Posted on 10/20/2008 2:12:41 PM PDT by Chet 99
Daily Tracking Poll: John McCain Pushes Back but Barack Obama Remains Ahead
Democrat Leads 53-44 as Republican Contender Improves on Economic Empathy
ANALYSIS by GARY LANGER
Oct. 20, 2008—
John McCain has climbed back from his record shortfalls on economic empathy and "change" since the final presidential debate last week -- but not enough to alter the basic dynamic of his contest with Barack Obama.
Focusing on economic concerns at the debate and since, McCain has trimmed Obama's lead in better understanding Americans' economic problems from 31 points last week to 19 points now; on bringing "needed change" to Washington, from 34 points to 21; and as the "stronger leader," from 17 points to 8.
Click here for PDF with charts and questions.
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Hmm....a nine point lead with a seven percent Dem oversample? Without doing the math, I’m guessing that this translates into a small national lead for McCain. To put this in context, it took a 4 point Dem turnout advantage to give Gore a 0.5% margin in the 2000 popular vote. This happens because the past election history shows that slightly more Democrats vote Republican than vice-versa.
If you were designing a sample frame, how would weight your sample between Dem and Rep?
When comparing your survey data to Census Tract data how much of a disparity between the two would you believe to be acceptable?
And when conducting your poll what response rate would you aim for?
Historically, the two parties are within 1% or 2% after the votes are counted, never more than 4%. There is no basis in actual voting statistics for a 7% or 12% difference.
You caught me. I have no idea how pollsters go about developing the list of names to call. But it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the deal you’re making of it.
It matters which calls you ‘throw out’ to get down to your weighted numbers. And that’s where I’m saying they’re under-sampling Republicans. I’m saying the pollsters are not giving sufficient weight to the historical relative percentages.
Of course, you’ll say they’re the pros and I’m just an anonymous poster on FR. True.
Even so, we won’t know the real truth until sometime after Nov 4.
The current weighting of R & D is based on how people have Id’ed themselves over the past six months. Now, why is it that so many more people identified themselves as Democrats in the last six months?
However, the sample frame is based on census data and when a bogus survey is released it is easy to debunk by comparing the frame to census data.
We’ll see.
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