Isn’t a post-convention bump a historically relevant event?
Nearly all national public opinion polling organizations that use Likely Voter samples ask some variation of these two sets of questions to determine who is a likely voter:
For live interviewer-asked questions—
How much thought have you given to the coming presidential election?
How closely have you been following news about the candidates?
Do you plan to vote in the presidential election? How certain are you that you will vote?
Rate your chance of voting in November on a scale of 10 to 1, with 10 being “definitely will vote” and 1 “definitely will not vote.”
How often do you follow what’s going on in government and public affairs?
Have you ever voted in your precinct or election district?
How often would you say you vote?
Do you happen to know where people in your neighborhood go to vote?
In the last election, did things come up that kept you from voting or did you vote?
“The other big problem with election polling, though not a new one, is that survey respondents overstate their likelihood of voting. It is not uncommon for 60 percent to report that they definitely plan to vote in an election in which only 40 percent will actually turn out. Pollsters have to guess, in effect, who will actually vote, and organizations construct “likely voter” scales from respondents’ answers to maybe half a dozen questions, including how interested they are in the election, how much they care who wins, their past voting history and their reported likelihood of voting in this particular election. Unfortunately, research shows there is no single magic-bullet question or set of questions to correctly predict who will vote, leaving different polling organizations with different models of who will turn out.”
I noticed in one recent poll 80% of respondents said they were registered and 99% of those said they were likely voters LOL!
Now, aome rare polls pay the cost to get voter info and only call people on the voter list. These can make a reasonable estimate of ‘likely voters’.
“because the sample of names is derived from lists of known voters, we know by definition that the person we are seeking is indeed a registered voter. Working off a voter list also provides the pollster with the voter’s actual party registration, as well as his or her frequency of voting in past elections, since this information is contained on the official voting records. This information can also be used to ensure that the sample is aligned properly to the state’s actual party registration and in identifying which voters are most likely to vote.”
Every summer the Rs are polling 6+ points behind their final numbers. Rs have conventions too: so IMO it’s strange. (Obama is different- he had 15% racist climb-over-broken-glass-to-vote-for-him support. Very unusual!