Party Disparity in Polls and the impact on the difference...

RCP ^ | 11/6/2012 | Self

[Positive]

I just ran this little spreadsheet math to see if it would make me feel better.

In today’s RCP table ABC News/Washington Post through Sunday and Pew Research through Saturday are outliers giving Obama +3.

By clicking on the name of the ABC/WashPo line and scrolling to the bottom you will see that they used 35% Dems, 29% Republicans and 32% Independents.

Here are some of my assumptions – 90% of Dims vote Øbama while 90% of Republicans vote Romney. In exhibit A I have 52.5% of Is voting Romney and 47.5% voting Øbama. (This Independent number is well within most reports from pollsters).

Using this poll’s party split and my assumptions resulted in Øbama + 3.2% (RCP shows 3%).

Now if I change the Dims to 31% and the Republicans to 33% and leave the party votes the same but decrease Romney’s share of Is to 52% and increase Øbama’s share to 48% guess what????

The calculation turns to Romney 49.4%, Øbama 46.5%... Romney plus 2.9% --- a 6.1% switch to Romney.

I’ve heard many people acknowledge the party disparity but I’ve never seen an explanation of the math before.

[Andrei Bulba]

We will know soon enough.

[HannibalHamlinJr]

We've been conditioned to believe that O's reality is reality, and that we're applying black magic.

Not so, what SHOULD happen in any sane universe is that Obama should be down by 15%. But, he's got that hypnosis hopey changey thing, so he should be down by about 8%.

And ... that's exactly where all the polls are really saying he is.

What's happening today is not an exception, as the media will say tonight and tomorrow. The exception is the polls and the media themselves.

There should be comfort in knowing that this was never close ... because that's how a sane universe would behave. The real news is that it always was being sane.

Tomorrow, the media will tell is it's been a historic last minute surge, or a historic example of the polls missing the qualitative.

No. Sure the first debate helped, and I happen to like Romney a lot and always did, but even McCain could have shown up in debate #1 and puked down his shirt and swung 5% his way. Americans just needed an alternative who breathed.

Nothing exceptional is happening. What was exceptional was the propaganda.

The bonus is that we're actually getting a really good president out of deal.

[luv2ski]

Boy, I surely hope you are right. I wish I could be as calm as you apparently are. Frankly I am a nervous wreck. I keep going over it in my head: fewer people voting for BHO this time (check), more people voting Republican this time (check), Independents breaking big for RR (check). How can we lose? Then I read stories on here about how some volunteer helped Carter win Philly in 1976 with blatant and absurd fraud and about the GOP poll watchers begin thrown out and I get nervous again...

[Albion Wilde]

Sure the first debate helped... but even McCain could have shown up in debate #1 and puked down his shirt and swung 5% his way. Americans just needed an alternative who breathed.

LOLs!!! Nailed it!

[HannibalHamlinJr]

The dynamics this election are stronger than fraud.

If Mitt loses - which simply defies all logic - and I mean hard numbers - it won’t be from fraud.

If it’s close enough for fraud to win for Obama, then the Republic is toast.

This is not an election of ‘down the the wire’ ... it’s binary. Either certain factors are in play, and it will be a crushing defeat for Obama, or ... it will be close and Obama wins.

But all, all, all of the quantitative and qualitative ways of looking at this race say it’s the former. I was never as sure as last night when I watched Barrack and Michelle do their final rally - it really was a goodbye speech.

Some argued with me “harumph I don’t see any evidence of goodbye”, and Rush isn’t perfect - but I had to go get some din din for tonite, and he was on and he said “this last rally sounds like ... ... ... good bye” ... for all the reasons I picked up on ... he played some of the very same things I heard and said “Whoa!!!! They’re not even hiding it well.”

But don’t get hooked on little details in tonight’s reports. If something weird is operating in the universe, of course O could win ... but if it’s not, it’s going to be a blowout. What it isn’t, is a horse race.

[Wayne07]

In 2010, if you look at the final RCP poll averages for the 23 Senate races, they correctly picked the winner in 20. In the 3 they got wrong, they picked a Republican, and Democrats won 2 and Murkowski won Alaska.

So, in spite of all the complaints about bias in the polls, in 2010, they were accurate predictors, and slightly biased pro republican. I just don't see why this year will be different. I'm very worried about Ohio...

[Mike Darancette]

Here are some of my assumptions – 90% of Dims vote Øbama while 90%

Use 95% for Dims and 99% for GOP per CNN Poll.