Archive:
The 2006 Race
May 05, 2008
Time for another round-up of available poll demographics, this time from North Carolina. The most important variable in this state is the African American percentage of likely Democratic primary voters. The most recent polls -- at least among those that...August 16, 2007
I took my laptop with me on vacation, and in catching up on the news, I came across one of those impossible-not-to-blog items in NBC's First Read: NBC/WSJ pollster Peter Hart (D) tells First Read that the revision of...June 29, 2007
George Mason University Professor Michael McDonald, whose voter turnout web site is one of the most useful election data resources on the web, sends along this note: The 2006 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplement, a primary...February 02, 2007
Democrats gained an average of 3.4% and Republicans lost 3.0% in partisan identification between 2005 and 2006, according to a new Gallup estimate based on over 30,000 interviews conducted throughout 2006. Gallup aggregated polls throughout the year to create...January 17, 2007
Today I have two possibly overlooked items to report, both related to the new Democratic House and both discovered via MyDD: First, the latest CNN/ORC poll released last week included a job rating of new Speaker of the House...December 21, 2006
Today's Guest Pollster's Corner contribution comes from Mark Lindeman, assistant professor of Political Studies at Bard College. In the wake of allegations that the 2004 U.S. presidential exit polls pointed to a stolen election, many observers wondered how the 2006...December 15, 2006
Today's Guest Pollster's Corner contribution comes from Amy Simon, a partner at Goodwin Simon Victoria Research. News media and academics hold up Random Digit Dialing (RDD) sampling methodology as the gold standard for survey samples for elections. Meanwhile, many top...December 13, 2006
I spent yesterday morning at a post election conference sponsored by Charlie Cook's Political Report, James Carville, Congressman Tom Davis and the Northern Virginia Community College. The conference kicked off with a panel of four very experienced campaign pollsters, two...November 29, 2006
On Monday, I looked at how well our averages of polls in U.S. House Districts did in comparison to the unofficial vote counts, and when we averaged the averages, they compared quite well. A related and important question is how...November 27, 2006
Continuing with our post-election review of how the polls performed, I want to turn to the polls conducted in individual House races. As I discussed last week, the final results among likely voters for the national generic vote varied with...November 22, 2006
So how did national estimates of the "generic" House vote compare to the national vote for Congress? We learned in my last post on this topic that the national House vote is being counted and is not yet set in...November 20, 2006
We are pleased to announce that we have posted spreadsheet files the include every poll result we gathered for 2006 Senate, House, and Gubernatorial races. These are now available for download from each respective national summary page. For each poll we've...November 20, 2006
For more than a week -- with my bout of flu virus causing an unfortunate interruption -- I have been trying to come up with a reasonable tabulation of the total House vote to use as a comparison to the...November 16, 2006
[This post concludes my comments started yesterday in response to a column by Washington Post polling director Jon Cohen.] We chose to average poll results here on Pollster -- even for dissimilar surveys that might show "house effects" due to...November 15, 2006
We interrupt the previous post still in progress to bring you a feature Pollster readers will definitely want to read in full. Carl Bialik, the "Numbers Guy" from Wall Street Journal Interactive did some comparisons of the performance of five...November 15, 2006
I had an unhappy experience yesterday morning while still down for the count with a persistent fever (it has broken finally and thanks to all for the kind get well wishes). As I lay shivering, achy and generally miserable, my...November 15, 2006
Today's Guest Pollster Corner Contribution comes from Alan Reifman of Texas Tech University, who takes a closer look at this fall's pre-election polls. In the months leading up to the 2000 and 2004 general elections, presidential election polls showed...November 14, 2006
A quick follow-up on Karl Rove's contention in his now well-known interview with NPR's Robert Siegel: I'm looking at 68 polls a week . . . and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You...November 11, 2006
Out of Step or Out of Office? (Or Just a Bad Election for Republicans?)
Today's Guest Pollster Corner Contribution comes from Simon Jackman of Stanford University, who takes a closer look at Tuesday's Senate election results. Two interesting questions to ask after Tuesday's election are (1) Were the six defeated Republican senators particularly "out...November 08, 2006
Despite exhaustion and sleep deprivation, we want to take a few minutes today to a very quick and very preliminary look at how the preelection polls did as compared to yesterday's results. Since some precincts are still out and some absentee...November 07, 2006
1:40 am One more "alert reader" emails: Actually, "alert reader MW" has it exactly wrong. If you look on the details page for Isle of Wight County, there are 22,861 registered voters in the county. With the count at 6,984...November 06, 2006
Our next to last Slate Election Scorecard reaps where things stand in the closest Senate races: Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia. Meanwhile I wanted to give one last update on the overall "mashed-up" margin across all the Senate races...November 06, 2006
Democracy Corps, the project of Democratic pollster Stan Greeberg and Democratic consultants James Carville and Bob Shrum, just released their final tracking survey (memo, results) conducted among voters in 50 competitive districts currently held by Republicans. To be clear, they do...November 05, 2006
Three of the last six national polls have found sharp downturns in the Democratic lead on the congressional generic ballot. After rising steadily since the week before the Foley scandal, the Democratic advantage has now begun to turn down. USAToday/Gallup,...November 05, 2006
Three of the last six national polls have found sharp downturns in the Democratic lead on the congressional generic ballot. After rising steadily since the week before the Foley scandal, the Democratic advantage has now begun to turn down. USAToday/Gallup,...November 05, 2006
Across the board, in Senate, House and Governor's races, the wave boosting the Democrats crested about 10 days ago. Since then the advantage Democrats have built throughout the year has been reduced by from 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points....November 05, 2006
As should be evident by our "most recent polls" box on the right, the Mason-Dixon organization released their (presumably) final round of statewide surveys today. We just updated our charts and the new polls helped push both the Maryland Senate...November 05, 2006
Joe Lenski is the co-founder and executive vice-president of Edison Media Research. Under his supervision, and in partnership with Mitofsky International, the company of his later partner Warren Mitofsky, Edison Media Research currently conducts all exit polls and election...November 04, 2006
I want to take a close look at our House of Representatives summary scorecard, partly to address some of its shortcomings, but mostly to try to get an overall sense of what the available public polling is telling us about...November 04, 2006
Joe Lenski is the co-founder and executive vice-president of Edison Media Research. Under his supervision, and in partnership with Mitofsky International, the company of his later partner Warren Mitofsky, Edison Media Research currently conducts all exit polls and election...November 04, 2006
Just a note that I did two interviews on Thursday that will air over the weekend. One was for a story that should run on the Saturday broadcast of the CBS Evening News (unless the LSU vs. Tennessee game runs...November 03, 2006
I estimated the net national forces in the Senate rate last night. Here is the same estimation procedure applied to the House. This is based on 86 House races with a total of 380 polls. This is much less...November 03, 2006
The generic ballot measure of the House has surged up and not stopped rising since September 22. The surge began the week in which the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) appeared, followed by Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial. A...November 03, 2006
Here is a recap of what are (or at least once were!) the competitive Governor's races (AK and ID lack enough data for the analysis and are omitted.) The graph is ordered from the strongest Republican in the lower...November 03, 2006
Our most recent update changed some of our designations. Good news for Republicans In Tennessee: Rasmussen's latest shows Republican Corker leading Democrat Ford by eight points (53% to 45%48%) and moves Tennessee to the "lean" Republican status. As the chart shows...November 03, 2006
There have been some important changes in the Senate polling over the past week. Tennessee now appears to have turned against Democratic Rep. Harold Ford, while Virginia has moved away from Republican Sen. George Allen to a clear tossup....November 03, 2006
Here is an item published by Roll Call on Wednesday that we almost missed about two Zogby polls in New York's 25th District that two media outlets refused to run: The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse and WSYR-TV had asked Zogby...November 03, 2006
This is certainly a good year for Democrats, but how good? And what are the national forces at work? I can estimate a summary of national forces to answer these questions. I estimate a model that pools ALL Senate...November 02, 2006
Two pieces of housekeeping: First, our latest update of the charts and scoreboards moves the Montana Senate race to the toss-up category. The new Reuters/Zogby poll showing Democrat Tester up by just a single percentage point confirms a recent Rasmussen...November 02, 2006
A few quick updates on the poll data we track on races for the House of Representatives: First, as of last night, we now have charts available for all 84 House districts for which we currently have polling data. Clicking...November 02, 2006
Jacob Eisenstein: Using Kalman Filtering to Project the Senate
Today's Guest Pollster Corner contribution comes from Jacob Eisenstein. While not technically a pollster -- Eisenstein is a PhD candidate in computer science at MIT -- he recently posted an intriguing U.S Senate projection (and some familiar looking charts) based...November 01, 2006
Using the Generic Ballot to Forecast the 2006 House and Senate Elections
[Today's Guest Pollster's entry comes from Alan I. Abramowitz, the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also a frequent contributer to the blog Donkey Rising.] In order to predict the outcome...October 30, 2006
Picking up on the post from earlier tonight, the new Majority Watch surveys released today provide another strong indicator of recent trends, in this case regarding the race for the U.S. House. The partnership of RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics...October 30, 2006
Charlie Cook writes tonight: "With the election just eight days away, there are no signs that this wave is abating." Some supporting evidence: The overall average Democratic margin in the Slate 13 -- the 13 most competitive Senate races we...October 29, 2006
Professor Michael P. McDonald, a nationally renowned authority on voter turnout (and an occasional commenter on Pollster.com), had a timely op-ed piece published in today's Washington Post reviewing the academic evidence that debunks "5 Myths About Turning Out the Vote."...October 29, 2006
[Democratic Pollster Mark Mellman posted a comment here on Friday in response to the final installment of my three part series on the national data on the race to control Congress. It was structured around a metaphor Mellman has used...October 28, 2006
Alert reader GS and AAPOR colleague CP alerted me to an intriguing (and somewhat contentious) NPR interview of chief Republican strategist Karl Rove conducted last Tuesday by correspondent Robert Siegel. Whatever one might think about Rove's spin, his comments remind...October 27, 2006
Bafumi, Erikson & Wlezien: Forecasting House Seats from Generic Congressional Polls
(Editor's note: Today's Guest Pollster's Corner contribution comes from Professors Joseph Bafumi of Dartmouth College, Robert S. Erikson of Columbia University and Christopher Wlezien of Temple University. The post is based on a larger paper available for download here). Although...October 27, 2006
In Parts I and II of this series, I summarized evidence of a wave of anti-Republican sentiment brewing nationally - in the form of Democratic leads on the "generic ballot" and greater enthusiasm about the election expressed by Democratic voters....October 26, 2006
After a long wait and a lot of hard work by the entire Pollster team, we are proud to unveil our new scorecard for races for the U.S. House of Representatives. We introduce the scorecard showing 219 seats in the...October 26, 2006
Last night's update of our Slate Election Scorecard feature notes a big change (also reflected on our new Pollster map and scorecard): Republican George Allen's margin over Democratic challenger Jim Webb has narrowed to the point that we now rate...October 24, 2006
Last night's Slate Scorecard update reviewed the relatively recent polls showing new momentum for Iowa gubernatorial candidate Democrat Chet Culver, but I want to take a moment and review two things readers should know about the averages in the Slate...October 23, 2006
Andrew Kohut is the President of the Pew Research Center and arguably the dean of the survey research profession. President of the Gallup Organization from 1979 to 1989, Kohut recently received the highest honor of the American Association of Public...October 23, 2006
My last post looked at evidence of an "anti-Republican wave" in the form of consistent Democratic advantages on the so-called generic House vote. Today I want to consider another indicator of that potential wave, the various measures of an "enthusiasm...October 20, 2006
I have spent a lot time over the last few days pouring over the U.S. House polling numbers on Pollster as we have been at work on some sort of summary scorecard. But before we plunge back into the micro,...October 18, 2006
Yesterday, our Slate update shifted to a district-by-district focus on races for the U.S. House. Our initial tally shows Democrats right on the edge of statistically meaningful leads in enough districts to take control of the House, and Democratic challengers...October 16, 2006
With the addition of House race data to Pollster.com, it is a good time to talk about the difficulty of measuring the status of the race to control Congress at the district level. Political polling is always subject to a...October 15, 2006
A staple of modern American politics is the article or column that inevitably follows any landslide election speculating whether this particular victory heralds a national realignment that will reshape politics for decades. It rarely does. Make what you will of...October 13, 2006
We have devoted much attention recently to the flood of new national surveys showing small declines in the Bush job approval rating and modest Democratic gains on the generic House ballot question since mid-September. Until today, I had not looked...October 12, 2006
Our Slate Election Scorecard update tonight focuses on two new polls in New Jersey that confirm recent gains by Bob Menendez and move the race to lean Democrat status. The overall scorecard tally now indicates 49 seats leaning or held...October 12, 2006
This "Guest Pollster Corner" contribution comes from Thomas Riehle, a Partner of RT Strategies Editor's note: In a 2:30 p.m. press conference, Riehle announced that when the sum up results of the 63 surveys they have conducted since August and...October 12, 2006
Our Slate Election Scorecard update yesterday focused on a new poll in Connecticut conducted by for the Hartford Courant by the University of Connecticut Hartford showing Joe Lieberman leading by an eight point margin (48% to 40%) over Democratic nominee...October 10, 2006
Today's flood of new national surveys provides enough raw material for a week's worth of blog posts. The new surveys are from ABC News/Washington Post, CBS/NY Times, CNN/ORC and USAToday/Gallup, plus one more from Newsweek released over the weekend. I...October 10, 2006
The post-Foley Folly polls find an upturn in the Democratic margin in the generic Congressional ballot. Prior to the Foley developments, Democrats held a 10.6 point lead in the polls. (This is the Dem percent minus the Rep percent.)...October 10, 2006
The post-Foley Folly polls find an upturn in the Democratic margin in the generic Congressional ballot. Prior to the Foley developments, Democrats held a 10.6 point lead in the polls. (This is the Dem percent minus the Rep percent.)...October 10, 2006
Four new polls find approval of President Bush has declined substantially since the end of September, following revelations of "overly friendly" email and IM messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) to pre-adult House pages. All these polls were completed...October 09, 2006
Our Slate Election Scorecard update for this evening focuses on two races for Governor: Michigan, where two new polls showing Governor Jennifer Granholm leading restore that state to "lean" Democrat status, and Oregon where Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski's recently...October 09, 2006
Not quite two weeks ago, I wrote about a survey of Indiana's 8th Congressional District conducted by for the Evansville Courier & Press by Indiana State University's Sociology and Research Lab. Of the registered voters that responded to to that...October 07, 2006
Last night, Josh Marshall linked to a new national automated poll from SurveyUSA asking whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert should resign: Based on what you know right now, do you think Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert should remain in his...October 07, 2006
Our update to the Slate Election Scorecard yesterday focused on six new statewide polls from the USAToday/Gallup partnership. Their new poll in Rhode Island helped push our assessment of that state into the "lean" Democrat category. As always, we encourage...October 06, 2006
I'm between planes so no time for a full post, but the generic ballot that was trending slightly down two weeks ago is now at least flat and perhaps very slightly rising. Too soon to tell what the real...October 06, 2006
I'm between planes so no time for a full post, but the generic ballot that was trending slightly down two weeks ago is now at least flat and perhaps very slightly rising. Too soon to tell what the real...October 06, 2006
More post-NIE, post-Woodward, post-Foley polls are out, suggesting that approval of President Bush has stopped its recent rise and has begun to turn down. Polls from Time, AP and Greenberg find small declines since the previous poll. A Pew...October 06, 2006
"This is as close to pollster hell as it gets." Or so wrote GOP pollster Bill Cullo last night on Crosstabs.org. While this may be an especially hellish week for Republican pollsters, Cullo makes a very valid point. "These days,...October 05, 2006
Our update Tonight's Slate Election Scorecard update focuses on the slew of new statewide surveys released earlier today by the Reuters/Zogby polling partnership. MP readers may especially appreciate the disucssion of the wide variation in polls in New Jersey. Read...October 04, 2006
Our Slate Senate Scorecard update for tonight focuses on a new Rasmussen poll in Connecticut that shows Joe Lieberman leading Democratic nominee Ned Lamont by ten points (50% to 40%). Tracking the Connecticut Senate race especially challenging because the most...October 04, 2006
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds asked a good question yesterday: THE LATEST POLL shows a Ford-Corker dead heat. Hmm. Just yesterday we had one with Ford up by 5; not long before that there was one with Corker up by 5. Is...October 03, 2006
Our Slate Election Scorecard update for tonight looks at a slew of new polls that largely confirm the status of many races but make one key change: The last five poll average now puts Virginia into toss-up status. Read it all....October 03, 2006
It must just be Murphy's Law of blogging, but the most link-worthy news always seems to spring up during days when I am unable to post. I will try to catch up with more details on some of these items,...October 01, 2006
Editor's Note: This post inaugurates a new feature on Pollster, our "Guest Pollster's Corner." We hope this new forum will provide opportunity for professional pollsters of all stripes -- media and campaign; Democrat, Republican and non-partisan -- to occasionally share their own...September 30, 2006
Our most recent update to the Slate Election Scorecard focuses on a new poll in the New Jersey Senate race, but I would like to say a few words about Virginia. We updated the race on Thursday, but two new...September 21, 2006
The morning brings two new surveys: One from CBS and the New York Times (article, results, CBS analysis, results on Iraq/terror, elections) and one from Bloomberg and the LA Times (article, results). Both surveys are lengthy and the accompanying analysis...September 20, 2006
Our update to the Slate Election Scorecard yesterday tries to put the results for the generic congressional vote from the USA Today/Gallup survey into some perspective. It also reintroduces the controversy over likely voter models in general with specfic attention...September 19, 2006
Our Slate update last night focuses on changes to the Election Scorecard for Governor's races over the last few weeks. The most notable difference is a shift of Iowa from lean Democrat to toss-up. Read it all. ...September 18, 2006
Our last Slate Election Scorecard update on Friday night shows a shift in national momentum for the first time, based on recently improving Democratic fortunes in states like Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri and Washington. These gains have occurred despite the...September 13, 2006
A quick update on last night's Republican Senate primary in Rhode Island. Incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee defeated challenger Stephen Laffey by an eight percentage point margin (53.6% to 46.4%). So in the battle of the polls -- described in my...September 07, 2006
The big news yesterday for true political junkies was the release of separate polls conducted simultaneously in 27 of the most competitive districts nationwide (with surveys in three more districts ongoing) using an automated recorded voice rather than live interviewers....August 14, 2006
Time to revisit "incumbent rule," thanks to Mickey Kaus who highlighted this observation last week by Michael Barone's column in U.S. News & World Report: It may be time to revise one of the cardinal rules of poll interpretation--that an...August 09, 2006
The nearly final 3.6% margin by which Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman in yesterday's Connecticut Senate Primary (with 98% of precincts counted, Lamont leads 51.8% to 48.2%) was certainly closer than the margins on the final public polls. The two...August 08, 2006
CT: No Exit Polls Today (Make that One Exit Poll - See Updates)
I noticed several hundred (at least) incoming Google searches on various combination of "Connecticut exit poll Lieberman Lamont," so let me pass on the official word regarding today's Connecticut primary from ABC's The Note: "There are no pooled network exit...August 08, 2006
For those waiting on the results of the today's Connecticut primary, here is a cautionary tale about the limits of polling in a primary election. Four years ago this week, I learned a lesson the hard way about what...August 07, 2006
Quinnipiac has released another poll in Connecticut this morning that has the political web sites buzzing, perhaps a bit too much. While the latest survey shows Ned Lamont leading by closer margin than their last survey, the differences are small...August 04, 2006
By now it seems that the entire political blogosphere has taken note of the latest Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut primary voters showing Net Lamont leading Joe Lieberman by 13 points (54% to 41%). Much of the commentary I have seen...August 01, 2006
Of the many national polls released last week, the most intriguing was the survey released by NPR of likely voters in the 50 competitive congressional districts (story, report). Two campaign pollsters -- Republican Glenn Bolger and Democrat Stan Greenberg --...
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08 STATEWIDE PRIMARIES
US
Dem,
Rep
Upcoming
Kentucky (5/20)
Oregon (5/20)
Puerto Rico (6/1)
Montana (6/3)
South Dakota (6/3)
2008 POLL DATA
Pres General Election:
McCain vs
US: Clinton, Obama
AL: Clinton, Obama
AK: Clinton, Obama
AZ: Clinton, Obama
AR: Clinton, Obama
CA: Clinton, Obama
CO: Clinton, Obama
CT: Clinton, Obama
DE: Clinton, Obama
FL: Clinton, Obama
GA: Clinton, Obama
HI: Clinton, Obama
ID: Clinton, Obama
IL: Clinton, Obama
IN: Clinton, Obama
IA: Clinton, Obama
KS: Clinton, Obama
KY: Clinton, Obama
LA: Clinton, Obama
ME: Clinton, Obama
MD: Clinton, Obama
MA: Clinton, Obama
MI: Clinton, Obama
MN: Clinton, Obama
MS: Clinton, Obama
MO: Clinton, Obama
MT: Clinton, Obama
NE: Clinton, Obama
NV: Clinton, Obama
NH: Clinton, Obama
NJ: Clinton, Obama
NM: Clinton, Obama
NY: Clinton, Obama
NC: Clinton, Obama
ND: Clinton, Obama
OH: Clinton, Obama
OK: Clinton, Obama
OR: Clinton, Obama
PA: Clinton, Obama
RI: Clinton, Obama
SC: Clinton, Obama
SD: Clinton, Obama
TN: Clinton, Obama
TX: Clinton, Obama
UT: Clinton, Obama
VT: Clinton, Obama
VA: Clinton, Obama
WA: Clinton, Obama
WV: Clinton, Obama
WI: Clinton, Obama
WY: Clinton, Obama
Sen General Election:
Alaska
Colorado
Louisiana
Maine
Minnesota
Mississippi (Special)
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Mexico (Pearce)
New Mexico (Wilson)
North Carolina
Texas
Virginia
PUBLIC POLLSTERS
ABC News
AP-IPSOS
CBS News
Democracy Corps (D)
Diageo/Hotline Poll
Economist/YouGov
EPIC/MRA
The Field Poll
FOX News
GWU/Battleground
Gallup
Harris Interactive
IBD/TIPP
ICR - International Communications Research
LA Times/Bloomberg
Mason Dixon Polling and Research
Marist Poll
Market Shares Corporation
Mitchell Interactive
NBC/Wall Street Journal
New York Times
Opinion Research Corporation
Pew Research Center
Polimetrix
Princeton Survey Research Associates International
Public Agenda
Public Policy Polling
Quinnipiac University Poll
Rasmussen Reports
Selzer & Company
Suffolk University Political Research Center
Survey USA
Time/SRBI
Washington Post
World Public Opinion
Zogby International
POLL BLOGS AND SITES
Political Arithmetik
Crosstabs.org
The Polling Report
Electoral-Vote.com
R. Chung's Graphics
Prof. Wang's State Poll Meta-Analysis
Prof. Pollkatz Pool of Polls
Slate: Election Scorecard
Public Opinion Pros
Frank Newport: Gallup Guru
Carl Bialik: The Numbers Guy
Poll Positions: Kathy Frankovic
The Numbers: Gary Langer
Washington Post: Behind the Numbers
SURVEY RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)
The National Council on Public Polls (NCPP)
Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO)
The World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR)
The Council for Marketing and Opinion Research (CMOR)
Marketing Research Association
ARCHIVES
May 11, 2008 - May 17, 2008
May 4, 2008 - May 10, 2008
April 27, 2008 - May 3, 2008
April 20, 2008 - April 26, 2008
April 13, 2008 - April 19, 2008
April 6, 2008 - April 12, 2008
March 30, 2008 - April 5, 2008
March 23, 2008 - March 29, 2008
March 16, 2008 - March 22, 2008
March 9, 2008 - March 15, 2008
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