Posted on 11/01/2004 12:48:52 AM PST by Dont Mention the War
That 49-49 result is due to Gallup's decision to allocate the remaining undecided voters based upon a tried-and-true formula -- 9 to 1 for the challenger.
Pew, on the other hand, decided to allocate the undecideds they found equally. This is what Pew had to say: "Pew's final survey suggests that the remaining undecided vote may break only slightly in Kerry's favor."
So, it appears that Pew's data told them something that the CW of undecided voters, i.e. their breaking toward the incumbent, is off. Gallup just did what my 9th grade geometry called a "plug and chug." As Polipundit notes, The New York Times survey indicates the same result as Pew. They found that undecideds do not seem to be breaking for Kerry.
Who is right? I do not know. I am going to cut my loses and put their non-leaned numbers into my poll averages. This puts us at Bush 48.71% and Kerry 46.2% (also factoring in this evening's Battleground Poll update).
The fellas at Emerging Democratic Majority, incidentally, smells a rat with Pew. They are all atwitter that it is (gasp!) "over-sampling" Republicans by 3.6%. "The horrah!" Maybe, but they wound up with the same result as The NY Times poll, which over-samples Democrats.
And if they are over-sampling Republicans, it simply means that they are not weighting by party ID, which in turn means they found more Republicans out there than Democrats. You want to dismiss that out of hand, guys? Do ya? They also note that Democrats have out performed Republicans at the polls for 14 years by 3-5%. Fellas, it ain't gonna happen this year. It just ain't.
They also note with interest that Pew predicted a Bush win in 2000. True true. I, in turn, will note with interest that CBS News/NY Times predicted a Gore win in 2000.
posted by Jay @ 1:40 AM 5 comments
I think there is another thing to mention here. The Zogby poll shows this race close and remember the Kerry campaign said they will challenge any state that is not in the margin of error of polls. I believe Zogby is really trying to help Kerry and the Dems this time around because he might know this is going to be a blowout for Bush and if the results are not in the margin of the polls then the Kerry campaign will challenge in the courts.
Any poll after Friday should just be ignored -- that is if you don't just ignore them all anyway.
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