, would rate their chances as pretty remote. Should mind-changing as currently being presented be part of any story when the chances of doing so are so slim? I don't think so. I prefer the ABC qualifier.

Another thought. Shouldn't there be some analysis to validate such high could change their mind numbers? The analysis could compare poll stated undecideds with "could change their mind" levels with actual candidate vote preference changes from poll to poll and to election outcomes.

Another subject. David mentioned the recent CBS poll. According to their release they had 12% undecided which seems reasonable to me. If you go to pollster.com's national summary you will find many polls with much lower undecideds. However, half of Gallup's higher undecideds shown there are actually vote for "neither" which should not be combined with undecideds in that table. Click the Gallup links. Moreover, "neither" response is not very meaningful. It would be more precise to replace it with "vote for other" and "won't vote" with non-voters excluded from the base for calculation of voter percentages. All for now.

By Guest Pollster on August 6, 2008 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 5, 2008

It's Closer Than You Think

By Steve Lombardo

John McCain won the earned media battle last week because the predominant political discourse centered on the issues of race and celebrity--not the economy, the war and George W. Bush. Any time the focus of this election is about something other than the aforementioned three issues it is good for John McCain. Team McCain didn't just knock Obama off-message; it sent his entire campaign bus careening down a back road.

Count me as one of the few analysts who actually thinks the celebrity ad with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears was a good one. Sure, the execution was a bit awkward, but the net-net is that the images stick and they resonate with a good number of swing voters who worry that Obama lacks the substance to be President. The images fit the preconceived notion that some voters already have in their heads. Any time you can tap into these stored perceptions it is that much easier to get your point across. The ad works because it rings true.

So Obama spent the week counterpunching instead of talking about gas prices and the housing slump. And remember the substantive attack points in the "Celebrity" spot: Obama isn't ready, he hasn't accomplished anything, he has no energy plan and he'll raise your taxes. Pretty darn good bogeymen if you ask me.

New Survey Results: Presidential Ballot Test

Recently we conducted a national survey of 850 registered voters. If you're in a hurry: Obama is currently ahead 40% to 35% (we didn't push respondents to make a choice between the two, which is why we have a large "undecided" contingent of around 16%). We think this is a more accurate reflection of the electorate given the early stage of the election.

Cutting the sample to only likely voters (n=647), however, reduces the Obama lead to just two points (40%-38%). This confirms some of the public polling data (and conventional wisdom) that McCain does better in polls of likely voters--and, indeed, perhaps at the polls on Election Day--than he does in polls of all registered voters. While right now that discrepancy is not quite close enough to suggest a McCain victory, it seems fair to say that a lead of less than five points for Obama in polls of registered voters--whether national or statewide--may not indicate much of an advantage at all.
Looking at the demographic breakdown of these registered voters, John McCain has a six-point lead among men and Obama has a 14-point advantage among women. The gender gap has widened somewhat since a previous national poll we conducted in May, where McCain was +4 among men and Obama was +10 among women (this reflects a normalization of the race along recent Presidential voting patterns).

Given his struggles to woo older voters away from Hillary Clinton, it is somewhat surprising that Obama is in a statistical dead heat with McCain among voters 65 and older (he actually leads among those ages 55 and older). With Obama continuing to carry all voters under 35 by the wide margin that propelled him to his primary victory, it's natural to wonder where McCain's support comes from.

The answer is middle-aged and older men. The only age/gender categories where McCain leads? Men aged 35-54 (McCain + 10), 55-64 (McCain +7) and 65 and older (McCain +17). Of course in the past these cohorts have been the most likely to make it to the polls on Election Day.

For a couple of weeks now we've been talking about this election as a referendum on Barack Obama (rather than a choice between Obama and McCain). While we'd like to have a few more surveys to confirm this, it appears that--despite the groundswell in Democratic support as measured by party identification--12% of registered voter Democrats remain undecided, compared with 9% of Republicans.

The fact that 12% of Democrats have yet to throw their full support behind their party's most appealing candidate since Bill Clinton is stunning. Furthermore, Republicans have also traditionally had the advantage in turning out their own partisans. For example, VNS exit polls in 2000 show that 91% of Republicans voted for George W. Bush, while "only" 86% of Democrats voted for Al Gore. That five-point edge may seem small, but, as we have seen many times, it can swing an election. Another point of interest that may be a surprise to those who feel swamped by the intensity and persistence of the 2008 election coverage: 28% of independents have yet to make up their minds. This thing is a lot closer than people realize.

Obama's Overseas Trip

While it begins to fade from the news media consciousness, we do have some data to share on the impact of Obama's trip to Europe, Afghanistan and the Middle East. According to our recent survey, 75% of registered voters "definitely read, saw or heard something" about his trip. We then asked those respondents whether "learning about Barack Obama's overseas trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries has made you more confident or less confident in his ability to serve as President, or has it had no impact?" The overwhelming majority (56%) claimed that it had had no impact. (A caveat: it sometimes may take days, weeks or even months for voters to "digest" an event like this, and even then they're sometimes reluctant to admit that it had an impact on their attitudes). Twenty-three percent of these voters said Obama's trip made them "more confident" in his ability to serve as President and 18% said that it had made them "less confident." Among likely voters, the impact of the trip was roughly the same. Of course, the majority of those who claimed the trip had instilled greater confidence in Obama were Democrats. Among undecided voters, 66% said the trip had no impact and just six percent said it had made them "more confident."

We also presented respondents with two statements about Obama's trip and asked them which one they agreed with more. The statements were:

1. Barack Obama's overseas trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries is a sincere effort on his part to get a first-hand look at conditions in those areas so that he can make informed foreign policy decisions.


2. Barack Obama's overseas trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries is just a political stunt so that he can have campaign-style photo opportunities with foreign leaders in an effort to look presidential.

Half (49%) thought that his trip was a "sincere effort," approximately one-third (36%) felt that it was a "political stunt," and the rest thought it was either a mix of both or weren't sure. Interestingly, those undecided voters who had an opinion either way were more cynical: slightly more than one-third (36%) felt that it was a "sincere effort," another third (35%) felt it was a political stunt and ten percent felt that it was both (the rest were unsure). So with no apparent bounce in the polls--and most voters claiming to be unmoved--in the end the trip may have been just what it appeared to be: a chance for some photo opportunities.

As we said previously, the trip was a start in the "build up Obama" process. This data suggests that this will need follow-up and reinforcement before it becomes a bankable attribute. At this point, this election is still about Obama and many voters are still unsure about him.

Thanks again to John "Zippy" Zirinsky and Pete Ventimiglia for their efforts on this week's Election Monitor.

By Steve Lombardo on August 5, 2008 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Why Should Pollsters "Cringe" at the Undecided Vote? (Panagakis-Moore, cont'd.)

By David Moore

Nick Panagakis' response to my column on a different approach to measuring vote choice reflects, I believe, the current conventional wisdom, that a forced choice vote choice question is the best predictor of how voters will cast their ballots. This approach, Nick argues, "historically comes close to the actual outcome." Not only that, he "cringes" when he sees pollsters hedge their bets on a poll, by saying "candidate A is up by 9 points - but 30% could change their minds." He says that reporting such numbers "devalues polls."

But what is the "truth" of the matter? Are we not interested in accurately portraying what the electorate is thinking "today"? If so, how can we say, as CNN does, that 100 percent of voters have made up their minds with more than three months before the election? Or as Gallup has been telling us for the past two months, that an average of 95 percent of voters have already made up their minds? Or even, as most other pollsters say, that over 90 percent have made a choice?

Pollsters get away with producing such dubious numbers, I think, because most pundits take a schizophrenic approach to the polls. At one level, they treat the results as though they are the Holy Grail. At the next moment, they dismiss the numbers as being irrelevant at this time of the campaign season, saying that we need to wait until after the conventions before people begin paying attention to the election. Dan Rather's recent column encapsulates this sentiment, headlined as "Summer polls in the presidential campaign are pure folly."

If we are concerned about devaluing polls, we might want to think about giving an accurate portrayal of what the public is actually thinking (or not thinking) weeks and months before an election. The current vote choice question clearly does not reveal the extent of public indecision, and thus, I think, undermines the credibility of polls more generally.

I am not arguing that shortly before election day, in their last pre-election polls, pollsters should not press voters for their choices. I agree that in most elections, even the "undecided" voters have an inkling of whom they will support. Barring last minute media coverage that favors one candidate or the other, the faint-hearted leanings of these undecided voters usually turn out to be decent predictors of how they will act when they get in the voting booth. (Notable exceptions at the national level occurred in the 1948 and 1980 presidential elections, of course, not to mention the 2008 New Hampshire, South Carolina, and California primaries, among others).

Still, during the campaign leading up to the election, why should pollsters "cringe" at reporting that a large segment of the population remains undecided? In fact, that's just what CBS News has done, commendably in my view, when it headlined its latest poll results as "Poll: Obama Leads, But Race Fluid." Nick, it seems, would not favor such a headline, nor apparently would most other media pollsters - at least as indicated by their own reports.  

There may be better ways to get at voter indecision, other than asking first, if people have made up their minds. Andy Smith of the UNH Survey Center said he will be experimenting this election season with other approaches, which could include the names of the candidates, as well as asking voters who they expect to vote for in November (not "today"), with the tag line, or haven't they made up their minds yet? A follow-up question could probe their leanings, but at least up front, the question would explicitly allow for the undecided voter to indicate such a sentiment.

By David Moore on August 5, 2008 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

August 4, 2008

Polling Trends in 2008 vs '04 and '00

By Charles Franklin

The most common description of polls is that they are snapshots, not predictions. A good way to look at that in the 2008 election is to compare the '08 campaign with the two that came before.

The chart above shows the trend estimates for each of the last three presidential campaigns. I'm plotting the estimated margin between the two candidates, Dem minus Rep, for each year.

With 93 days to go until the 2008 election, Obama holds a 3.3 point advantage over McCain, though that has been eroding over the past six weeks. If we put a confidence interval around today's estimate, we get a race that is just barely leaning Democratic.

But what about the future? The dynamics of the next 92 days are all important for where we stand on November 4. Since we can't foresee those 92 days yet, let's see what happened during the same time in 2000 and 2004. That gives us a better idea how much change we might anticipate in the next three months.

In 2004, Kerry slowly built a 2 point lead by this time, and held a small lead through much of the summer. But then the race took a sharp turn, with Bush making a 6 point run, taking a four point lead with 50 days to go. Kerry gained back 3 points of that in the polling, but less than 2 points of it in the actual vote, losing by a 2.4 point margin.

In 2000, Bush led in most of the early polls, holding a 6 point lead with 107 days to go. Then Gore moved sharply up, erasing Bush's lead and then adding a 3 point lead for Gore with about 56 days left. Bush promptly reversed Gore's gains with a six point move in the GOP's direction, and led by about 3 points over the last three weeks of the campaign. Of course, the 2000 polls were misleading in predicting a Bush win. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 points.

So far in 2008, Obama has enjoyed a run up of 5.5 points since his low point in late March. That run is on a par with Bush's in 2004 but still a bit less than Gore's 9 point run in 2000, and on par the Bush's 6 point rebound that year.

Judging from the dynamics we've seen in the past it is quite reasonable to expect the current trend to shift by half-a-dozen points. August and the conventions have been periods of substantial change in both previous elections, so if history repeats itself the next 4 or 5 weeks should be pretty interesting.

The bottom line is neither campaign should be complacent or despondent. There is a lot of time left and recent history shows that both up and down swings of 6-9 points are entirely plausible.

As a P.S. here are the three campaigns with educational confidence intervals around them.

The current 2008 estimate is just barely inside the "lean Dem" range, and will move to toss up if the current trend continues for another couple or three polls.

The 2004 estimate was pretty close to the outcome which was well within the 68% confidence interval around the trend.

The polls in 2000 were troubling for having the wrong popular vote winner, but even there the outcome was inside the 95% confidence interval. With races as close as the last two, it is worth appreciating just how wide those confidence intervals are.

Our efforts to characterize races rely on the best estimates of those confidence intervals, but it is all too easy to focus on who's ahead and not remember how much uncertainty there is. That uncertainty is both about where the current estimate says the race stands today and about how the race may change in coming weeks. The data here show that unless one candidate builds a bigger lead than either has held so far, the uncertainty remains pretty big.

Note: My trend here is slightly different from the Pollster National trend because I'm working off the difference between candidates, not each trend separately, and because I've made 2008 comparable to 2000 and 2004, just a slightly different amount of smoothing compared to Pollster's standard estimator this year. None of those differences change the qualitative picture or shift the magnitude of changes I cite above.

Cross posted at Political Arithemik.

By Charles Franklin on August 4, 2008 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

July 29, 2008

"Statistical Dead Heat?" Depends on Which Statistics You Use

By Brian Schaffner

If you have paid any attention to the news in the past month, you have had a hard time avoiding some journalist or pundit noting that the presidential race is currently a "statistical dead heat" or "essentially tied." The news media, of course, love to cover the horserace aspects of the campaign, particularly in a way that emphasizes how close the election is. But when you step back and gain a little perspective on the big picture, you realize that this race isn't quite the dead heat that it is made to be.

The news media are often a bit myopic in their view of the contest, extrapolating too much from the most recent poll (or even the most recent "surprising" poll). Last week, Fox News released a national survey that showed Obama holding a 41-40% lead, well within the margin of error for the survey. Commentators were quick to emphasize this result and note that the candidates were essentially running neck-and-neck or that the race may even be tied. No doubt there will be a lot of commotion over the latest Gallup/USA Today survey showing McCain ahead (though also within the margin of error) among likely voters. Nevertheless, we gain much better perspective on the state of the race when we look at all available data.

Alan Abramowitz notes that Obama has consistently led in national polls over the past two months. In fact, according to national poll results listed on Pollster.com, Obama had been tied or ahead in 50 consecutive national polls through Sunday. Sure, many polls may show Obama holding a lead within the statistical margin of error, but if Obama and McCain were actually tied, we'd expect as many polls showing McCain ahead as show Obama ahead. Based on some basic calculations, the probability that 50 consecutive national surveys would show Obama tied or ahead if the candidates were actually tied is .0000000000000009. In short, this race is not a "statistical tie," despite what a few scattered surveys (drawing disproportionate attention from the pundits) indicate.

By Brian Schaffner on July 29, 2008 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

July 23, 2008

Obama's Overseas Screen Test

By Steve Lombardo

Note: We are pleased to add Republican pollster Steve Lombardo, the president and CEO of Lombardo Consulting, as a regular contributor. His weekly email update, the LCG Election Monitor, is well known to political journalists and insiders as a source of straight-shooting analysis of political poll trends. Starting today, the LCG monitor will also be published every week right here on Pollster.com.

It is often difficult to accurately assess the electoral impact of events during a campaign - especially those that occur more than 3 months prior to Election Day. But in the case of Obama's overseas trip, I think we can mark this down as a substantial tactical and strategic victory.

First, as I have said before - in the words of my friend and colleague, the late Mike Deaver - elections are about impressions. And this trip (and the accompanying coverage and photos) has created an impression of Barack Obama as that of an engaged, serious and strong person. Second, the trip serves to negate the preexisting notion that Obama is not up for the job of President. While it likely has not completely reversed the "inexperienced" impression, the trip has begun the process. Time will tell if other moments can serve Obama in the same way. The campaign will be looking for them to be sure.

From a micro perspective Obama has swamped McCain in terms of positive media coverage, driven largely by this overseas trip. Media reports have, to this point, been almost uniformly glowing. This has been helped along, of course, by comments from Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, which seemed to support Obama's plans for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Yes, there has been some criticism that this is a media stunt, but the vast majority of the coverage has been positive, suggesting that this was a sound strategy. Our sense is that when most Americans turn on their televisions, visit their favorite websites or open up their newspapers and see Obama sitting down with foreign leaders and chatting with American soldiers, most of them will say: "Sure, he looks presidential." In the end, that's all that matters.

John McCain has been hammering away at Obama on the stump and in this ad. This, too, is a pretty good strategy: trying to move the conversation away from whether Obama supported the war to whether he supported the surge. Obviously, Obama is vulnerable here. He stated that the surge would be counterproductive, and this line of attack serves to underscore the idea that he is not ready for the job. But this somewhat narrow approach may be obscured by events abroad (Afghanistan, Iran) and at home (gas prices, the economy). Remember that the economy is by far the number one issue in the country right now. Obama only needs to be in the ballpark with McCain on handling Iraq; if he dominates on the issue of the economy, he wins.

As we said in our last Election Monitor, this campaign will be a referendum on Barack Obama. If the American public comes to the conclusion that he can be an effective commander-in-chief - basically, if they become comfortable with the idea of him as President - then he should win the race. But the American public isn't there yet; the one area where Obama still trails McCain is on this key question of leadership and whether he has the "experience" to be president. This is obviously something that the Obama Iraq trip is designed to address. Our sense is that it is working; the question is whether the leadership "bounce" that Obama gets from the trip can be sustained.

Electoral Vote Projection Map

Our electoral vote map has not changed in the last two weeks. To this point, nothing has fundamentally altered the race, either nationally or in any key states. We will have to wait for next week's batch of polling data to see if Obama's overseas trip has any quantifiable impact on the race.

However, there is some new polling data that does confirm a couple of our earlier predictions, as well as hint at one of the LCG Big Ten moving into the Obama column:

1. Michigan (Toss-up). The upper-Midwest is clearly the Obama campaign's center of gravity. With his campaign headquarters and personal and political roots in Chicago, he has taken the sensible strategy of making strong plays for Iowa (which was won by less than 1% of the vote in both 2000 and 2004) and Michigan, a state that went Gore +5.2, Kerry +3.4. Horserace polling in Michigan has consistently shown Obama and McCain within the margin of error. However, the three most recent polls in Michigan (Rasmussen, Quinnipiac/WSJ/WP and PPP) show an average of Obama +8. If this recent bounce continues, we may have to move Michigan into the Obama column.



2. Iowa (Obama). We debated putting Iowa--a state that Bush won in 2004--in the Obama column so early, but every publically-released poll conducted in Iowa since the end of 2006 has shown Obama leading McCain, and now a new poll confirms a significant Obama advantage. A Rasmussen survey of 500 likely voters has Obama at a comfortable +10.
3. North Carolina (Toss-up). As we mentioned in our initial comments on this electoral map, the fact that a state Bush won by at least 12 points in both 2000 and 2004 is a toss-up underlines the enormous structural advantage the Democratic Party has this year. We still think that McCain is likely to win this state, nevertheless, three new surveys (Rasmussen, SurveyUSA and PPP) show an average of just a 3-4 point lead for McCain and we will continue to treat this as a toss-up until something changes.

Just one more note before we go. So much has been made of the Independent vote that we decided to take a look at it, both in terms of how Independents are trending in 2008 and how that compares with previous elections. The chart below makes it clear that structural changes and disaffection with the current administration hasn't translated into increased support for Obama--yet. For all the talk of Bush's base-pandering and Obama's popularity among swing voters, the middle is being split between the two candidates, and it's been that way for the last eight years. For historical perspective, the small edge Obama currently enjoys is nothing compared to the huge Independent support garnered by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

However, our sense is that McCain is doing better with likely voters and therefore, to win, Obama will need to open up a 4-7 point lead with Independents (think Clinton in '92 and '96).

We will be back again next week. Thanks to Pete Ventimiglia and John Zirinsky for their insights.

By Steve Lombardo on July 23, 2008 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

July 9, 2008

A Dog of a Poll Story

By Mark Blumenthal

Yesterday, the Associated Press wrote up results from an AP/Yahoo poll showing that John McCain does better than Barack Obama among pet owners than among Americans who do not own a pet. Desmoinesdem, the blogger who seems to have a knack of getting called by internal campaign polls, called it "the worst analysis of a poll I've seen in a while." I tend to agree.

The gist is that a survey of 1,750 adults conducted over the Internet using the Knowledge Networks panel found that John McCain leads by Barack Obama by five points among pet owners (42% to 37%), while Obama leads by 14 point margin (48% to 34%) among those who do not own a pet.

They also report results showing Obama doing slightly better among cat owners than dog owners, although those differences to do not appear to be statistically significant -- something the AP story does not mention.

Go to the end of the story and you get a hint of something highly pertinent:

The population breakdown of who has pets and who doesn't also may be a factor.

For example, the poll found 47 percent of whites own dogs, compared with just 24 percent of blacks. Whites tend to favor McCain, while blacks overwhelmingly favor Obama.

Some 64 percent of dog owners are married, slightly higher than the overall population. The poll found 47 percent of married people own dogs, compared with 39 percent of non-married people. Married people tend to favor McCain.

Married people also "tend to" be over the age of 30. As Gallup tells us, Obama leads by a whopping 24 points among those age 18-29, while the race is much closer among those over 30.

And what about pet ownership by party affiliation? Or income? As Demmoinesdem points out, these potentially confounding variables may also be at work. And that strong possibility reminds us of the lesson that all pollsters are supposed to learn in their first statistics class: Correlation is not causation. Pet owners may prefer McCain for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the candidates own pets.

But that lesson is largely lost in this piece, because in the lead of the story -- and who knows how many local television news pieces run as a result -- strongly implies just the opposite (emphasis added):

If the presidential election goes to the dogs, John McCain is looking like best in show.

From George Washington's foxhound "Drunkard" to George W. Bush's terriers "Barney" and "Miss Beazley," pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.

The apparent Democratic nominee Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn't have a pet at home.

The pet-owning public seems to have noticed the difference.

Really? Do we have any evidence that Americans have "noticed" the difference? How many know that McCain owns "more than dozen" pets while the Obamas own none? Which candidate do Americans consider more pet friendly? This survey is silent on that score.

Even without probing deeper into the subject, a fairly simple regression analysis would tell us if pet ownership shows a significant correlation with vote preference even after controlling for things like party, race, age, income and marital status. And while we would not expect an AP story to expound on multiple regression analysis, they could certainly tell us, in so many words, that pet ownership explains greater preference for Obama even after controlling for factors like party, race, age, income and marital status.

That might be a start, but why let a straightforward analysis kill an irresistibly cute lead?

[Typos corrected]

By Mark Blumenthal on July 9, 2008 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

June 13, 2008

Trends in Party Identification in Wisconsin

By Charles Franklin

This week my colleague Ken Goldstein and I conducted a Wisconsin statewide survey sponsored by the UW Department of Political Science and WisPolitics.com. So fair warning that I'm a party to this survey rather than an independent observer.

A number of people have commented on the party identification balance in the survey: 38% Dem, 24% Rep, 29% Independent (37% Independent when "no preference/other" are allocated to independent. When this group is asked how they "lean", very few insist on some other party, so this allocation makes sense.) See Alan Reifman's blog on weighting and party id for a good example and discussion of broader issues of weighting to party id.

I want to point out two things here and put our data in the context of other polls in Wisconsin.

The chart above shows party identification trends since 2000 using data from three sources that have done frequent polling in the state. What we see is a relatively stable Dem/Rep parity from 2000-2004, with Dem ID falling a bit around 2004 while Reps moved up slightly.

Starting in 2005, however, there is an initially slow but then sharper shift in partisanship. Republican ID declines from about 30% to about 24% today, while Dem ID rises from about 30% to nearly 40%. After an initial surge of independents, that group has recently fallen off a bit. (You have to squint a bit to see WPRI and Badger after 2005, but they are close to the trend lines during this period, so the changes are not just a matter of house effects or phone vs ivr methods. WPRI, for example, has Rep ID moving from 33% in 2004 to 28%, 26% and 25% in 2005-2007. Their Dem ID rises from 30%-33%-34% then falls to 29% over the same period. The final 29% is a large discrepancy from the trend, of course.)

We did not weight our survey to party identification, and these trends help explain why we have reservations about doing that. While relatively stable, party id does move over time, and by a fair bit, as you can see here. But that said, our unweighted results turn out to be quite close to the estimated trends in partisan categories in any case.

The second point is to compare these trends with those in exit poll measures of party id. In 2000, the VNS Exit poll put Wisconsin pid at 37% Dem, 32% Rep and 31% Ind. This shifted in 2004 to 35% Dem, 27% Ind and 38% Rep. But in 2006 the exit polls found that the balance was 38% Dem, 34% Rep and 27% Ind. Those values all show a smaller share of independents at the polls on election day compared to the polling trend, but that is to be expected given differences in turnout between partisans and independents. The size of the party ID groups grows as a result, but the balance between them is in line with what we see in the trends in the polls, though certainly not an exact match. The polls, after all, are of either adults or likely voters, while the exits are by definition a measure of who actually showed up on election day.

For 2006, the Dem exit percent and the Dem trend estimate are a close match. Republicans gain in the exits, by about 6 points over the 2006 trend estimate. If that holds for 2008, we might expect an electorate more like 38% Dem and 30% Rep. Of course both parties will have very active "ground games" and GOTV efforts to try to change those numbers.

While I'm certainly happy that our party id balance is so close to the trend in all the other polling, the more important point is that party id in Wisconsin has shifted quite a bit over the past four years. The coming campaign may alter that, possibly bringing disappointed former Republicans back home, for example. Likewise a Republican advantage in turnout could bring the exit polls back to closer balance. But as the data show, today the GOP is at the worst disadvantage the state has seen in over eight years.

Let me conclude with a bit of descript