Three Links, One Point
Mark Blumenthal | August 5, 2008
Bear with me. The post that follows links to three seemingly unrelated items that will hopefully add up to a coherent point about our tendency to over-analyze day to day "change" in polls on the presidential race.
The first is Ellen Gamerman's recent Wall Street Journal feature on "whether people are telling the truth" to pollsters. She reviews the steps well known political pollsters are taking to check for the "Bradley Effect" (sometimes also called the Bradley-Wilder effect), "the idea that some white voters are reluctant to say they support a white candidate over a black candidate." The piece notes that both CBS and ABC News will be checking whether results vary with the race of the interviewer have an impact on vote preferences.
The article also includes a useful review of the work being done by academic survey researchers on whether respondents will be more honest on "self administered" surveys (those without a live interviewer). Don't miss the interactive graphic featuring audio commentary from the researchers on examples of other ways that respondents are sometimes less than honest on surveys. While there are some intriguing new findings (see especially those on "good TV" and "M&M's"), the bulk of the research on this subject warns us to watch out for circumstances where respondents tell us "what they expect [the interviewers] want to hear" (as Tim Byers, a researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health, puts it).
That possibility leads me to a second finding from last week's "News Interest Index" survey from the Pew Research Center. The result that caught my eye received no mention in their analysis, largely because it involved a question they have been tracking on a weekly basis since January that showed no meaningful change last week:
[In the past week] Did you follow news about candidates for the 2008 presidential election very closely, fairly closely, not too closely or not at all closely?
30% very closely
34% fairly closely
21% not too closely
15% not closely at all
<1% don't know/refused
So, taking these results at face value, we know that less than a third of Americans are paying "very close" attention to the presidential race. More than a third (36%) say they are following the campaign "not too closely" or "not closely at all." Now consider the 34% who say "fairly closely" in light of what survey researchers tend to take for granted: Respondents sometimes tell us things they think we want to hear. In the context of a survey about about how much attention people are paying to the news, some respondents may be exaggerating their attentiveness to news. I would take the "fairly closely" result with a grain of salt.
Next consider the results from the second and third questions asked on the same survey. Fifty-nine percent (59%) said they heard nothing about Barack Obama in the previous week that made them either more or less favorable to Obama, and 62% said they heard nothing about John McCain that changed their view of him.
These data paint a clear picture for me: Most Americans are paying far less attention to news about the campaign than most journalists, pundits and readers of this site. If we assume that all Americans are following the campaign as a jury follows a trial, we are in error.
Finally, consider something ABC's polling director Gary Langer wrote earlier today:
We too often expect knee-jerk reactions to events of the day; rarely, in fact, do we see them. With few exceptions public opinion proceeds, instead, by a process known as considered judgment: People obtain information as it develops, evaluate it, let it accumulate to the point that it warrants reconsideration of existing attitudes, and at that point re-evaluate and either maintain or change their views.
Attitudes, this means, are far less flighty or reactive to individual events than is commonly assumed; for the most part they are, actually, rational. Obama's trip, like everything else he's doing - and ditto for John McCain - are therefore about building a case, not about changing daily numbers (which, at this stage, are fundamentally silly).
Combine Langer's description with the fact that many Americans are "obtaining" information about the candidates at glacial pace, and we should be surprised to see much meaningful change in the polling numbers right now, especially those measuring vote preference.
Update: In the comments, Along makes a good point:
As Mr. Franklin posted on Monday, the polls in 2004 and 2000 began to shift quite a bit right around now--the 100 days out mark. In 1992 Bill Clinton also started rising significantly in mid-July, after the convention. Kerry's summer swoon started just after his convention, Gore's summer rise started just before his. So are you saying the summer movement in those races was not "meaningful change," or that it was, and we should simply be waiting till the conventions grab our attention to see meaningful movement this year?
I meant mostly the latter. The conventions were earlier in previous years. While convention "bumps" may not endure, voters do pay more attention and the information they receive during conventions is important. Nate Silver made a similar observation last night:
Pundits -- including yours truly -- generally exaggerate the speed with which political news reaches a saturation depth in the American electorate. There are a few exceptions -- debates, conventions, and major victories in the primaries can have measurable effects almost immediately, and certainly within the first 48-72 hours. So can DEFCON-2 level controversies like Jeremiah Wright. But most of the things we write about here, or the National Review talks about, or Keith Olbermann talks about, take a long time to penetrate the electorate if they do so at all.
By Mark Blumenthal | August 5, 2008 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments
As Michael McDonald says, it would have been interesting to see if people followed the McCain ads and the brouhaha over those.
Still, I'd propose a different theory: Both candidates will each get about 40-45% of the vote. So 80-90% of the population has no reason to follow the news (yeah, taking them for granted...)
Of the one-third that closely follow the Presidential race, some - not all - are politically-informed, firm supporters of one candidate or the other, who won't change. The remaining voters - the 10-20% with a reason to follow the news, presumably in swing states - are leaners/undecided, and thus, perhaps more inclined to follow the campaigns. Advertising is concentrated in these swing states... That might cause some fluctuations in each candidate's support levels.
These fluctuations need not be movement from one candidate to the other, just to the "undecided" group, or something that fails to pass the LV screens, and amounting to just a few percent of the total... which could explain some of the daily variations (in addition to random noise, of course).
Given that most of the time Obama is in the lead or tied, perhaps McCain's attack ads had the effect of softening Obama's support among "leaners" and moving a few percent over to "undecided"... resulting in the Gallup ties seen last week.
Or it could all be random noise and Obama is just ahead of McCain by 1-2%!
[Sorry for the rambling post...]
Another hurray and huzzah, Mark. In reference to the Pew results you cited, if we assume that the responses are skewed toward the socially acceptable end of attention paid and that we really have no idea what "a lot of attention" actually means, I believe we can conclude that no more than a thousand Americans, including the talking heads on TV, are actually spending the first week of August engaged by the presidential campaign.
your analysis seems quite sound and cogent, but... how does it square up with the history of 3 of the last 4 elections? As Mr. Franklin posted on Monday,
http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2008/08/polling-trends-in-2008-vs-04-and-00.html
the polls in 2004 and 2000 began to shift quite a bit right around now--the 100 days out mark. In 1992 Bill Clinton also started rising significantly in mid-July, after the convention. Kerry's summer swoon started just after his convention, Gore's summer rise started just before his. So are you saying the summer movement in those races was not "meaningful change," or that it was, and we should simply be waiting till the conventions grab our attention to see meaningful movement this year?
There was a Rassmussen analysis of the controversy last Sunday. 69% of voters say they saw the ads and some unreported percentage heard Obama's dollar bill comments. It is difficult to make real sense out of these numbers since the universe is (likely?) voters. I think this gives us a hint that the movement in Rassmussen's likely voters towards McCain may have something to do with interest by Republicans around McCain's ad last week.
I'm generally in agreement, though it's worth noting that McCain got almost as much media coverage as Obama last week -- much of it about his ads -- which may explain the Rasmussen numbers also. Obvs, no one knows whether it lasts.
Also: Nice title.
Another Amen, Mark.
When I look back at the Gallup polling last week, it looks like there must have been an exceptionally good pro-McCain sample late last week. Was it because of the McCain attack ads? To have a better idea if this was the case, a pollster would have had to ask the question...did you see the ads or news coverage about them? Without that information, all the outgassing of punditry could have solved America's energy crisis.
I suspect the answer is only the most politically informed received information about the ads, and few of them would have changed their minds about who they were going to vote for since the politically informed have the highest levels of candidate support. More likely, the change in support in the Rassmussen and Zogby polls come from a change in likely voters, which is next to meaningless this far out. Of course, we would have to know something about their likely voter models to know for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with Steve Lombardo that the ads were effective in framing the campaign, particularly among the media elite. They tapped into the frame raised by the Clinton campaign in the 3am phone call ad and capitalizing on Obama's bitter comments. Obama's campaign would be wise not to dismiss these ads as same old politics. And in a way, the past week makes a strong argument for Clinton as VP since she would neutralize this frame and send the McCain campaign scambling back for another attack frame.
Posted on August 5, 2008 5:34 PM