Are the Polls Skewed Toward Obama?

WEEKLY STANDARD ^ | July 20, 2012 | Jay Cost

[neverdem]

A topic that inevitably receives a lot of focus during election season is the partisan spread of the major media polls. Conservatives regularly complain that the polls are tilted against their side, and thus favor the Democrats.

They have a point.

To be sure, we can conclude that without accusing any pollster of malfeasance. In this essay, Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post correctly notes that the problem gets down to using registered voter polls. These tend to oversample Democrats. The argument in support of them is that, while a likely voter screen would draw a larger Republican sample, it would create more variability as pollsters would be guessing unduly at the final party turnout.

That is a fair point in some respects, although there is a cost associated with either choice. Using registered voter polls might cut down on variability, but they also create statistical bias. That is, the polls tend to oversample Democrats in a systematic fashion. And because partisan support is so strong – with 90 percent of Republicans supporting GOP candidates and 90 percent of Democrats supporting Democratic candidates – you regularly see the Democratic candidates’ margins overstated in polls of registered voters.

Let’s see if we can quantify this a little bit. To begin, we need to know the historical partisan tendencies of the electorate. For that, we can turn to the exit polls going back to 1972.

As we can see, the GOP position suffered enormously because of the Watergate scandal in 1974. Republican identification among voters plummeted 10 points, not to rebound fully until Ronald Reagan basically rebranded the party in 1984.

Ever since then, we have seen both parties pull a relatively constant range of support. This actually pushes back against Blumenthal’s point that there is an...

[jmaroneps37]

This information was very helpful LAST WEEK when it was put together by Jim Geraghty at National Review on line. This rip off without attribution is shameful.

[Dustoff45]

while this will be “close” in terms of popular vote

I expect the truth is the Vote against Obama crowd is huge and can be depended on, with their passion, to get out and vote.

The Vote for Obama crowd will probably continue to say they want to vote for him, but on that first Tuesday in November, will find something else to do that day. Their passion is very low.

[TomEwall]

I find it interesting that how terrible these state polls are does not get commented on more. One can understand the MSM not commenting, but even sites which are either neutral or leaning right don’t often do so.

E.g., the RCP state polls show the election basically where it was in 2008, except for Romney flipping NC and IN. This can’t possibly be right, just by looking at the job approval numbers. Obama is running behind Bush in 2004, and Bush only won by Ohio. The state polls should basically be showing Romney ahead in the states which Bush won, excepting possibly NV, CO and NM, which have trended Dem, as Romney is about where Bush was in 2004. But they seem to be skewed, on the average, by about 5 percent.

Interestingly, even the Rasmussen state polls are showing Obama doing better on a state by state basis than the national polls would show. Perhaps newer polls by Rasmussen will show something different.

Besides Rasmussen, the Battleground polls are good, and Mason-Dixon. Some of the others too, sometimes, depending on the internals. To have internals with 7% more Democrats is ridiculous.