Trump outperforming Romney by 16-points– Washington Post/ABC News poll

Sharyl Attkisson.com ^ | August 18, 2016 | sattkisson

[xzins]

Democrat-heavy sample nets better news for Trump

Among the same Democrat-heavy sample: 26% say they voted for Romney in 2012. 42% say they are leaning toward Trump in 2016.

The following is a media news analysis

Another poll; another way to spin.

Earlier this week, I showed how the reporting on a Bloomberg poll could be skewed to make results look more or less positive for a given candidate.

Today, we look at a Washington Post/ABC News poll that also purports to show a widening Clinton lead over Trump – by 8 points: 50% to 42%. This may well be the case. However, looking at the poll sample numbers, there’s some relevant context not reported in news stories.

Read the Washington Post/ABC News poll

The poll interviewed 10% more people who identify as Democrats (33%) than Republicans (23%), with the largest group (36%) calling themselves independent. So with 10% more Democrats than Republicans questioned, Clinton leads Trump by 8-points.

Even more interesting, the same Democrat-heavy sample favored Obama by a larger 10-point margin over Romney in 2012: 36% Obama to 26% Romney (with 32% saying they didn’t vote). We know this because the poll asked respondents how they voted in 2012. So today, Trump is outperforming Romney with the exact same Democrat-heavy sample of voters.

In other words, the same Democrat-heavy sample of Americans that gave Obama a 10-point edge in 2012, gives Clinton a slightly smaller lead, 8-points, in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Further, this particular sample has not proven to be representative in the past. Of those who said they voted in 2012, they gave Obama a hefty 15-point edge over Romney: 54% to 39%. But the actual general election was a much tighter 4-point race: 51% Obama, 47% Romney. So Romney ended up performing 8-points better and Obama 3-points worse than this Democrat-heavy sample group reflected.

Among the same Democrat-heavy sample: 26% say they voted for Romney in 2012, 42% say they are leaning toward Trump in 2016.

Hillary Clinton

One polling expert told me there’s typically no disclosure or adjustment made when random sampling turns up significantly more respondents identifying with one party over another. There’s no way to know how that will match up with the population that actually turns out to vote. “It’s a judgement call,” says the expert. Finding substantially more respondents identifying with one party over another could be an indication that the makeup of the electorate is changing, she adds.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll does what the Bloomberg poll did in pressing respondents to pick a candidate even if they initially stated they didn’t know if they were going to vote or who they would vote for. [Bloomberg added in the “leaners” when reporting the totals in an article, even though the respondents were answering a different question than “for whom would you vote.” This gave Clinton the appearance of a slightly larger lead than she actually had in the Bloomberg poll.] The Washington Post/ABC News poll seems to take this a step further: they represent the two questions “for whom would you vote” and for whom would you “lean” as if they were a single question, though they were undoubtedly asked as two separate questions. See question #2. For some reason, they chose not to separately publish both answers, and only provided the combined total. Does that favor Clinton, as in the Bloomberg poll, whereas without the ” leaners,” Trump is closer? A query to the Washington Post polling department was not answered by publication time.

There’s another point worth noting. The pollsters asked a series of four questions raising negatives about Trump: “goes too far in criticizing,” “a problem with respect for for people with whom he disagrees,” “criticism of Muslim-American family whose son was killed while a U.S. Army captain in Iraq,” “biased against women and minorities.” But they asked just one question raising a negative about Clinton: “too willing to break the rules.” One could envision other questions more comparable to the Trump questions such as: “considers herself above the law in light of the FBI findings about her email servers,” “committed perjury giving incorrect testimony to Congress,” “demonstrates hypocrisy on women’s rights considering her husband’s background and her response to it,” and “jeopardized national security with conduct the FBI called extremely careless.” But these questions weren’t asked. This means there are a number of potential negative Trump points to highlight when reporting on the poll, but fewer potential negative Clinton points available.

None of this is to suggest the headline of this poll won’t prove to be entirely accurate in the general election. Poll trends over time are typically fairly accurate predictors. But this poll is most likely to be an accurate predictor, it seems, in a race where 10% more Democrats vote than Republicans… and that remains to be seen.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

I’m left with the impression that publicly announced polls aren’t worth very much this early in the election.

They might have improved their polling method since Romney, but then again, who knows?

We best assume that winning is very possible if people care enough.

FRegards ....

[Agamemnon]

In my opinion, Reagan didn't "surge" at the end. He was probably way ahead of Carter all along.

You recall this correctly.

You may also recall that GHWB was supposedly 17-points behind Dukakis in August, 1988.

Dana Perino is all butt-hurt for Bush. She publishes her book, "And the good news is ...." last year, and put a happy face on a lot of things. Now, this year she is called "Debby Downer" and "Negative Nancy" - or so she said on O'Reilly, and is now because she thinks the polls have been so accurate since 1952. She chooses that date since the Dewey Truman race of 1948 defied polls. She feels foolish for having believed polls in 2012 in the end pointing to a Romney win and said it was Bob Beckel who was right.

Oh, you mean ballot-stuffer Bob, who chortled openly on Hannity back in 2012 about all the (D) vote manipulation that goes on in Fairfax County? Sure he knew about fraud -- but Perino has apparently never even considered the degree that it occurred in 2012.

This chick was 8 years old when the 1980 Reagan victory happened - she has no meaningful personal recollection of it I'm sure. She was a 16 year-old high school teenie-bopper at the time of the Bush v. Dukakis example I just gave. Maybe she was taking high school civics class, where they focused on "Kitty litter" (remember the bottles of alcohol Kitty Dukakis was stashing - sorta like Tom Eagleton did as McGovern's running mate did and had to get replaced by Muskie in 1972. Dana was sill just nursing then.)

Fact is, Sam, it sounds like you and I were there and remember it like yesterday, and Dana's just another pretty has-been with a substantially uninformed opinion. The establishment made her. She'll stick by the Establishment.

FReegards!

[NKP_Vet]

Hitler finds out Hillary Clinton has been using his email server.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs2_mqdfaJM

[KavMan]

LOL Please don’t compare Romney to TRUMP!

Romney had no one excited about him, TRUMP has a damn movement behind him & just look at all those Youtube videos of TRUMP’s face superimposed on movies, Romney had none of that!

[Kay Ludlow]

No question about the indoctrination! Send kids off the college, especially grad school, and they come back as good little leftists. As far as the issue though, I believe they are using the education question in the polls to reduce the weight of those who would vote for Trump, so the polls show Hillary further ahead ;-)

[fortes fortuna juvat]

News of anything that humiliates Mittens puts a big smile on my face. Cannot stand that obsequious establishment toady.

[realEmperorNorton]

I clicked on the link to the new Trump Youtube ad in comment 34 in this thread, and it crashed my computer.

Earlier today, I clicked on the link in a Breaking News thread (”NEW: Donald Trump’s First General Election Ad, “Two Americas”. MAGA! HD (video)” to the same Trump video, and it crashed my computer two times.

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks!

[WilliamCooper1]

My father is absolutely convinced that Romney had a win stolen. He said he waited in voting lines longer than he had in his entire life. And they weren’t Obama voters.

[Nero Germanicus]

The final ABC News/Washington Post poll before the 2012 election had Obama at 50 ( he ended up with 51%) and Romney at 47 (exactly what he got).
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html

[Intolerant in NJ]

Finding substantially more respondents identifying with one party over another could be an indication that the makeup of the electorate is changing, she adds...this is cr*p - a rationalization for continuing to use samples overrepresentative of 'rats - you don't make adjustments when you have no reason to believe that your universe is skewed one way or another - but when you have some indication that it is, and by how much - voter registrations or models of past years' turnouts - it's polling malpractice to continue to insist that every sample you take is perfectly representative of the factor you're evaluating - whether or not the electorate is changing is another issue which should be checked by another study - you can't determine both the possible change in the electorate and the current voter preferences in one study - not honestly anyway.....