Women are disproportionately affected by poor health care coverage

Because of gender differences in work patterns, women are less likely to have employee coverage, and more likely to have less efficient individual coverage. Compared to men, women report being more likely to delay needed care, and more likely to spend over 10% of their income on health care.

The White House, driven by the First Lady, has made some effort to bring women into the health care debate. But until just recently, those efforts seemed less successful, at least in generating interest.

Women, particularly younger women, are paying less attention to the debate

Thanks to the kind folks at Pew, we were able to get crosstabs from recent surveys about attention paid to various issues in the news. They found women to be paying less attention to the health care debate than men up until their October survey.

Examining gender by age, younger women were substantially less likely to be following the debate. In early September, this group was largely divided between following the debate closely (53%) and not closely (48%). At least two-thirds of other gender/age groupings were following the debate closely. In the most recent survey, younger women have begun to catch up with younger men in extent of interest.

Women, particularly younger women, are more supportive of health care reform

While they might not be paying as close attention, polls suggest younger women make up a strong base of support for reform. Gallup has shown more women would advise their Member of Congress to support health care reform, while men would advise their representative to vote against it.

There's actually quite a large difference between older and younger women on this, but little age difference among men. Younger women are one of the demographic groups most likely to advise their representative to vote for health care reform. Older women, however, are evenly divided.

Open Republican hostility to women's health care provides a real opportunity to gain support for reform

Supporters of health care reform should talk to younger women about more than Stupak and abortion. There is plenty of material with which to draw a contrast with reform opponents. See, for example, Senator Kyl's (R-AZ) sneering hostility to maternity care, or Representative Session's (R-TX) likening coverage for woman-specific treatments to coverage for smokers. The very same Senator Enzi (R-WY) who introduced legislation to allow companies to deny coverage of mammograms is now incorrectly using the recent mammogram recommendations as an attack on health care reform. Left unchecked, insurance companies are calling rape and domestic violence pre-existing conditions.

Right now supporters have a good opportunity to make women's health care central to the national conversation. Supporters should remind women which party has been consistently hostile to women's health, and which has not. Politicization of mammograms, and perhaps even the revival of Sarah Palin, threaten to cede some ground among women voters. But women, especially younger women, are ready for our message on reform.

UPDATE:  Thanks to the person who alerted me to this 2006 vote, in which ten Senate Republicans voted against coverage to victims of domestic violence.  The link also has some other important facts about women and health care reform, such as a C-section frequently being considered a pre-existing condition.

So my advice to President Obama . . . Challenge Congress to pass a reform bill that requires all members to obtain their health insurance the same way as those without employer-provided health insurance -- through the newly created health care exchanges, rather than the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. The two systems are conceptually similar -- similar enough that the pledge could help sell voters on the benefits of the exchange itself.

"...it comes out there:"

[O]ne of the decisions Harry Reid had to make in reconciling the HELP Committee and Finance Committee was whether or not to require Members of Congress to purchase their insurance the same way everyone else does. The Finance Committee would have required all Members of Congress to give up their Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan and buy insurance through the new exchanges instead, while the HELP bill would allow them to keep their exclusive health care plans.

The final bill's out, and Reid chose to include the Finance Committee language. Straight form the bill text:

(d) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.

(i) REQUIREMENT. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are

(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or

(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).

Heh.

Greg Sargent notes that NYC terror trial opposition tends to be old, white and Republican.

David Hill gives Obama's stock a "sell" rating.

Mark Mellman says voters oppose Congress making abortion decision.

John Petrocik charts Obama job approval for Resurgent Republic.

Alan Reifman calculates opposition to health care reform from the Left.

John Sides flags surprising opposition to the Opt-Out provision for the Public Option.

Nathaniel Persily reviews new survey data on "terror, torture and death."

Politico's Alex Isenstadt reports on reactions from Democratic party officials to setbacks with independents.

Noam Scheiber responds to Rasmussen and Schoen on deficit politics.

Nate Silver, Tom Schaller and Jim Geraghty ponder whether Sarah Palin will run for president.

James Vega thinks Obama's new Afghan strategy is not a "betrayal" of the Democratic base.

Chris Bowers finds the demographics of Democrats look more progressive than Blue Dog.

Tom Schaller handicaps the 2010 races for governor.

Teagan Goddard recaps coverage of his CQ/Roll Call polling panel.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports on teens and distracted driving.

Mike Mokrzycki assesses two surveys looking at who will pay for news.

Melissa DeCesare shares data on the power of Mom.

Doug Hoffman "Un-Concedes."

How will Frank Luntz top this (via Eldon)?

The point is, polling on issues is next to useless--especially on issues as emotionally complicated as wars and as technically complicated as health care reform. The only safe conclusion from these particular polls is this: the public has mixed feelings on Afghanistan and health care reform. Brilliant! I have mixed feelings, too. But that's not the way you'll see these played: the headlines will be: Public Opposes Health bill. Public Opposes War.

And the headlines will be ginormous. This is one of my biggest gripes with journalism as it is practiced, particularly on cable news: Polling numbers are "facts." They can be cited with absolute authority, sort of. And so they are given credence beyond all proportion to their actual importance or relevance. But they are not very truthy facts. The are imperfect impressions.

Thoughts anyone?

[Correction: I added "next to" back to the headline. Thanks to Mark L for catching my goof and apologies for the omission]. 

I directed the question (which begins at about the 1:00 mark) at Rasmussen and Jensen largely because their national surveys on presidential job approval and other issues are among the few that currently report results for likely voters or "voters" and because their reports provide little definition of those terms. The persistent and noticeable "house effect" in the Rasmussen results has led some to conclude that they are "polling a different country than other polling outfits."

I promise a longer post tomorrow summarizing my take on why Rasmussen is different, but since I'm running out of blogging time today, here are the verbatim answers from earlier today followed by a few comments. First, Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports:

First of all, we actually do have something in our daily presidential tracking poll that says that it's likely voters not adults, and we we do have a link to a page that explains something about the differences, maybe not as concisely or as articulate as I will say here...

There's a challenge to defining a likely voter. The process is a little different than in the week before an election for us than it is in two months before an election than it is in a year before an election. And to give a little history, normally if you would go do a sample of all adults, you go and interview whoever picks up the phone and you model your population sample to the population at large. When you begin to sample for likely voters you do it by asking a series of screening questions.

At this point in time, we use a fairly loose screening process, in the sense that we don't ask details about how certain you are to vote in a particular election next November. In fact, even the term "likely voters" is probably not the best term. I used to use the phrase "high propensity voters," because it was suggesting that these people who were most likely to show up in a typical mid-term election. We're not claiming this is a particular model of who will show up in 2010. When we used the phrase, "high propensity voters" -- I got a bunch of journalists who wrote back saying, "what does that mean?" I tried to explain it and they said, "oh you mean likely voters." So I finally just gave up.

Now for us [what] happens is that from this point in time, from now until Labor Day right before the election we will continue to use this model. These are people who are generally likely to show up in a mid-term election. When we get closer to the election, we add additional screens based on their interest in the election and their certainty of voting in this particular race and so the number does get more precise.

What does it mean in practical terms? Rasmussen Reports and Gallup are the only two polls out there with a daily tracking poll of the President's job approval. If you go back from January 20th on, most of the time you will see that Gallup's reported number is about three or four or five points higher than ours, because these are surveys and there is statistical noise. Sometimes the gap is bigger, sometimes its smaller. In fact there are some days when our number is a little bit higher than Gallup's. But typically, the gap between the adults and the likely voter sample is in the four or five point range.

The reason: Likely voters are less likely to include young adults, people who [as] Tom mentioned were very supportive of the President. They are less likely to include minority voters who are, again, very strongly supportive of this President. And so the gap is consistent.

Now I would explain that, at this point and time, it's a little like the difference between measuring something in inches or in meters, inches or in centimeters: the trends are the same in both cases, the implications are the same in both instances. And, by the way, the ultimate answers are that Republicans strongly disapprove of this President, Democrats strongly approve of this President, and independent voters have grown a little bit disenchanted, but they're not anywhere near the level of discontent that Republicans show. And that's true whether you measure it with likely voters or adults.

Next, Tom Jensen of PPP:

Well, I'll give a very concise answer. For our national polls, we're just pulling a list from Aristotle Incorporated of registered voters, period. We don't do any sort of likely voter sampling on our national polls. On our state level polls for 2010 races, we're polling lists of people who voted in the 2004, 2006 or 2008 general elections. If we were a live interviewer pollster that would be too liberal a sampling criteria, but we do automated polling and people who don't tend to vote in an election aren't going to answer an automated poll, so they just hang up. So we figure the 2008 wave voters we should be calling because some of them will come out in 2010, and those who will not, just hang up.

A few quick notes. First, very little of Rasmussen's explanation of his voter screen appears on the Rasmussen Reports methodology page (the one that's linked to from their daily presidential presidential tracking poll). Second, I'm still not quite clear on the question or questions that they currently use to screen for likely voters, although he implies that they ask a question about how often respondents typically vote. I understand that media pollsters often treat these screen questions like a proprietary "secret sauce," although the partisan pollsters that rely on screen questions, including Democracy Corps, Resurgent Republic and Public Opinion Strategies, typically include them in their filled-in questionnaires. Rasmussen Reports could help consumers of its data better understand "what country they are polling" if they did the same.

Finally, about Jensen's comment that "people who don't tend to vote in an election aren't going to answer an automated poll, so they just hang up:" He assumes that to be true -- and it's a perfectly reasonable assumption -- but I am not sure anyone has produced hard evidence yet that non-voters "just hang up." If they do, however, it calls into question the wisdom of assuming that an initial sample of adults called with an automated poll is really a sample of all adults (a question I've wondered about for years, even for pre-election surveys conducted with live interviewers).

The column quotes the pollsters at the three most prominent firms that conduct automated polling, SurveyUSA, Rasmussen Reports and Public Policy Polling (PPP).  Since I quoted each only briefly in the article, and since their comments were all far more extensive and on-the-record, I am sharing them here verbatim.

I asked each to respond to this passage of a polling review from former George W. Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove:

Automated polling firms like SurveyUSA and Rasmussen have drawn criticism in the health care debate for showing Americans significantly more opposed to reform than traditional pollsters who use human interviewers.

Yet on Tuesday, automated polling firms like Rasmussen were significantly more accurate than conventional competitors. Voters who stay on the phone to answer the questions of an automated pollster may more accurately represent the electorate in off-‐year elections when turnout is lower and only the most enthusiastic voters are likely to turn out. If so, Democrats who face re-‐election next year should start worrying--automated pollsters' results showing a majority of Americans opposed to health care reform may be the most prescient look at what lies in store for next year's midterms.

Scott Rasmussen, Rasmussen Reports

First, I am pleased that Karl Rove noted how "automated polling firms like Rasmussen were significantly more accurate than conventional competitors" in polling the New Jersey Governor's race.

Only part of that success can be attributed to the automated methodology. Much of it has to do with the way that we measured the support of nominal supporters of Daggett and undecided voters. Our survey model helped us project actual Daggett's vote total more closely than other firms.

As a result, I continue to believe that you can do a good automated poll or a good operator-assisted poll. You can also do a bad poll using either method. Automated systems clearly have an advantage when it comes to consistency in tracking polls, but there may be areas where operator-assisted polls have an advantage as well.

As for the health care debate, the methodology issue has little to do with it because all polls show a plurality or majority opposition to the health care plan working its way through Congress. On the Pollster.com site, the average results show 49.6% opposed and 41.8% in favor, a gap of just under 8 points. Our latest polling at Rasmussen Reports shows 45% in favor and 52% opposed, a 7 point gap.

I do believe Democrats should be concerned because the health care debate has become a lose-lose situation for them. But, it's not because automated polls show a different result. It's because all polls send the same message. The health care issue is complex and very challenging to measure. But, the overall messages from polling using both automated systems and operator-assisted approaches are quite similar. Most Americans are at least somewhat happy with their own coverage and quality of care. Anything that would force them to change is going to create political problems. Competition and choice are seen as good things. And, there is a strong desire to reduce the cost of health care along with a skepticism about the ability of our political process to accomplish that goal.

Jay Leve, SurveyUSA

Recorded-voice telephone polls are not inherently superior.

Recorded-voice telephone polls are not inherently inferior.

True: when asked yes/no questions about personal conduct - such as: "Do you have unprotected sex?" or "Do you drink alone?" - respondents who answer by pressing a button or checking a box report higher incidences than respondents who must "confess" to a human.

But: I don't think you can argue, on an issue as complicated as health-care, that mode trumps. I could draft two health-care questions today, and produce conflicting results tomorrow, one that shows support for reform, the other that shows opposition. And I could do that regardless of whether the research was conducted by US mail, mall intercepts, headset operators, professional announcers, or email.

Too many poll watchers are mode-fixated. Often, mode is the least of it.

Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling (PPP):

IVR polls were more accurate than live interviewers in New Jersey and Virginia at calling the horse race. That does not mean IVR is superior to live interviewers on every kind of question that ever gets polled. It does mean that IVR polls should be taken as seriously as any other polls on most measures of public opinion- they deserve to be a part of the discussion. They should not be ignored on issues like health care and Obama's approval.

That said, I think Rasmussen's Republican friendly numbers on things like Obama's approval and health care are more a result of his polling likely voters, presumably for the midterm elections, than an IVR vs. live interviewer thing. We saw last Tuesday that GOP voters are a lot more fired up right now so it's not surprising they're more likely to pass an off year voter screen. We model our monthly national approval polls on a Presidential year electorate because of the 2012 horse race polling we do and we find Obama with numbers more similar to the live interviewer national pollsters than to Rasmussen's. That's a sampling issue rather than a mode issue.

There are good live interviewer polling outfits and bad ones. There are good IVR polling outfits and bad ones (particularly the sort of fly by night ones that aren't a consistent presence on the polling scene.) What I want to see is not for everyone to think that IVR polls are superior, but for people to judge individual polling companies on their actual merits and not how they conduct their interviews.

I'm not sure if that gets to the heart of what you're looking for and if you have any specific questions I'm happy to answer but those are my overall feelings- no individual poll should be treated as if it's the one and only accurate one but all polls with a track record of accuracy, so long as they're transparent about their methodology, deserve to be taken seriously.

Gary Langer goes biblical on dangerous data.

Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen think Obama's numbers among independents will drop further.

Adam Geller (Chris Christie's pollster) joins a DC lobbying/policy firm.

Andrew Gelman examines how much leeway constituents give their representatives. 

Karl Rove thinks Obama's policies will drag down his favorable rating (via Lombardo).

Steve Benen says that Congress getting things done explains the Gallup uptick in Congressional approval.

Chris Bowers puts the latest Gallup results on the national House ballot into the context of other polls.

Nate Silver thinks Democrats should panic "maybe a little."

Jonathan Singer shares yet more generic House ballot numbers by region. 

Mike Barone thinks health care is hurting Democrats in Ohio and Connecticut.

Seth Masket sees little correlation between unemployment and majority party seat loss in the House (via Sides); 

Jed Lewison finds an AP polling report light on polling data.

DesMoinesDem weighs in on the new Des Moines Register Iowa poll. 

The National Journal political insiders and bloggers sound off on whether abortion restrictions in health care reform legislation will help or hurt Democrats.

Lee Rainie and Tom Rosenstiel present 12 ways news consumers have changed in the digital age.

The New York Times graphics wizards create an amazing interactive trend chart of unemployment statistics showing "the jobless rate for people like you."

Hunch crunches data on how food preference varies by ideology (via Scola).

Ms. Palin's unpopularity--the result of horrendous media coverage and her role as the McCain campaign's pitbull--is a major political obstacle. Her unfavorable rating hovers around 50%, the point at which most politicians would reach for the Valium.

An October Gallup poll put Ms. Palin's favorable number at 40%, her lowest rating to date. In a November Gallup survey, 63% of all voters said they wouldn't seriously consider supporting her for the presidency.

Yet Ms. Palin isn't as unpopular as John Edwards, and she has a higher approval rating than Nancy Pelosi. As Hillary Clinton's career shows, public perception changes over time. Ms. Palin remains highly popular among Republicans (69% favorable). But the Democrats' striking antipathy to the former governor--she has a 72% unfavorable rating among them--drives down her overall approval.

Independents are a different story. These are the folks who decide presidential elections, and they are divided on Ms. Palin. In last month's Gallup poll, Ms. Palin had a 48% unfavorable and 41% favorable rating among independents. Not good, but not insurmountable. Flip those percentages, and they could be serving moose burgers in the White House in 2013.

What drives independents' uncertainty is their feeling that Ms. Palin isn't up to the job. Independents blanch at her perceived lack of expertise on issues unrelated to energy or abortion. They look at Ms. Palin's disappointing interview with Katie Couric last year, or laugh at Tina Fey's impression on "Saturday Night Live." Her resignation--still not fully explained--stokes their worst fears.

Continetti goes on to outline a strategy that he believes Palin could use to rehabilitate her image. But Palin's reputational problems are more profound than he admits. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, perceptions of Palin's qualifications for the presidency are shockingly low for a former presidential/VP nominee -- there's been no one comparable to her since Dan Quayle. As such, while it may be true that independents are "divided" in their feelings toward Palin (41% favorable, 48% unfavorable), they tilt heavily toward viewing her as unqualified. Continetti doesn't mention any polls on the subject, but a Gallup survey released last week found that only 28% of independents (and 58% of Republicans!) believe Palin is qualified to be president -- significantly lower than the other prominent Republicans included in the survey (Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich). Given how much people already know about her and how much negative attention she draws from Democrats and the press, it's extremely unlikely she will turn around those numbers. In other words, keep the moose burgers on ice.

PS Note to Continetti: It's a bad sign when you have to clarify that Palin is more popular with John Edwards, a man who cheated on his wife while she was battling cancer.

Update 11/18 9:46 AM: This post was cited in a Christian Science Monitor story on Palin's 2012 prospects.

(Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com)]]> http://www.pollster.com/blogs/continettis_unlikely_case_for.php http://www.pollster.com/blogs/continettis_unlikely_case_for.php 2012 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:09:22 -0500 questions@pollster.com (Steve Lombardo) by Steve LombardoWe re-learned something important last Tuesday: President Obama doesn't have proprietary rights to "change." Change is a non-partisan electoral phenomenon, and last week the forces of change bit the Democratic hand that fed them in 2008. Change didn't end when Obama was elected, and this anti-Washington, pro-reform sentiment will likely shape the political environment for the next several months.

To some extent, of course, results in VA and NJ were about key segments of the electorate (such as suburban voters and white women) returning to their ideological comfort zones, but the results there were more about a general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country; that was the key driver in the defeats of two Democratic governors.

While passing some type of health care reform will almost certainly provide a boost to Democrats, we believe that the prolonged focus on health care reform--by Congress and the media--is frustrating voters who continue to be more concerned about the economy. This is why we saw the President announce a "Jobs Summit" this morning. Where has the White House political team been since January? Under a rock?

A lot can--and will--happen in the next 12 months that will impact the 2010 midterms. The generic congressional ballot, however, is one of the better predictors of future election outcomes and the trend is undeniably positive for Republicans. Below is a regression trend going back a little over one year. Just for fun, if we project this out to Election Day 2010 we're looking at a GOP landslide. That, of course, is unlikely, but it does show that Democrats should be concerned with the overall trend.

Some additional notes on the current environment, informed by last week's exit polls:

1. The GOP swept VA and won the Governor's race in NJ by flipping the Obama coalition on its head. Yes, turnout was lower (normal for off-year elections and unsurprising considering turnout for the 2008 Presidential election) but independents, suburban voters and even young voters (in VA) went for the Republicans. Obama won VA by 7 points and NJ by 20! These two maps really tell the story (click for the larger originals):

2. The economy was a key driver of anti-incumbency sentiment last week and this will continue unless perceptions of economic performance improve. While the Dow is soaring again, unemployment has hit 10.2%. Despite the growing talk about a recovery, it has yet to hit Main Street. A recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll shows that only seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has "turned the corner." From most voter perspectives, the economy is still a mess and they are unsatisfied with the Democrats' response. This is confirmed by the exit polls:

• 89% of NJ voters were worried about the economy and Christie won 51% of the vote among them (Corzine 43%, Daggett 5%).
• 85% of VA voters were worried about economy and McDonnell won 63% - 36% among that group.

In short, voter attitudes regarding the direction of the country are really hurting the President and Democrats right now.

3. All politics is local, but the perception is that local economic woes are due to national, systemic problems. The storyline is that the recession was the result of insufficient regulation and excessive speculation on Wall Street, and it's clear that voters now believe that these type of things fall under the purview of the federal government. This skepticism toward the federal government's ability to deal with these problems was further reinforced by reactions to the stimulus.

4. The exit polls confirm that we're still in a "change" mindset. Republicans also won handily among independents (66-33% in Virginia and 60% - 30% - 9% in New Jeresey).

• Thirty-nine percent of NJ voters said "change" was the most important quality, not "honesty," "experience," or "values," and "change" voters broke 67% - 26% - 7% for Christie.
• McDonnell also won the youth vote 54% - 44%. While this group represented just 10% of the turnout, it is a surprising result for a socially conservative Republican.

5. The stage may be set for another wave election. Suburban voters and white women favored both Christie and McDonnell after breaking for Obama in 2008. These groups were key to both Clinton's victory in 1992 and the subsequent swing back to the GOP in the 1994 midterms. While the economy was not front-and-center at that time, the failure of a transformative liberal agenda to properly address issues sounds familiar. Again, we must stress that we are a long way away from Election Day 2010 and this is just one scenario--if an increasingly plausible one.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

Under a new law in New York that extended deadlines, military and overseas ballots received by this coming Monday (and postmarked by Nov. 2) will be counted. Standard absentee ballots had to be returned this past Monday.

Hoffman conceded the race on election night, and Owens was sworn in by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just in time to provide an additional "yes" vote on heath care reform legislation. Weiner explains how that was possible given the ongoing vote count:

Conklin said the state sent a letter to the House Clerk last week explaining that no winner had been determined in the 23rd District, and therefore the state had not certified the election. But the letter noted that Owens still led by about 3,000 votes, and that the special election was not contested -- two factors that legally allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to swear in Owens on Friday.

"We sent a letter to the clerk laying out the totals," Conklin said. "The key is that Hoffman conceded, which means the race is not contested. However, all ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed."

While the re-canvass narrows the race from a 4.1 percentage point Owens margin (49.3% to 45.2%) on election night to a slightly better than 2 point margin now,** it is still very unlikely that Hoffman can overtake Owens on the absentee votes. Hoffman would need to defeat Owens by a margin of at least 2:1 among absentee voters, assuming that most of the 10,200 ballots were returned and that Scozzafava's vote is 10% or less. Not even the ill-fated PPP poll had Hoffman ahead by 2:1 districtwide. And Hoffman's margin would need to be larger if Scozzafava's vote is bigger or if the number of returned ballots is smaller.

Also, the narrowing does not change the polling story that I focused on in this week's column. I was working with the AP vote totals reported by the Saratoga Springs Saratogian that had already corrected the Oswego County error and showed Hoffman leading by roughly three percentage points. So the closer count does make the polling "error" smaller, but only a little smaller.

**The Post-Standard story provides new vote totals for Hoffman and Owens but not Scozzafava, so I can't calculate the precise percentages.

Update: The Watertown DailyTimes published results-by-county this morning that give Owens a 3,176 vote margin.  They also say that only "about 5,400" absentee ballots left to be counted, which would make it virtually impossible for Hoffman to overtake Owens. 

Jennifer Agiesta reviews broad support for the death penalty in Virginia.

Lymari Morales explains why we should care what other people think.

Mark Mellman sees one surprise in the 2009 elections.

Bill McInturff and Nichole McClesky list 5 trends to watch in 2010.

Tom Jensen finds Republicans to be mostly conservative.

David Hill shares sensible advice about making sense of independents.

Morris Fiorina believes Republicans still have more serious problems than Democrats with the "uninterested, uninvolved electorate."

Chris Bowers thinks Democrats can appeal to both disillusioned and swing voters.

Nate Silver finds explanations of independent voting in 2009 unconvincing.

Greg Sargent notes an enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans in today's new Pew Research survey.

Jonathan Silver reviews yet more regional tabulations of the generic House vote.

Stuart Rothenberg crowns SurveyUSA "Pollster of the Cycle."

Jim Galloway reports on a live interviewer experience sure to please automated pollsters.

The Onion satirizes another Zogby innovation.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has consistently trailed in the polls against both former state senator and Republican party chairwoman Sue Lowden and real estate owner Danny Tarkanian. On the gubernatorial side, Jim Gibbons appears to face an uphill climb to win reelection against primary or general election challengers, although polling in the governor's race has been sparse.

Links to all of the newly added Nevada pages are available below, and all of these pages can be found via or Nevada state page.

Ratings:

Pres. Obama: Approval, Favorable rating
Sen. Reid: Approval, Favorable rating
Sen. Ensign: Approval, Favorable rating
Gov. Gibbons: Approval, Favorable rating

2010 Senate:

NV-Sen: All Head-to-Head Matchups
NV-Sen: Lowden (R) vs Sen. Reid (D)
NV-Sen: Tarkanian (R) vs Sen. Reid (D)
NV-Sen: Republican Primary

2010 Governor:

Keep in mind that differences in methodology (question wording, populations sampled) produce huge variation in the results. Use the chart's "plot" tool to hide the trend lines, and you see quite a bit of overlap between the dots representing individual poll results for favor (black) and oppose (red). As such, the "nose" of this particular chart gets fooled more often than election charts when the most recent polls come from pollsters that are typically skewed in one direction or another.

In this case, however, the change looks to be real. First, try using the "smoothing" tool to change to the "less sensitive" setting, which effectively reduces the influence of the most recent surveys on the trend line. Doing so in this case shows the same upward drift in the oppose line.

Second, forget the chart and focus on apples-to-apples comparisons for three pollsters that released new surveys over the last week:

• Last week, CNN/ORC showed 45% of adults favoring "Barack Obama's plan to reform health care" and 53% opposed. That represents a reversal since mid-September, when 51% were in favor and 56% opposed.

• Gallup shows initial support for the "health care legislation now being considered by Congress" falling sharply from 38% in mid-September and 40% in early October to 28% this week, with opposition remaining flat and "or do you not have an opinion" jumping sharply (from 22% to 33% since mid-September). When Gallup pushes their adult samples to say which way they lean, their results look similar to the CNN poll: 43% support or lean to support while 48% are opposed or lean that way -- a reversal since September and mid-October.

• Last week's IPSOS/McClatchy poll shows a similar change: Earlier in the month, their adult sample divided on "the health care proposals now being discussed" (40% favor, 42% oppose). Their survey last week shows 39% in favor and 49% opposed.

Mickey Kaus noticed the trend in the IPSOS/McClatchy poll last week and asked what this apparent change might be about. Here is my take.

The most important thing to remember is that Americans most likely to be shifting their opinions are those least engaged in news about the ongoing Congressional health care debate. And even though most of the Pew Research News Index surveys in recent months show large majorities who say they are "closely" following the debate, they also find that nearly half of adults (44%) do not know that the "public option" deals with health care, while four-out-of-five cannot pick Max Baucus' name from a list of four senators as the chair of the Senate Finance committee working on health care.

Bob Blendon, the widely respected Harvard academic who has studied public opinion on health for much of his career, makes a similar point in a just published article in the New England Journal of Medicine (co-authored by John Benson, summarized on Kaiser Health News and blogged about yesterday by Karen Tumulty):

Most Americans are not health policy specialists, and they are unlikely to read a long and complex piece of legislation. Instead, they will rely on trusted intermediaries to clarify its likely impact on them. The President and congressional leaders play a critical role, but public confidence in leaders in Washington is not universally high.

As he has argued all along, Blendon believes that as the health care debate comes to a close, the "most important factor in determining the level of public approval" will be "Americans' impressions of the legislation's likely impact on their own situation. Support for or opposition to specific elements of the legislation and concerns about the need for reform in general will be secondary influences."

In that context, here are two theories about what might be behind the October trend:

1) More negative ads from reform opponents - CNN reports:

Opponents of President Obama's approach to health care reform have outspent supporters by more than $7 million in the past 30 days... "We are starting to see a separation in the messaging," said Evan Tracey, president of CMAG and CNN's consultant on political television advertising. "Groups that are opposed to President Obama's health care plan are starting to turn up the volume in key states to put pressure on lawmakers to vote against these bills."

2) Process coverage and Democratic disunity - As always, news coverage tends to focus on the legislative process - who is up, who is down and what tactics are working or not working. In September, President Obama's speech largely rallied Democrats who were generally upbeat and supportive in public comments. Over the last few weeks, however, the story reverted to previous form: Most coverage focused on threats of filibuster or non-support from Senators Landrieu, Bayh, Lieberman, etc. in contrast to the relatively unified opposition of the Republicans. My guess is that the contrast of Republican opposition and Democratic squabbling gives greater credibility to the Republican arguments against reform.

I called Blendon for his reaction, and he largely agrees. He points to the Gallup result showing 26% of adults who say the health care bill will "make your own health care situation better," 36% who say it will make it worse and 31% who think it will not make much difference. "In the absence of not having a fixed view of what this [reform bill] is and how it will work out for me," he said, Americans are "more susceptible to advertising."

In the same context, Americans are also watching the news coverage focused on the legislative process and "getting more scared." He said he watched the cable news coverage following passage of the bill on Saturday night and saw "not a word telling you why you should care if the thing passes."

Blendon still believes, as he and Benson argue in NEJM, that "public opinion is still fluid on the key question about the impact of the legislation." Again, the percentage that say they will be worse off still falls far below a majority, and Gallup has tracked in increase in the initial "not sure" response (from 22% to 33%) over the last month. Proponents of health care, Blendon argues, must invest time telling seniors and others who stand to benefit "how they will be better off...that's the thing they have to do to turn this around."

But how is this business doing?

Political polling (which drives the majority of the visitors to this site) is a fairly predictable business driven by the electoral calendar and not by the business cycle. The business of political polling is facing several large (but manageable) challenges. One is cooperation rates and the other is the decline of the landline. But, this business seems to be humming along at its usual clip, relatively immune to the great recession.

However, many political polling firms also have large commercial research businesses. These commercial research businesses are frequently dominated by public affairs and corporate messaging research practices, but have branched out into traditional market research work as well.

And how is this part of the industry doing?

It's been a tough year.

The Research Industry Trends 2009 Survey polled 512 individuals in the market research industry, including those on the supplier and client (inside a corporation) side. The results are unpleasant for anyone in the industry:

1. 57% reported a decline in revenue.
2. Only 42% of US based researchers expect a growth year.
3. 73% agreed that research is becoming commoditized with clients less willing to pay for quality.
4. 70% agree that clients are demanding shorter timelines and faster delivery of results.

To see the full report, here or here

At a broader level, this data tracks closely with my assessment of the industry and where it is headed.

For a lengthier read on where I think the market research industry is going, click here

I'd like to contribute a few thoughts on the performance of the public polls during the recently concluded New Jersey Gubernatorial race. On this topic, I bring a unique perspective, as the pollster for the Christie campaign, and I'd like to offer my thoughts not as any type of authority, but rather to contribute to an important professional discussion.

I should mention that, for what it's worth, some observers may have been surprised by the results on November 3rd, but neither Governor Elect Christie nor his advisers were surprised.

Before the cement hardens and ink dries on the post election wrap up, let me offer the following five thoughts:

1. The automated polls were more accurate than the live interview public polls, due in part to the methodology of the live interview polls.
   From polls that were in the field for an entire week (Quinnipiac) or even longer (FDU), to polls that oversampled Democrats (Democracy Corps, among several others) to polls that asked every single name in the ballot (Suffolk), an essential reason for the poor performance of the live interview polls had less to do with the fact that a live person was administering the poll and more to do with methodological issues.
2. The partisan spread in the polls ought to be reported up front.
   Some public pollsters make it difficult to determine how many Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters they interviewed. Why not just put it into the toplines? Reporters and bloggers should demand this before they report on the results. Not to pick on Quinnipiac, but they had Corzine and Christie winning about the same amount of their own partisans, and they had Christie winning Independents by 15 percentage points, and yet they STILL had Christie trailing overall by 5 points. Quinnipiac did not publish their partisan spread, but then an astute blogger was able to ascertain the fact that there were, in fact, too many Democrats in the sample. Other polls, notably Democracy Corps, regularly produced samples with too many Democrats (though, in their parlance, some of these were "Independent - Lean Democrat"). That their sample was loaded up with Democrats had the obvious effect on their results. Whether this was intentional or not, I would leave to others to speculate.
3. In general, RDD methodology is a bad choice in New Jersey, if the goal is predictive accuracy.
   In New Jersey, there are many undeclared voters (commonly but mistakenly referred to as Independents). These undeclared voters identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats - even though they are not registered that way. In our polls, we frequently showed a Democrat registration advantage that matched their actual registration advantage - but when it came to partisan ID, the spread was more like a six point Democrat advantage. By using a voter list, we knew how a respondent was registered - and by seeing how they ID'ed themselves, we gained insight into the relative behavioral trends of undeclared voters and even registered Democrats who were self identifying as Independents. Public pollsters who dialed RDD missed this. Partisan identification in New Jersey is not enough, if the goal is to "get it right."
4. The public polls oversampled NON voters.
   Again, this is a function of RDD versus voter list dialing. It is easy for someone to tell a pollster they are "very likely" to vote. With no vote history and no other nuanced questions, the poll taker has little choice but to trust the respondent. Pollsters who use voter lists have the benefit on knowing exactly how many general elections a respondent may have voted in over the past five years, or when they registered. By asking several types of motivation questions, the pollster can construct turnout models that will have a better predictive capacity. The public polls did not seem to do this.
   
   To this end, we had heard all about the "surge strategy" that the Corzine campaign was going to employ. This refers to targeting "one time Obama voters" and driving them out in force on election day. With voter lists, we were easily able to incorporate some "surge targets" into our sample. After running our turnout models, we saw no evidence that the surge voters would be game changers.
5. The Daggett effect was overstated in the public polls.
   Conventional wisdom holds that Independent candidates underperform on election day. But the reality is, many analysts could have easily predicted Daggett's collapse, based not on history, but on simple a simple derivative crosstab: for example, voters who were certain to vote for Daggett AND had a very favorable opinion of him. They could have asked a "blind ballot" where none of the candidate choices were read. We did these things - and we estimated Daggett's true level of support to be around 6%.

What does it mean for next year? At the very least, journalists, bloggers and reporters need to ask more questions about the methodology and construction of the poll sample. They need to understand the partisan spread, and the extent to which it conforms to reality. They need to know how long the survey was in the field. They also need to beware of polls being released that are designed to manipulate opinion rather than manage it. They need to ask if certain polls are being constructed to reflect what is happening, or if they are being constructed to reflect what the poll sponsor would LIKE to happen. The public polls add to the dialogue, and given their ever increasing contributing role, we all ought to be more demanding when reporting their results.

The survey clearly identified the growing importance of digital tools for both communicating with constituents and for constituents reaching their members. They noted websites have become ubiquitous in terms of their usage and effectiveness in reaching constituents (82% feel they are effective) while other outlets have also demonstrated their positive impact - online videos (52%), blogging (46%) and micro blogging such as Twitter (22%).

In terms of the effectiveness in reaching their members of Parliament and Congress through digital means, e-mail scored the highest at 87% effective with Member's blog rated at 31%, Member's social network at 22% and microblogs, such as Twitter, at 7%.

The study found that staffers are turning to social networks, blogs and microblogs more regularly for personal usage (Facebook 60%, YouTube 52%, Personal Blog 12%, Twitter 11%) than they are for professional reasons. However, their usage patterns reflect receptivity to these tools and an opportunity to increase usage for analysis, communicating with constituents and reaching colleagues on policy issues.

For the full report, click here: http://edelman.com/capital_staffers_index.pdf

With even a casual examination of past turnout data, this seems to be an unbelievably high standard by which to define turnout success.  An odd-year election simply cannot hold a candle to a record turnout presidential year.  Voting groups who turnout less frequently--like minority groups and younger voters--are not going to be solely responsible for the dropoff.   The charts below show turnout since 1978.  In both states, not one time has either odd year or mid-term turnout surpassed presidential year turnout from that cycle.  In fact, only once (in Virginia) does mid-term turnout appear to just surpass presidential turnout from a different cycle.

The shifts in outcomes between the 2008 presidential and 2009 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia were driven far more by shifts in voting preferences among groups than by changes in turnout across those groups. Only age groups show consistently substantial changes in relative share of the electorate. Vote preference, in comparison, shows quite large shifts between election years. While one narrative of the 2009 election was changing turnout motivation, this turns out to be substantially false. Instead, changes in candidate preference drove the Republican wins in both New Jersey and Virginia.

The chart above shows the direction and size of change in vote preference for nine categories and 27 groups measured by exit polls in both years. The arrows start at the 2008 vote and point to the 2009 vote. The length of the arrow shows the amount of change and the arrow shows the direction of change. The colors code the shift in majority vote from 2008 to 2009. Blue indicates a Democratic majority for the group in both years. Red represents a Republican majority both years. Purple shows the groups that switched from a Democratic majority in 2008 to a Republican majority in 2009. None of the 27 groups switched from Republican to Democratic majorities.

In Virginia, large shifts in preference came among 18-29 year olds, those without a college degree, independents, rural voters and males. Smaller but still interesting changes came among lower and middle income voters, both of which shifted from majority Dem to majority Rep.

The most talked about shifts are among partisans and ideological groups. The large 16 point shift from 49 to 33 percent Dem among independents has justifiably received a lot of attention. But perhaps as interesting is the similarity of partisan loyalty among Dems and Reps. Neither shifted by enough to make the length of the arrow stand out. Virginia Democrats actually increased their Dem support by a point, while Republicans came home by a small 4 percentage points more than in 2008. Clearly the independents drove the dynamics of the outcomes.

Among conservatives, there was a modest shift of 9 points more Republican support in 2009, and a 5 point shift among moderates. Liberals moved a single point more Democratic.

By contrast, the shifts in share of the electorate were quite modest, as seen below.

By far the largest shifts are among the various age groups. The 18-29 year olds dropped 11 points, from 21 to 10 percent of the electorate. Those 30-44 also declined a bit, from 30 to 24 percent. These were matched by gains of 9 points among 45-64 year olds and of 7 points among those 65 and older. Age is one of the most potent predictors of turnout, and as this chart shows, one of the most dynamic from 2008-09.

The other two groups with interesting shifts are the rise in share of the electorate among conservatives (up from 33 to 40 percent of voters) and the similar decline in turnout among Democrats, from 39 to 33 percent.

Not only are these shifts substantial, but they also stand out against the very modest shifts in share of the electorate for all other groups. Many of the arrows have invisible lengths, indicating very small changes of one or two percent.

In New Jersey, we also see large preference shifts and even smaller turnout shifts.

The giant preference change in New Jersey is among independents, the same as Virginia. NJ independents took a massive 21 point shift from 51 percent for Obama to just 30 percent for Corzine. Also as in Virginia, Republicans came home to their party a bit, from a 14 percent defection rate for Obama to just 8 percent defection to Corzine. Democrats meanwhile barely budge, down from 89 to 86 percent Dem.

There were other substantial movements in vote preference, among 30-44 year olds, moderates, whites, hispanics and males. In short, many groups in New Jersey made substantial movements away from Democratic votes.

By contrast, the makeup of the New Jersey electorate changed a bit among age groups but hardly at all for virtually all other groups.

As with Virginia, there were declines in share of the electorate among 18-29 and 30-44 year olds and compensating increases among those 45 and above.

No other group comes close to such large changes in size. Several change by exactly zero (the open circles in the chart) and most others have lengths too small to see in the plot. The nearest exceptions are a decline of moderates of five percent and a corresponding five point rise among conservatives.

The bottom line for both states is that turnout changes were mostly about the age structure of the electorate. Younger voters are more responsive to short term stimulation, and in 2008 that translated to relatively large turnout, while in the absence of that stimulus in 2009 the more stable commitment to voting among those over 45 advantaged that group.

The shifts in preference in both states were significantly larger for many more groups. Preferences are driven by candidates and issues and those were the primary drivers of the change in outcomes from 2008 to 2009.

Below are alternative looks at the data, comparing the share and the vote for each state. These give a better look at the entire set of groups, but it is harder to compare magnitude of changes along the diagonal line in these charts than in the arrow plots above.

600

Rasmussen reports Democratic party ID inching up in October.

Glen Bolger reviews what worked for McDonnell.

Ed Goeas sees Tuesday's results as good news for Republicans.

Mark Mellman says Tuesdays results tell us little we did not already know.

Sam Stein examines pollster hits and misses in 2009.

Karl Rove is impressed with automated polls (via @dusher).

Jonathan Singer notes some regional inconsistency on the generic congressional ballot.

Jed Lewison rebuts the Frank Luntz health care memo.

Carl Bialik calculates the odds that Gov. Schwarzenegger's nasty anagram happened by chance (more in his blog and from Andrew Gelman ).

FBI investigators pursue the possibility that the Kentucky Census worker death was suicide (via Sullivan).

Survey Practice publishes its November issue, includes an article on how to target cell phone only households for Internet surveys.

Taegan Goddard will host CQ's panel of pollsters on November 17 featuring Scott Rasmussen, Quinnipiac's Peter Brown and PPP's Tom Jensen.

And, slightly off-topic, Failblog reminds us the posters need proofreading too:

New Jersey. Our final trend estimate based on all pre-election polls was dead even, with each major party candidate receiving 42.0% of the vote and independent Chris Christie 10.1%. Christie had a one-point lead on the RealClearPolitics average of the last five non-partisan polls (+1.0%), roughly the same margin as using our more "sensitive" trend line (+1.1%).   

The unofficial count, as of this writing, has Christie leading by 4.3% (though as noted yesterday, all of these unofficial results are likely to change slightly as provisional and absentee ballots are counted). So the average polling error in New Jersey was between 3.3% and 4.3% depending on the average. Nate Silver did a compilation of comparable New Jersey polling errors (compared to final averages) on 9 previous elections that ranged from a low of 0.5 to a high of 4.8. So the error yesterday, while higher than average, fell well within recent experience.

At the same time, nearly everyone has noticed that the average of the final polls from three organizations using an automated methodology (sometimes refered to as "interactive voice response" or IVR) had Christie ahead by four percentage points (46% to 42%) -- roughly the same as his unofficial margin -- while the last three live-interviewer telephone polls had Corzine leading by an average of one point (41% to 40%)

As I wrote on Monday night, what makes that gap between automated and live-interviewer polling interesting is that it was not some random fluke on the last few polls, but persisted throughout the campaign to a degree that we did not see in Virginia this year or in most states during the 2008 presidential election. My conclusion was that the consistency in the estimate of Corzine's vote on so many recent polls suggested a looming "incumbent effect," that voters had largely made up their mind on Corzine but that a small but critically important number were still weighing whether to support Christie or Daggett. So, the theory goes, the IVR polls did better by removing the live interviewer and simulating a secret ballot, thus pushing voters harder to make a choice and more accurately recording their true intentions over the phone.

And what happened to Daggett? Our final trend estimate had him at 10%, but he received only 5.8% of the vote. Although it had been rising until mid-October, Daggett's support ultimately followed the traditional pattern. Many voters that had been intrigued by his candidacy ultimately concluded that their votes would be wasted and opted to support either Christie or Corzine. The Fairleigh Dickinson Unversity poll provided a hint of where Daggett's support was heading in an experiment conducted on their last survey: They found that Daggett received just 6% -- the same number he won on election day -- when they only named Corzine and Christie as candidates but accepted Daggett as a volunteered choice. When they offered a three-way-choice that included Daggett, his support jumped to 14%.

Virginia. Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in Virginia was never in doubt during the final weeks of the campaign, so political junkies were less obsessed with the polling numbers, but the polling errors in Virginia were, on average, about the same as in New Jersey. Our final trend estimate had McDonnell ahead by 13.4% (54.7% to 41.0%). The unofficial tally has McDonnell leading by 17.4% (58.7% to 41.3%) so the error, as of this writing, averages 3.7 points on the margin.

In Virginia, the gap between the results of automated and live interviewer polls was not nearly as big or as consistent as in New Jersey. The average of the final automated polls in Virginia conducted by PPP, SurveyUSA and Rasmussen had McDonnell at 56% compared to 54% on the final polls in the last week conducted by five organizations using live interviewers, while both sets of poll gave Democrat Creigh Deeds an average of 41% of the vote. However, the final automated polls by SurveyUSA and PPP along with the live interviewer survey by Virginia Commonwealth University are closest to the final margin (as of this writing).

New York City. Our final trend estimate had Mayor Michael Bloomberg leading Democratic challenger William Thompson by a 14-point margin, (53.1% to 39.0%), but Bloomberg won by less than five (50.6% to 46.0%) so the polling error is large (9 points on the margin) -- roughly the same as the infamous New Hampshire polling debacle).

What happened? Marist pollster Lee Miringoff describes it as a "text book case of pre-election poll analysis:"

It is not unusual in contests between a well-known incumbent (Bloomberg) and a relatively unknown challenger (Thompson) that the incumbent ends up getting pretty much the same number he was attracting in pre-election polls. Undecided voters tend to find the challenger or not vote at all, having already rejected the incumbent.

He refers, of course, to the "incumbent rule," a subject I speculated about at length in 2004, only to see it generally not apply that year, in close races in 2006 or 2008. That said, it does appear to have returned in New Jersey and New York City on Tuesday.

But that apparent reemergence raises an important question: If the rule is no longer a "rule," but rather a phenomenon that occurs only occasionally, how do we know to expect it? Miringoff wrote yesterday that Marist's polls "showed the trend that Democratic voters were 'coming home' to Thompson." That result would have been a helpful warning sign. Problem is, I can't find any reference to it in Marist's final poll release. Instead, I find this prediction: "If today were Election Day," they wrote on Wednesday without qualification, "Mayor Michael Bloomberg would handily win a third term."

If anyone deserves to say "I told you so" in New York, it is Thompson pollster Geoff Garin, who released a survey last week showing Thompson gaining (he said), trailing by only 8 points (38% to 46%) and by only 3 points (41% to 44%) among those who said they were certain to vote. The release prompted Bloomberg spokesman Howard Wolfson to retort that it "gives new meaning to the term margin of error." Not exactly. (And yes, we managed to miss this poll and omit it from our chart -- apologies to Garin and our readers for that oversight).

I asked Garin for his thoughts and he agrees that "undecideds split against incumbent" in the New York race and that such a split was knowable in advance, but argues:

[I]t is stupid to think they would split 100 to nothing. There was a high undecided in NYC because voters were cross pressured -- they did not want to reward Bloomberg for his bad behavior on term limits, but they didn't know enough about Thompson to know whether he would be up to the job.

Garin also thinks their sample made a difference:

I think the main reason we did better and the public polls were off is that we worked off the voter file, and were persnickity about who we took into what was very likely to be a low turnout election. Even among whites, the smaller the turnout scenario the better for Thompson. I am sure the public polls let in too many people.

Maine Question 1. Polling on the gay-marriage referendum was far more limited -- just seven public polls released over the course of the campaign -- and the complicated ballot language and the error prone nature of prior referenda poll warned us to expect the unexpected. Yet while the differences between the final polls were relatively small, it is worth noting that the automated survey from PPP was the only one that showed more support for the anti-gay marriage position than opposition. Our final trend estimate showed the No side (pro gay marriage) with a two point lead (49.4% to 47.1%) but Question 1 won by nearly six (52.8% to 47.2%).

While this one experience is far from a conclusive test, there are at least theoretical reasons to think that automated surveys have an advantage in measuring true preferences on issues like gay marriage, where the presence of a live interviewer might introduce some "social discomfort" that would make the respondent reluctant to reveal their true preference.

* * *

So were automated IVR polls the big winners on Tuesday, as Mickey Kaus, Taegan Goddard and PPP's Tom Jensen argue? If what you care about most is predicting the winners, it is clear that the automated surveys provided a more accurate gauge of the outcome, especially in New Jersey where the closer simulation of the secret ballot probably gave us a heads up of an imminent "incumbent rule" effect favoring Christie. SurveyUSA also deserves credit for coming closer than most pollsters to the final margin in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City.

But that said, consider that we count on polls to do much more than predict the outcome. In addition to the points raised by Brian Schaffner here yesterday, consider two things:

First, as a live-interviewer media pollster pointed out to me yesterday, there were some inconsistencies with subgroups, particularly by race. As the table below shows, despite relatively small sample sizes, the three automated surveys showed Republicans Christie and McDonnell winning a greater percentage of the African American vote than the final live-interviewer surveys and the exit polls (though there were a few inconsistencies; namely Rasmussen in New Jersey and Marist in New York City).

If you believe the exit poll result, then the automated surveys provided a generally misleading sense of whether the Republican candidates were about to make bigger inroads than they did among African-American voters (consider also commenter RussTC3's observation about big differences between job approval ratings as measured by PPP and the exit polls -- as Mike Mokrzycki reminds us we do polls for reasons other than predicting the outcome).

Second, there is one last contest we need to review....

New York 23. Although three last minute polls on the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District conducted after Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race last Saturday showed Conservative Doug Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens by margins of between 5 and 17 points, Owens prevailed by 4 points (49.0% to 45.9%). Whatever shortcomings we might identify in the polling, the far bigger error was the interpretation applied by pundits, most notably me, who foolishly assumed that the trend in Hoffman's direction was unstoppable and that normal assumptions about last minute developments would apply. In retrospect, it is obvious that there was nothing normal about the last 72 hours of this particular campaign.

Moreover, we should have paid closer attention to the evidence of growing voter uncertainty in the final Siena Research Institute poll. Their final survey, conducted on Sunday night, showed Hoffman with modest but not quite statistically significant lead (41% to 36%) but also a doubling of the undecided (from 9% to 18%) in just a few days. So their poll showed that voter uncertainty was surging at a time when it is usually nonexistent. To his great credit, Siena pollster Steven Greenberg also argued that Owens might still gain from the Scozzafava endorsement on Sunday since "most voters are not political junkies" and had not yet heard the news" (an argument I boldly dismissed since few undecided voters had a favorable impression of Scozzafava -- apologies to Greenberg for that).

But while we might plausibly reconcile the results of the Siena poll with the outcome, the PPP survey is another story. While their estimate of Owens' support (34%) was within a few points of the other polls, PPP had Hoffman receiving five percentage points more support (51%) than he ultimately received (45.9%). A late shift among the undecided voters cannot explain the difference.

I am planning to look more closely at this example, but the important point for now is that while the automated polls turned in a strong performance in New Jersey, Virginia and Maine, the PPP poll in NY-23 was highly misleading.

The larger lesson is this: Automated polls have been maligned, unfairly in my view, as inherently "unreliable." Yet when it comes to predicting election outcomes they continue to prove, NY-23 aside, at least as reliable as surveys done by conventional means. In New Jersey this week, they were more accurate in predicting the winner. At the same time, however, it would be wrong to jump to the opposite conclusion and place inherently greater trust in all automated surveys,  especially when used for purposes other than predicting election outcomes.

All polls have their limitations. Rather than trying to divide them into two categories, "reliable" and "crap," we might do better to try to understand their limitations and interpret the results we see accordingly.

First, there is no way to control for other reasons that these polls might have generated different results, including different approaches to screening for likely voters and how undecideds are dealt with. With regard to the latter issue, it is important to note that the pollsters using live interviewing in New Jersey were showing more than twice the percentage of undecideds as those using IVR.

This leads to a second important point (related to the first): comparing these pollsters based on the final result presupposes that each pollster that has been entered into this fictitious competition was actually trying to get the final result correct in the first place. If that was the goal, then it seems as though each polling firm would have allocated all of their undecided respondents into one camp or another.

Third, one of the reasons for concerns with IVR polling is that citizens with only a cell phone cannot be reached by these pollsters and these citizens now comprise at least one-fifth of the population. Yet, while the cell-only problem may generally be an issue for IVR technology (and for live interview pollsters who aren't calling cell phones), it is less of a problem for polling on elections, and particularly in low turnout elections. This is because the types of people that do not have landlines are less likely to be voters (and particularly less likely to be voting in low turnout elections). Ultimately, an off-year low turnout election may actually be less of a challenge for IVR-based polls because the non-coverage bias should be smaller for these contests. Where these polls may run into greater challenges is when they attempt to make inferences about the American public rather than registered (or likely) voters.

Also, the following analysts and organizations have posted in-depth analyses of the exit poll results:

• ABC's Gary Langer on Virginia and New Jersey.
• CBS's Jennifer De Pinto on New Jersey.
• CBS's Fred Backus on Virginia.
• Associated Press on Virginia and New Jersey.
  
• Politico's Erika Lovely on Virginia and New Jersey.
• Monmouth University's Patrick Murray on New Jersey.
• Edison Research's Joe Lenski on New York City.
  

[I'm confident this list is missing similar analysis from other organizations, so please add a comment or email us if you see articles worth linking to].

If I had $100 for every time I've been asked that question by a reporter on the Wednesday morning after an election, I could retire early. And after five years of blogging on this beat, it's a question I'm determined to refuse to answer today.

Why?

First, all the votes are not yet counted (including 7% of the precincts in NY-23), and the counts that are available do not yet include the absentee and provisional ballots that will be added later and are not reflected in those percentage-of-precincts-reporting statistics you see on all the media vote counts morning. Take a look at this snap judgement from November 5, 2008. It declared a "big winner" among prognosticators on the assumption that Barack Obama won by 6.1 percentage points (52.4 to 46.3), but when all the ballots were counted the margin was 7.2 (52.9% to 45.7%). So that particular snap judgement picked the wrong "big winner."

Second, the whole notion of crowing a "big winner" based on a handful of polls in a handful of states is foolish. The final polls yesterday had random sampling error of at least +/- 3 percentage points. If a poll produces a forecast outside its margin of error, that's important. But if several polls capture the actual result within their standard error, chance alone is as likely as anything else to determine which one "nails it" and which miss by a point or two.

Third, there are sometimes other problems with making too much of "hitting a bullet with a bullet" on the final poll, when the polls leading up to it provide different results.

Yes, there are several good stories about what went right and what went wrong with yesterday's polling, including some important lessons about the value of automated polling. Some pollsters certainly did better yesterday than others. And I'm hoping to have something written and posted on that subject later today, provided that I don't get bogged down by the calls and emails from reporters wanting me to tell them, "who was the most accurate pollster yesterday?

Republicans Are Poised for Gains in Key Elections
Outcomes in New York, New Jersey and Virginia Are Unlikely to Forecast Much About National Races in 2010, History Shows

Republicans appear positioned for strong results in three hard-fought elections Tuesday. But isolated, off-year contests aren't always reliable indicators of what will happen in the wider federal and state races held in even-numbered years.

Wall Street Journal, 11/4/09:

Republicans Win in Key States

A Republican sweep in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday shifted the political terrain against President Barack Obama only a year after his historic election.

PS For the record, the WSJ was right the first time. Despite what the press will tell you, a handful of off-year elections don't tell us much about the "political terrain" facing Obama and the Democrats. As Matthew Yglesias points out, we have these things called "polls" that we can use to measure people's political beliefs and opinions. Perhaps we should consider using those instead.

Update 11/4 11:41 AM: Dave notes in comments on my blog that the first story includes a similar passage about the election potentially revealing "much tougher political terrain," which I missed:

A Republican sweep in Tuesday's key contests would at minimum show that Democrats face much tougher political terrain than they did a year ago.

I'm not sure what the passage means (the metaphor of "political terrain" is not well-defined) but it seems to contradict the lede of the story, which states that off-year elections are not reliable indicators. The point remains that the ledes are in tension (if not in direct contradiction).

It's also worth noting note the contradiction between the election "show[ing]... political terrain" (11/3) and the results actually "shift[ing] the political terrain" (11/4). Maybe it's time to retire the metaphor, which lets reporters vaguely suggest that things have changed without specifying how.

Update 11/4 8:49 PM -- Eric Boehlert at Media Matters has a virtually identical item on the AP's election coverage:

The AP on Tuesday:

To be sure, it's easy to overanalyze the results of such a small number of elections in a few places. The results will only offer hints about the national political landscape and clues to the public's attitudes. And the races certainly won't predict what will happen in the 2010 midterm elections.

The AP on Wednesday:

To be sure, each race was as much about local issues as about firing warning shots at the politically powerful. But taken together, the results of the 2009 off-year elections could imperil Obama's ambitious legislative agenda and point to a challenging environment in midterm elections next year.

(Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com)]]> http://www.pollster.com/blogs/wsj_vs_wsj_on_2009_elections.php http://www.pollster.com/blogs/wsj_vs_wsj_on_2009_elections.php 2009 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:24:27 -0500 charles@politicalarithmetik.com (Charles Franklin) by Charles Franklin

I'm headed to bed but here are a couple of snapshots of election night.

First, above, New Jersey then and now. Whatever else you say about the race, Corzine lost support across all regions of the state and by relatively constant amounts. This "uniform swing" shows that he didn't just lose in Rep areas, or Dem areas, or urban centers. The decline in Corzine support was very widespread and quite even. An across the board loss.

In NY23, Hoffman generally outperformed McCain's vote in 2008, but not by enough to take the race. These are based on 87% of precincts reporting, so not quite final data.

The reason is that while highly variable, the final polls were largely unbiased in the aggregate. Any one poll might be way off from the final result, but the average of all of them usually comes reasonably close to the final result. There have certainly been exceptions in individual states, but in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, the polls looked reasonably accurate once averaged across all states.

We may perceive things differently tonight. First, instead of watching polling across 20 or 30 contests, most of us are focused on just three or four races and for two of these -- New York's 23rd District and the Maine Question 1 -- we have only one or two recent polls to consider.

Second, as  Nate Silver pointed out yesterday, the challenges in some of today's elections -- again, especially Maine and NY-23 -- may be more like what pollsters faced during last year's presidential primaries, where poll averages often missed the mark by wide margins.

Silver also posted a handy comparison of final poll averages in New Jersey elections since 2000 (below), which helps make two important points. First, as he writes, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary there has not been "any particular tendency by Democrats to outperform their numbers once the final polls are in." Second, though usually very close to the result, final poll averages in individual states typically missed the final margin by a few percentage points. So even though our final New Jersey trend estimate is a remarkable 42.0% to 42.0% tie, for example, the final margin will be close but probably not that close.

Which brings me to our final polling-wrap up for 2009. Here's what the final polls and our trend estimates are showing:

• New Jersey, again, ends up as 42.0% to 42.0% tie on our trend estimate, a contest simply too close to call between Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie, with independent Chris Daggett running far behind at 10.1% and likely falling. My hunch, explained last night, is that Christie prevails.

• New York's 23rd District special election for Congress was the focus of much speculation over the weekend. The last two polls, both conducted immediately after original nominee Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race, each had Conservative Doug Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens, but by widely different margins (5 and 17 percentage points). Our trend estimate, which has Hoffman leading by 7 points (43% to 36%) also factors in previous polling that showed a closer contest. The ultimate margin is anyone's guess, but my sense is that Hoffman will win comfortably.

• The outcome of Virginia's race for Governor has never been in much doubt. Republican Bob McDonnell began with a roughly 7-point lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds that never significantly wavered, widening to nine points by Labor Day and ending at our final trend estimate of roughly 14 points (55% to 41%).

• Ditto for the New York City Mayor's Race. Incumbent Michael Bloomberg led Democratic challenger William Thompson consistently on polling throughout the race, although his lead on our final trend estimate (53% to 39%) is sightly narrower than earlier in the year.

• And the very few polls on Maine's Question 1, the gay marriage referendum, show a close contest, although as I wrote earlier this afternoon, referenda polling is notoriously error prone. The age composition of the PPP survey seems closer to plausible than the final DailyKos/Research 2000 survey, but beyond that, your guess is probably as good as mine.

Two notes on what's coming up later tonight. First, the consortium of network news organizations (known formally as the National Election Pool or NEP) is conducting exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia tonight. While official results will not begin to appear until the polls close, some early leaked estimates will probably start to bounce around the internet sometime after 6:00 p.m. As I explained at about this time last year (on on most election days since 2004), these are not likely to be much more accurate than the pre-election polls summarized above. Very large grains of salt are in order.

And finally, we will be live blogging here once again tonight. If all goes well, we should be using a more advanced tool that will allow our all-star line-up of contributors (Charles Franklin, Kristen Soltis, Margie Omero, Steve Lombardo and hopefully more) to join in. We hope you'll join us starting at about 6:30 eastern time.

Another reason why the Maine polls are difficult to evaluate is that issue referenda polling is so treacherous and prone to error. A 2004 paper by Joe Shipman, then director of election polling for SurveyUSA, showed that polling on ballot measures had triple the rate of error (9.5 average error on the margin) as polls in presidential elections (3.4) and nearly double that of contests for statewide offices (4.6). I summarized the assumed reasons for that greater error rate in a long post four years ago today, but the most relevant to Maine are a greater difficulty modeling the likely electorate and the problem of accurately conveying ballot language.

A particularly painful example followed a few days after that post, when a set of ballot initiatives in Ohio produced some of the biggest polling errors in recent memory. The combination of failing to poll late and not accurately reproducing the actual ballot language were likely culprits.

Let's start with the ballot language in Maine that voters are confronting right now:

Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?

So, a "Yes" vote is a vote against gay marriage, and a "No" vote is for gay marriage. Confused? Imagine the uncertainty some Maine voters may be experiencing without that extra bit of explanation. As you can see in the table at the bottom of our chart, only the Pan Atlantic SMS surveys reproduce the actual ballot language -- and nothing else -- while the other pollsters provide a line of explanation to clarify the meaning of "Yes" and "No."

The final round of polling has shown a relatively close race, although results have varied. A survey conducted two weeks ago by Pan Atlantic SMS, shows the No side prevailing by an 11-point margin (53% to 42%), while a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll conducted late last week shows a dead-heat (No 48%, Yes, 47%) Finally, the Democratic automated polling firm PPP conducted a survey over the weekend that had the Yes side ahead by a not-quite-statistically significant four points (51% to 47%) despite a very large (n=1,133) sample.

Complicating the issue further is that the final poll from PPP differed in both the age of the "likely voters" they selected and the way they interviewed (via an automated, recorded voice methodology). Less than a third of PPP's likely voters (32%) were under age 45, compared to more than half (51%) of the Research 2000/DailyKos survey. Both showed much more support for the No side from younger voters.

On the question of age, the Research 2000 sample was even younger than the Maine exit poll in November 2008 (43% age 18-45) and far younger than in November 2006 (36% age 18-45). Of course, the PPP sample was older than both, but keep in mind that exit poll estimates are sometimes too young.

The question of the automated mode is more complicated. The automated polls conducted by SurveyUSA in California 2008 may have picked up more support for ultimately successful anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 than on live interviewer surveys conducted at the same time. However, the convoluted nature of the timing of the various polls and the final result from SurveyUSA (showing Prop 8 narrowly failing) make it impossible to draw firm conclusions.

So what conclusions can we reach about tonight's outcome in Maine? I have more faith in the age composition of the PPP poll than the one from Research 2000, but given the much larger potential for error in ballot referenda and the close margins on the two final polls, your guess is probably as good as mine.

The bottom line is that our final estimate is too close, in and of itself, to forecast winner. As I noted last Friday, our final estimates for the 2008 election included four states with final Obama-McCain margins that rounded to a percentage point or less. The nominal leader won in two of these states (North Carolina and North Dakota) but lost in two others (Missouri and Indiana).

But wait. Does our standard trend line ignore a last minute trend to Christie, analogous to the presumed movement to Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary? If you use our chart's Smoothing Tool to change to the "more sensitive" setting (as illustrated below), you will see a hint of a trend toward Christie. The Republican challenger's support ticks up slightly (to 42.5% as of this writing), while Corzine's line moves slightly (to 41.4%).   

Intriguing as it seems, given the mix of different methodologies and field periods on our chart, we cannot be sure that the twitch in the more sensitive line represents a real change and not just random noise. The slight move to Christie is because three of the five surveys released today show nominal movement to Christie, while only one shows a nominal shift to Corzine and one shows no change in the margin. I'm not certain of the odds calculation on that outcome, but the probability that it occurred by chance alone is far more than the usual 5% we usually require to say it is statistically significant (using different calculations, Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray reaches a similar conclusion).

Even if real, the 1.1 point margin favoring Christie on the more sensitive trend estimate is still not large enough to characterize the race as "leaning" Christie's way. So, for better or worse, if you are looking for a purely objective, empirical "call" of the New Jersey race, our trend estimates are not much help. The finals snapshot is just too close.

If, on the other hand, you are interested in some purely subjective speculation -- and that's what all of the various predictions of the outcome amount to -- read on.

Let's start with a review of the biggest New Jersey polling puzzle, the consistent difference in results between automated and live interviewer surveys, and then consider what it may imply about two things that polls are least able to measure consistently and accurately: Who will turn out to vote and what voters really mean when they say they are undecided.

The automated-vs-live-interviewer puzzle. As reviewed here on Friday, the three pollsters that use an automated, recorded voice methodology -- SurveyUSA, Rasmussen Reports and PPP -- have produced results consistently better for Christie and worse for Corzine than the other live-interviewer telephone surveys.

As the chart above shows, that difference persists through the final round of surveys released today and late last week. On their final polls PPP, SurveyUSA and Rasmussen have Christie leading by an average of 4 points (46% go 42%) while the three live-interviewer surveys released earlier today by Quinnipiac University, Monmouth University and Democracy Corps had Corzine leading by an average of one point (41% to 40%).

Modeling turnout: Probably the most important result in today's data comes from a single table buried in the cross-tabulations of the poll released by the Democratic-affilliated Democracy Corps. Their poll puts Corzine ahead by the largest margin 41% to 36%. The cross-tab shows that virtually all of Corzine's lead on the Democracy Corps poll comes from voters who did not cast a ballot in the 2005 election (and since Democracy Corps samples from a voter list, this classification is based on actual vote history, not a self-report):

Among those who voted in 2005 (84% of the Democracy Corps sample), Corzine leads by only a single percentage point (39% to 38%) in the Democracy Corps poll. Among those who have voted in other elections but not 2005 (and every respondent to this poll self-reported having voted in 2008), Corzine leads by more than two-to-one (54% to 26%). Thus the much discussed "all out push" by the Corzine campaign to win over Obama backers.

Corzine backers were cheered today by tabulations on two of the new polls showing the Governor with a significant lead among early voters. SurveyUSA's new poll found 14% had already voted and Corzine led among these voters by 12 points (50% to 38%). Monmouth found half as many early voters (6%) but an even wider Corzine lead among them (51% to 31%). Tantalizing as it is, we will not know until this time tomorrow whether the Corzine campaign is truly mobilizing the new Obama voters from 2008 or whether they are simply getting a lot of hard core Democrats that would have voted anyway to cast their ballots early. If Corzine wins, it will surely be because of this organizations advantage.

Last week, Nate Silver speculated better Corzine performance on automated polls might be due to an effectively "tighter screen" on those surveys:

An automated poll tends to be associated with lower response rates, since an automated script can't do as much a human to coax someone into an interview, and therefore sometimes tends to reach a more enthusiastic set of respondents (in effect, it may serve some of the same functions as a very tight likely voter screen).

Since Republicans tend to be more enthusiastic right now, that may be what's causing the automated polls to be more favorable to them. But since none of us yet know how the enthusiasm gap is going to play out in practice, it would be premature to come to any conclusion about whether the voter universe that Rasmussen and PPP are coming up with is "too tight" or "just right.

Perhaps, although as I noted on Friday, the automated-vs-live-inteviewer gap is significantly smaller in Virginia. On the final round of polls, the lead by Republican Bob McDonnell is only two points greater on the automated polls (56% to 41%) than the last five live interviewer polls.

Either way, my sense is that overall turnout will be driven less by the respective campaign field organizations than by the underlying enthusiasm gap driving voter decisions. It is one thing to help an already enthusiastic voter cast an early ballot. It is something else to convince a complacent voter to get excited about a candidate for whom they have mixed feelings.

Measuring those who are undecided. If you spend time with horse race polling numbers, it doesn't take long to discover that some of the biggest differences among pollsters involve the undecided percentage. One reason is that voters do not fall neatly into "decided" and "undecided" categories. Vote decisions fall along a continuum from completely committed to totally undecided, with most voters falling somewhere in between. The size of the undecided category on a poll may depend on the wording or structure of the question or how hard interviewers pushes for a decision. Automated surveys frequently obtain a smaller undecided percentage, and one reason may be that voters feel less comfortable revealing their "secret ballot" choice with a live interviewer.

Complicating this issue further is that saying "I'm undecided" on a survey may imply something other than total indecision. In a three-way race, it may mean that the voter has decided against voting for one candidate, but has not settled on which of the two alternatives deserves their choice (see some evidence of this sort of uncertainty in the focus group conducted by Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray).

The theory behind the incumbent rule (that I spent a lot of time speculating about in 2004) is that the undecided category swells with voters that have decided against supporting the incumbent but are not yet ready to embrace the challenger.

Over the last eight to ten years, it has been hard to find much evidence of an automatic "break" of undecided voters toward challengers especially in highly competitive races, probably because incumbents have become so much more adept at turning the tables and "going negative" on their opponents.

However, if we take a closer look at the automated-vs-live-interviewer puzzle in New Jersey, we see a pattern that a few years ago I would have treated as clear evidence of the incumbent rule in action. All of the surveys, regardless of their methods, are yielding consistent results for Corzine -- most have him within a point of 42%. But the final automated surveys show a much smaller undecided vote and a consistently higher percentage for Christie (45-47%) than the live interviewer surveys (36-42%). (And NRO's Jim Gerhaghty notices that this pattern extends back to far more surveys than those in the table below).

So what does all this tell us about the too-close-to-call final estimate we are showing for New Jersey? This now nearly three-year-old comment from Republican pollster Neil Newhouse sums up my feeling:

[N]ewhouse noted the example of his client, incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach (Pennsylvania-6), who was in a 44% to 44% tie on their final internal poll conducted a week before the [2006] election. In the "old days," Newhouse said, we would have assumed an easy Murphy victory. However, Gerlach ultimately prevailed (51% to 49%) after a closing with a final television ad featuring a personal appeal by Gerlach that Newhouse credited for the victory. As for the incumbent rule, Newhouse said, "we are seeing a bit of a change, but not much consistency." While he still tends to give challengers the "benefit of the doubt" when incumbents are under 50%, Newhouse believes it is no longer "carte blanche automatic" that the undecided vote on the final poll will all go to the challenger.

All other things being equal -- and 42.0% to 42.0% is about as equal as they get -- I still tend to give a challenger like Christie the "benefit of the doubt" when up against an incumbent like Corzine even though recent examples of the "incumbent rule" are few and far between. That instinct is reinforced by the large number of voters that are either undecided or still leaning to independent Daggett (with Daggett's support falling) and the fact that no matter how hard pollsters appear to push, Corzine does not seem to rise beyond 42%.

So while the empirical evidence says this race is still too close to call, my hunch is that Christie will emerge the narrow victor.

Our assessment of the polls suggests that McDonnell will win decisively in Virginia (easy pick), Christie will narrowly take New Jersey (hard pick) and Hoffman will take NY-23rd. While each of these races has its own unique political environment, the collective sweep does tell us a few things from a macro perspective.

1. Obama is personally popular but voters remain unsure of the effectiveness of his policies. That is why his personal popularity does not necessarily translate into help for either Corzine or Deeds. Poll after poll shows that the President is well-liked but voters are not yet convinced that his policies are moving the country in the right direction.
2. It's still all about the economy and, to some extent, Democrats are being punished for it. This, of course, can change in the next six months but for now voters are willing to look to Republicans for answers (even with a weak candidate like Christie).
3. This is what happens when a change election environment comes back to bite you. Democrats were all about change in 2008 but the shoe doesn't fit as well in 2009. Voters are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and they still want some sort of remedy. This was a difficult case for Corzine to make given the fiscal mess in New Jersey but Deeds simply blew it on this measure.

However, things are not all rosy for the GOP. Here are four reasons why Republicans should still worry:

1. The Republican Party image is in disrepair and this will continue to cast a negative shadow on all of its candidates.
2. The Democrats own the WH and Congress, so the Party will be the beneficiary of the eventual economic recovery.
3. The person most identified with the GOP today is Sarah Palin and, given her current image attribute ratings among voters, she is probably unelectable in a general election scenario. The latest WSJ poll had her at favorability rates at 46% negative and just 27% positive.
4. At this time, there are no tangible brand benefits to voting for a Republican. Certainly there are opportunities (e.g. tough on spending, economic growth without increased taxes and a hard line on terrorism), but until the GOP attaches itself to meaningful solutions to important issues, it will not regain dominance.

New Jersey Governor

Tomorrow will likely validate one of the best truisms in politics: an incumbent will get what s/he polls. In virtually every poll taken, Corzine has been hovering around 40%. It is highly unlikely that his vote share will exceed this number. Voters already know him, and they either like him or they don't like him; there are few, if any, voters who remain undecided on Governor Corzine. The wild card, of course, is third party candidate Chris Daggett. If he gets to 15% then Corzine has a chance. Our analysis of public and private polls has Christie winning narrowly while falling well short of 50% of the vote. We believe Daggett will finish with about 10%, a remarkable showing for a relatively unknown independent candidate. What has kept the race close is the failure of the Christie campaign to define its candidate in a positive way. As Tom Jensen of PPP points out, Corzine will need to win 12% of the vote among voters who have a negative opinion of him. It is probably not going to happen.

Virginia Governor

Last year at this time, pundits were heralding a new era of politics. In their view, Democrats--led by Barack Obama--had reshaped the political map and turned red states into blue states (or, at the very least, purple states). Well that was yesterday. Look! Virginia is red again. Republicans had the better candidate and an aligned electorate. Deeds' campaign has been flailing and unfocused since its hysterical swings at McDonnell over his thesis. Message discipline is key in politics and the Deeds campaign had very little of it.

NY-23

There isn't much heavy lifting to be done with the polling for this race. We can start by tossing out any polls that began fielding prior to Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race on Saturday. That leaves just two results from the past few hours: Hoffman +17 and Hoffman +5. While Scozzafava has endorsed her Democratic opponent Bill Owens, the lion's share of her votes seem to have found their way to Conservative Doug Hoffman, whose insurgent candidacy from the right has been surprisingly effective. Scozzafava's flame-out is especially interesting in light of the fact that incumbent John McHugh, a relatively moderate Republican, won handily with 63% and 65% of the vote in (respectively) 2006 and 2008. This, in a district Obama won 52% - 47%.

The second piece of news was a release from the Siena Research Institute announcing that they will release another new poll this morning a little after 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.

The new PPP survey suggests a significant acceleration of the trend evident in other polling including Siena's -- a collapse of Scozzafava's support while Hoffman's vote soars and Owens creeps up slowly. Strictly speaking, Scozzavfava's withdrawal and subsequent endorsement of Owens over the weekend render previous horse race results virtually useless as predictors of the outcome. We are probably best advised to throw out the previous polls (and the trend estimate based on them in the chart above) and simply examine the two post-withdrawal poll we'll have available later this morning.

If the Siena results are consistent with PPP, this discussion will be mostly academic. The Siena and PPP surveys use very methodologies, and given Charles Franklin's analysis of the last Siena survey on Saturday, I would not be surprised to see their update produce a closer result than PPP. I will update this post accordingly when we have those results.

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise, the Siena results show Hoffman narrowly ahead of Owens, but by a smaller, five-point margin (41% to 36%) than PPP, with Scozzafava getting only 6% of the vote and 18% undecided. With 606 interviews, that margin is not quite statistically significant given the usual 95% confidence interval.

Given that Siena uses a classic random digit dial (RDD) sample and live interviewers, while PPP uses a voter list sample and an automated recorded-voice method, some are going to want to ignore the PPP results and focus on the large number of undecided voters (18%) in the Siena survey. Even Siena pollster Steven Greenberg is arguing that Hoffman might not have the advantage going into tomorrow's election since "most voters are not political junkies like I am and didn't know" as of yesterday, that Scozzafava had endorsed Owens.

Apologies to my Democratic friends for the pessimism, but I don't see it. First of all, even if we focus only on the Siena survey, the crosstabs offer little hope of a decisive rebound among those undecided as of last night. Scozzafava's rating among the undecided is 28% favorable, 22% unfavorable, while half (50%) have no opinion. In case it's not obvious: If a voter doesn't like Scozzafava by now, there's not much chance her endorsement of Owens will mean much to them.

Keep in mind that before asking who they would support, the Siena question informed every voter that while Scozzafava's name would remain on the ballot she has "suspended her campaign" and "released those individuals supporting her campaign to transfer their support as they see fit." As such, nearly two-thirds (65%) of those still planning to vote for her say they are "absolutely certain" about their choice with "no chance I will change my mind."

Among the undecided, the ratings of Owens and Hoffman are similar, although Hoffman's negatives are slightly higher (by a margin that is far from statistically significant):

• Owens - 26% favorable, 20% unfavorable, 54% don't know
• Hoffman - 24% favorable, 25 unfavorable, 51% don't know

The overriding message from the big "don't know" numbers among the undecided is that most are not likely to vote. None of these numbers suggests a late, decisive break toward Owens.

There's also the matter of the trend. Scozzafava's withdrawal accelerated the trend to Hoffman's that was already quite strong. On the Siena surveys, for example, Hoffman's vote has increased from 16% to 23% to 35% to 41% on four surveys conducted since October 1. Count me as skeptical that the six-point bump in Hoffman's support seen in last night's poll fully captured the benefit to Hoffman from Scozzafava's departure.

And then, finally, we come back to the PPP poll and its bigger Hoffman margin. Rather than go on at length (again) about the differences between random digit dial (RDD) samples and voter lists and about the trade-offs between live interviewers and an automated method, let's consider it this way: Both are blunt instruments for sampling adults, selecting "likely voters" and measuring their preferences. Neither can be considered a gold-standard, a true random sample that perfectly covers, models or represents those who will vote tomorrow.

However, my experience conducting surveys for political campaigns, especially in Congressional districts in non-presidential year races, taught me the value of the vote history available on registered voter lists. More often than not, surveys I helped conduct based on such lists came closer representing the true likely electorate than media RDD samples which, like the Siena survey, disclose little to nothing about their likely voter screen or demographic composition.

Add to that the potential advantages of a self-administered automated survey in getting voters to provide more honest answers about whether they plan to vote and who they plan to vote for, and I find it difficult to ignore the PPP results. Hoffman looks like he's headed to a comfortable victory.

Micah Sifry proposes a way for Chris Daggett to overcome fear of wasted voting; 55,000+ (as of this hour) take the Daggett Pledge.

Jennifer Agiesta says Deeds is underperforming outside NoVA.

Tom Jensen says even Obama ran better in rural VA; finds Corzine will need 17% from NJ voters who don't like him.

Anthony Salvanto and Mark Gersh drill down on NY-23.

Charlie Cook sees no bellwethers in the 2009 races.

Stuart Rothenberg sums up the outlook for 2009.

Chris Bowers unveils his 2009 election forecast and debuts his National House Ballot monitor.

Jim Geraghty ponders the undecideds in New Jersey.

Ben Smith chronicles the role of pollster Joel Benenson in the Corzine campaign.

Sarah Dutton breaks down Obama's approval slide.

Gallup presents five key realities of public opinion and health care reform.

Frank Luntz releases another health care strategy memo (via Lundry); Brian Beutler summarizes.

Nicholas Thompson says the NBC/WSJ polls shows Americans have different health priorities than Obama.

Alex Bratty sees GOP opportunity amidst low trust in government.

Tom Schaller outlines a general theory of Democratic disgruntlement.

Steve Benen has his usual fun with the Fox News polls.  

Tom Edsall expands on the Hart Research findings that average people don't see government stimulus helping them.

Bloomberg/Selzer says investors still fear Rout in Stocks.

Josh Tucker finds factoid in SUSA tabs: Corzine hits 50% among Springsteen fans.

Flowing Data puts cell size in perspective (the other kind of cell size).

And Ana Marie Cox explains "scozzafava'd."

Charles noted that Scozzafava supporters in the survey (20% of all likely voters) rate Owens almost a negatively (50% unfavorable) as Hoffman (57%). That's important, but so are the party leanings of those voters. The Siena crosstabs did not include party identification tabulation, but I emailed the folks at Siena and they kindly shared the following data:

So Scozzafava voters, as of this past week, identify Republican by a more than three-to-one (64% to 19%) margin. At a minimum, it is clear that many Scozzafava supporters that choose to vote for someone else on Tuesday will have to resolve some attitudes in conflict, especially if Scozzafava herself makes no formal endorsement (her name will remain on the ballot; Nate Silver also points out that they also rate Barack Obama 64% favorable, 31% unfavorable).

Also, a post-script for your how-do-polls-influence-campaigns file: As Josh Marshall noted, in an local newspaper interview, Scozzafava attributed her decision in part to the results of the same Siena poll: "Ms. Scozzafava told the Watertown Daily Times that Siena Research Institute poll numbers show her too far behind to catch up - and she lacks enough money to spend on advertising in the last three days to make a difference."

Finally, PPP put a NY-23 poll in the field this morning that obviously got a little scrambled.  Be sure to read Tom Jensen's review of their "NY-23 Polling Odyssey."

Update: Charles has much more here. 

This is a quick note on the new Siena poll in light of Scozzafava dropping out.

Can Owens pick up from Scozzafava supporters? Not so likely given these poll results.

Owens Fav/Unfav among Scozzafava suppporters: 19/50
Hoffman Fav/Unfav among Scozzafava supporters: 15/57

Looks like a wash with many likely to skip the choice of two disliked alternatives.

And the worse news for Owens is among independents:

Ind. Fav/Unfav Owens: 39/47
Ind. Fav/Unfav Hoffman: 47/33

More after daughter's soccer game!

For perspective on the closeness of the margin you might want to stroll down memory lane and revisit my final Election Day update from Tuesday, November 4, 2008. We showed only four states where the Obama-McCain margin on our trend-estimates was less than 2 percentage points, and the leader ultimately won the state in 2 of 4 states. So a margin of under two percentage points puts us well within true toss-up territory in terms of predictive accuracy, especially with a weekend of polling still to go.

Understandably, the close nature of the race has political junkies turning these numbers upside down and reading every possible tea leaf and in search of the key to the outcome. After doing much of the same (while out with the flu) the last few days, the best answer I can give based on the empirical evidence -- for the moment at least -- is that this race is currently looking very close.

Are things trending toward Corzine? Yes, when compared to early September, our chart indicates a decline of roughly four percentage points for Christie and an increase of roughly three points for Corzine. Over the course of the summer, Christie had been dropping (from a high of roughly 49% in early July), while Corzine remained flat.

What is less clear is whether the closing trend has continued over the last two weeks. As of this writing, only three pollsters have tracked more than once since mid-October, allowing apples-to-apples trend comparisons. Two, SurveyUSA and Democracy Corps -- show Corzine's margin two percentage points better. One, Rasmussen, shows it one point worse. None of these differences are statistically significant alone and the patterns are obviously small and inconsistent.

That said, the trend over the next four days may not be as smooth, and the Daggett "wild card" that everyone has focused on for the last few months is the reason. Consider at least three ways that the Daggett effect leaves us even more uncertain about the outcome:

Individual level uncertainty -- The Monmouth University Polling Institute reported yesterday on a focus group they convened earlier this week in Edison, NJ among voters who are still either undecided or just leaning to a candidate. While they explicitly warn against treating the findings as representative of all undecided voters, the most clear finding was a sense of unhappiness with both major candidates: "These voters claim that this is the most difficult election choice they have ever faced. Nearly all said that Jon Corzine has not done a good enough job to deserve reelection. They simply have not heard enough from Chris Christie to cast their lot with him." Their final decision about Daggett, the report says, may come down to whether he has a chance of winning.

Aggregate level uncertainty -- One statistic worth pondering: On the last ten polls, all conducted in the last week, the portion of the electorate that is either undecided or supporting a candidate other than Corzine or Christie averages 16.5% (with a range of 11% to 23%). As a crude measure of voter uncertainty, that's considerably more than 5% or so we saw at this stage of last year's presidential election.

Measurement artifacts? -- Complicating this issue even further are the measurement challenges that pollsters face when testing lesser known independent candidates, especially when voters are unhappy with the top two choices. Offer just three choices and no explicit undecided category and some undecided voters will choose the independent as their way of expressing uncertainty. On the other hand, fail to prompt for the independent and you may measure a number that's much lower (see, for example, the intriguing experiment embedded in the Fairleigh Dickinson poll). Reality likely falls somewhere in between. And no one can be certain of the effect that the other 9 candidates will have.

And finally, there is the intriguing pattern noted earlier this week by PPP's Tom Jensen and explored last night by Nate Silver. Christie has done consistently better on telephone polls conducted using an automated, recorded voice than on those using live interviewers. Using the filter tool on our chart, as of this writing, Christie runs roughly three points ahead of Corzine on the automated polls, but Corzine runs a little less than three points ahead on live interviewer polls. The chart below, which Charles Franklin kindly prepared this afternoon, shows that the difference has been consistent throughout the race (his margins are likely different than on our interactive chart due to his use of slightly different smoothing levels).

We also see a similar though far less pronounced and consistent effect in Virginia, and then only since Labor Day.

What this effect is about, and what it portends for the outcome in New Jersey, I cannot say. Nate Silver has some plausible speculation about automated surveys being potentially more sensitive to an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, although if that is true, I have no explanation for why we saw no such consistent difference between automated and live interviewer surveys in the Obama-McCain polling last year. We should have new surveys over the weekend or on Monday from all three automated pollsters in New Jersey (SurveyUSA, PPP and Rasmussen) and from at least three of the live-interviewer polls. So this phenomenon will be interesting to watch.

Either way, the combination of a very close snapshot and many indicators of potential volatility makes for a very uncertain outcome.

BREAKING: Scozzafava suspends campaign. Divided party now unites. Demonstrates powerful appeal of right in Rep pty. What remains to be seen is if this appeal can win the general election. Amy Walters had a good catch at Hotline: Hoffman leading among independents. Thats good news for him. But other unknown is how Scozzafava's 20% split now. Are they loyal Reps or were they looking for more progressive issues and hence not likely to back Hoffman? With all attention on Rep split, has Owens given the district reason to back the Dem over a conservative? Fun!

NY-23 is the poster child for the conservative insurgency in Republican politics. What looked a few weeks ago to be a splintered party in NY-23 is looking more and more like a consensus developing in favor of the conservative candidate. If Scozzafava continues to collapse, Democrat Owens will no longer enjoy a fractured opposition but a united one.

Mark has posted extensively on the problem of polling in NY-23, so be sure to see his comprehensive post here. There are many problems with polling in this race, especially on the turnout side.

But setting those concerns aside for the moment, Hoffman's surge shows that an insurgency can succeed in winning over (so far) well over half of Republican voters. The string of Hoffman endorsements from Palin, Pawlenty, Pataki and others shows how seriously Republican leaders are taking conservative insurgents.

Given substantial investments in the NY-23 race by both party and independent groups, this might be seen as the best case for insurgents against the party establishment. The converse is that if Owens pulls it out, NY-23 will be a symbol of party fratricide. And if Scozzafava's support collapses, it will be a message of the power of party unity around conservative nominees.

I commented on this topic in a recent Christian Science Monitor story here, and spent a pleasant hour this morning discussing this and other insurgent challenges on Wisconsin Public Radio's Joy Cardine show. The audio is available here. At the time of CSM interview, Hoffman had not yet surged, something we talk about in the audio link.

Indeed, perceptions of Palin's qualifications are unprecedented among presidential/vice presidential nominees and major presidential contenders in recent years. From Joe Biden to George W. Bush, no one has been perceived as less qualified since Dan Quayle and Ross Perot. The Palin-Quayle parallel, which Jon Chait nailed soon after her nomination, is particularly striking. Each was a surprise VP pick who sparked initial enthusiasm but later became widely perceived as incompetent.

To illustrate the point, here's a comparison of poll results measuring perceptions of Palin and Quayle's qualifications based on time elapsed since their initial convention speeches*:

Though Quayle served as vice president for four years (and got a small bump in the Gulf War period), he could never overcome the perception that he was not qualified to be president. I expect Palin's trajectory to be very similar.

Update 10/30 1:26 PM: Credit where credit is due -- Phil Klinkner raised the Palin-Quayle parallel back on August 30, 2008, citing a Rasmussen poll.

Update 10/31 10:48 AM: In the post above, I didn't make explicit what happened to Quayle after his tenure as vice president. For those who don't know, he withdrew from the presidential race in 1996 and declined to run in 2000. Though he gave various reasons for his decisions to withdraw, the fundamental problem was his perceived lack of qualification to be president. Palin may run in 2012 or 2016 -- the base likes her much more than it did Quayle -- but she will face the same obstacles that he did in trying to mount a successful campaign.

* The polls that were included used national adult and registered voter samples with binary qualified/not qualified questions.

(Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com)]]> http://www.pollster.com/blogs/sarah_palin_polls_like_dan_qua.php http://www.pollster.com/blogs/sarah_palin_polls_like_dan_qua.php 2012 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:58:12 -0500 mark@mysterypollster.com (Mark Blumenthal) by Mark BlumenthalTeagan Goddard and Andrew Sullivan wonder what country Rasmussen Reports is polling; Scott Rasmussen responds.

David Hill reviews the Gallup ideology trends.

Jennifer Agiesta examines the Obama factor in the Virginia governor's race.

Mark Mellman says what's controversial with voters on health reforms is not with lawmakers, and vice versa.

Glen Bolger and Jim Hobart recommend an economic message for Republicans.

Resurgent Republic quarrels with CNN/ORC's cap and trade question wording.

Nate Silver lampoons a misleading Zogby question.

Jim Geraghty ponders divergent polls in New Jersey.

Alan Reifman tracks health care interest with Google Trends.

Megan McArdle explores polling mysteries.

Salena Zito polls opinion polls and finds Americans fed up (via Reynolds).

Jessica Hagy says is it all (via Flowing Data & Sullivan):

P.S.: I'm a bit under the weather with a bug bearing a strong resemblance to H1N1. Hopefully back to full speed soon.

These comments are prompted by the paper Comparing the Accuracy of RDD Telephone Surveys and Internet Surveys Conducted with Non-Probability Samples by Yeager, Krosnick, et al, and by Mark Blumenthal's two excellent articles in the National Journal reviewing their paper.

The paper's conclusions were based on a comparison between six "benchmarks" and the findings of the various polls they examined. They assumed that the benchmarks were perfectly accurate, and that any differences between the polls and the benchmarks were "errors." I believe that this is not the case and that some of the benchmarks were inaccurate because of the social desirability bias that is often found in surveys where respondents are interviewed, by telephone or in-person, by live interviewers.

Social desirability bias occurs where respondents are not comfortable telling interviewers the truth because they are embarrassed to do so, or where their behavior or attitudes may be seen as unethical, immoral, anti-social or illegal.

Our online surveys have always found substantially more people than our telephone surveys who tell us they are gay, lesbian or bisexual (by a 3-to-1 margin). Our online surveys also find fewer people who claim to give money to charity, clean their teeth, believe in God, go to religious services, exercise regularly, abstain from alcohol, or drive under the speed limit.

Furthermore, in-person surveys by the Census Bureau report substantially more people claiming to have voted in elections than actually voted. If there is a better explanation than social desirability bias, I haven't heard it.

This conclusion - that surveys with live interviewers underreport "socially undesirable" behavior is supported by the data used by Yeager et al.

Our online survey, used by Yeager, found more smokers and more people having had 12 drinks in a life time than either the benchmark surveys conducted by government agencies or the RDD sample (and our own telephone surveys). Our online survey found that (to the nearest whole number) 28 percent were smokers compared to 26 percent in the RDD sample and 22 percent in the benchmark survey. Our online survey found only eight percent who had not had 12 drinks in their lifetime compared to 15 percent in the RDD sample and 23 percent in the benchmark survey.

Another government study, the NHANES study reported that 24.9 percent of adults said they were smokers but that blood tests showed that an additional 4.5 percent had smoked in the previous 24 hours but had not reported it when asked by an interviewer. The resulting NHANES estimate of 29 percent is closer to our estimate of 28 percent than to Knowledge Network's 26 percent or the RDD sample's 24 percent.

Two of the six benchmarks used by Yeager et al come from government sources where one would not expect to find any social desirability bias. In both cases, the Harris Interactive data were slightly closer to the benchmark data than were the findings of the RDD telephone survey. Our surveys found 28 percent of adults with passports compared to 30% for the RDD sample and the 23 percent in benchmark. Our survey found 92 percent having a driver's license compared to 93 percent in the RDD sample and the 89 percent benchmark.

In addition to the presence or absence of live interviewers there is one other reason why our online polls may have less social desirability bias than most telephone and in-person surveys. Our panel members have agreed in advance to be surveyed, which suggests that they trust us with confidential information, and are therefore more likely to tell the truth.

All this evidence suggests that the Harris Interactive data used by Yeager et al is generally more accurate than the RDD sample and that some of the so-called benchmarks probably overstate socially desirable behaviors because they were obtained in surveys with interviewers.

Is the Club for Growth result cooked? That's what Nate Silver strongly implied in post last night headlined, "Reality Check: NY-23 Poll May Seek to Alter, Not Reflect, Reality." Let's take a closer look.

The table above shows the results from all six polls that have been publicly released so far for this race. The Club for Growth/Basswood survey is different, in that it shows Hoffman running seven percentage points higher than the two surveys conducted earlier in the month. (UPDATE: a new survey conducted by Neighborhood Research, sponsored by another Conservative group and released while I was drafting this post has results consistent with the CFG/Basswood survey).

However, the trend is consistent with earlier results and recent news. The two surveys from Siena College in late September and mid-October track a seven point decline in Scozzafava's support and a six point increase for Hoffman. Quite a bit also happened over the last week. Last Wednesday night, while the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll was still in the field, Sarah Palin endorsed Hoffman on her Facebook page, a development that subsequently received national attention. Hoffman also received endorsements from Steve Forbes and Rick Santorum on Friday. Basswood Research conducted their survey on Saturday and Sunday.

Let's be clear: It is always sensible to treat sponsored, internal surveys with extra skepticism when they are publicly released. Political scientists that have studied public polls (examples here and here) find that partisan surveys typically show a an average bias of 2 to 4 percentage points favoring the sponsoring party. One reason for this phenomenon is that most internal polls never see the light of day. Campaigns typically choose to share only those polls showing good news, not bad.

But in this case, Nate Silver is making a considerably stronger accusation. After running through a list of concerns, Silver concludes:

[T]his is very probably not a case, a la Strategic Vision, where the numbers were simply fabricated. But there's an awful lot that a pollster can do short of making up numbers -- asking leading questions, applying implausible likely voter models or demographic weightings, selecting an unorthodox sample frame, etc. -- to produce a result that fits its desired narrative.

Do we have any evidence that Basswood Research used leading questions, implausible likely voter models or demographic weights or an unorthodox sample frame used to produce its survey? Let me take these issues one by one.

Leading questions? Silver concedes in an update that Club for Growth posted a complete filled-in questionnaire that he had not seen when writing his post, although he hints at "fresh" questions raised by seeing the full text. I am not sure what he's referring to, as I see nothing that would obviously bias the result in Hoffman's favor or that deviates sharply from the standard practice of campaign pollsters. For what it's worth, the Basswood questionnaire provides more complete disclosure than the other public polls, in that it provides full text and results of the demographics (omitted by Siena) and the full text of the likely voter screen questions (omitted by both Research 2000 and Siena).

Implausible demographic weighting? Silver is concerned that "[o]nly 14 percent of the likely voters in this poll are age 40 or under, as compared with about 40 percent in the Research 2000 poll." I'd agree with FiveThirtyEight commenter Matt Hogan that if anything, it's the Research 2000 age composition that's implausible. Nearly half (49%) of their likely voters are under 45 years of age. Both the national and New York exit polls for the 2006 general election report only 36% in that age category, and if anything, exit poll estimates tend to be too young.

The sample was also weighted geographically, according to Basswood pollster Jon Lerner, so that the percentage contributed by each county in the sample conforms to the distribution of voters in the 2008 and 2006 elections. I have not attempted to gather county level vote returns for NY-23, but Basswood included the weighted value for each county in the filled-in questionnaire so anyone can evaluate its geographic representation. Among campaign pollsters, that sort of geographic weighting is standard practice.

Unorthodox sample frame? Hardly, although there is an important difference in the sample frames being used in NY-23. Siena College and Research 2000 are using a random digit dial sample -- one that reaches every working landline phone in the district by randomly varying the final digits of telephone numbers in exchanges within the District. When I spoke to him by phone last night, Basswood pollster Jon Lerner confirms that he sampled from a list of registered voters, selecting those who had cast ballots in either the 2006 or 2008 general elections.

While pollsters continue to debate the merits of samples drawn from voters lists versus random digits, the use of lists to survey congressional districts is hardly unorthodox. Pollsters have used list samples to conduct the vast majority of congressional district polling over the last several decades, since gerrymandered district boundaries make random digit sampling impractical in most districts. Telephone exchanges are a crude match to geography below the county level and very few voters can identify their district number when asked. The only reason that an RDD sample is even an option in NY-23 is that most of the district falls within eight undivided counties, leaving only a small portion in three counties that are divided between districts.

Implausible likely voter model? I don't see it. While pollsters differ wildly in their likely voter selection or modeling techniques, the screen used by Basswood seems reasonable and appears to fall within the norms of typical pollster practice.

Let's run the numbers: In last year's general election, according to the Almanac of Politics, just over 253,000 voted for either Obama or McCain in the 23rd District (Voter Contact Services puts the total turnout at 258,000). According to Wikipedia, 199,103 cast a ballot for Congress there in 2008. The nearby 20th District of New York provides another useful statistic -- 160,940 showed up for a special election held there in April. While no one knows for sure how many will turn out next week, it is likely to fall somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 (or lower; see the first update below).

So how does the Basswood model compare? The firm Voter Contact Services, which sells list samples, reports that it has 267,599 voters identified as having voted in a general election between 2006 and 2008 -- so that's roughly the population that Basswood sampled. The key question is how many of the sampled voters passed Basswood's screen question, which accepted those who say they are "very likely" to vote in next week's election, but terminates those who say they are only "somewhat" or "not likely" to vote. I do not have the terminate data from Basswood, but when the AP/IPSOS poll asked a similar question of adults using a 10-point screen in early October 2006 (via the Roper Center iPoll database), 69% choose the most extreme "completely certain to vote" response.

[Update:  I guessed low.  According to Jon Lerner, 85% of the registered voters they called  said they were "very likely" to vote in the special election.  See update 2 below].

Of course, reasonable pollsters can and will quibble over how to select likely voters. Recent efforts to validate turnout on list samples have revealed problems with self-reported likelihood questions. But the notion that this particular poll was cooked, that it used leading questions, an unorthodox frame and an implausible likely voter model is not supported by facts available.

Update:  I will gladly defer to others with more expertise on predicting turnout, but I probably should have set 200,000 as a high side (small-l) liberal guess at turnout.  David Wasserman, the House Editor at the Cook Political Report who spends a lot more time thinking about these things, writes today that in the NY-20 special election earlier this year, "roughly half the number of voters who turned out for the 2008 presidential election showed up for the special election, which suggests between 110,000 and 130,000 voters could show up for this race."

Via email, David adds, "anything above 150,000 is a pipe dream."

It is also worth considering the advice Twittered yesterday by NBC's Chuck Todd, who saw more than his share of partisan, congressional district polling in his years as Hotline editor:  

Be very cautious of ALL NY 23 polling. Why? There's nothing driving turnout; figuring out WHO is going to vote is near impossible.

Which gets back to my larger point.  Yes, caution is in order, but it's foolish to single out the Club for Growth/Basswood poll as somehow inherently implausible on such flimsy evidence.

Update 2 - Jon Lerner of Basswood Research emails:

In the CFG poll in NY-23, the percentage of those who were contacted and screened out for lack of being "very likely" voters was 15%.  In my experience, in a likely low-turnout race such as an off-year special election, using voter lists with vote history is far preferable to random digit dialing.  On the assumption that turnout in a special general election will be far lower than turnout in a normal general election, you want to begin with people with vote history.  Still, even that alone is not good enough, because many on-year general election voters will not vote in an off-year special election (especially one in which the highest office on the ballot is congress).  So, we try to narrow the scope further by including only those respondents who have vote history and who say they are "very likely" to vote in the special election.  Although we do not screen further, my assumption is that even with that screen we will have a small number of non-voters, as respondents tend to overstate their likelihood of voting.  Thus, while I believe the sample we derived for the NY-23 survey was as accurate as can be, if it is off at all, it is likely to be over-inclusive rather than under-inclusive.

[Typos and grammer corrected]

The short version of the column is that given all the obstacles -- Daggett's weak name recognition, his apparent inability to compete with television advertising and the way all three candidates compete with home town news on New York City and Philadelphia media outlets -- the independent would need something truly extraordinary to change the nature of "free" media media coverage in order to win.

One scenario that seemed at least plausible as of late last week might be for Daggett to pick up the remaining newspaper endorsements to provide a jolt of final week "momentum" coverage. Three things slammed the door on that possibility over the weekend.

First, six newspapers endorsed on Sunday and unlike the earlier endorsement of the New Jersey Star Ledger, none went for Daggett. Republican Chris Christie won endorsements from the New York Post, Press of Atlantic City, the Asbury Park Press and the Cherry Hill Courier-Post, while incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine got the nod from the Trenton Times and the Bergen Record (links via Hotline Wake-up Call).

Second, don't laugh: The New York Yankees won last night, clinching a spot against the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, which begins on Wednesday night. Thus, baseball games will compete with political news for five of the next eight nights left before Election Day (and on the front pages the next morning). For a sense of how hard it will be for any of the New Jersey candidates to make news in this environment, consider the front pages of today's New York Post, New York Daily News, the New York Times, even the Philadelphia Inquirer, New Jersey Star Ledger and Asbury Park Press! All feature the Yankees prominently (though the Times tucks the news discretely below the fold), while none but the Asbury Park Press say one word about the New Jersey governor's race.

Third, two polls released since Friday (by Suffolk University and by Democratic aligned Democracy Corps) show Daggett running well below the 19% and 20% measured by SurveyUSA and the Rutgers Eagleton poll late last week. Whatever we might conclude about the methodology of these surveys, the bottom line is that no headlines are currently heralding an independent candidate surging into the mid 20s.

The Suffolk University poll out this morning does look like a bit of an outlier, at least for now, both in terms of the nine-point lead it fives Corzine (42% to 33%) and the very large percentage of undecided voters (15%). The uncertainty they measured, however, may result from the interesting choice the Suffolk pollsters made about their vote question: They attempted to replicate the actual New Jersey ballot by first reading the names of the two major party candidates, Corzine and Christie, and then reading the names of all 10 independent and third party candidates in random order, including Daggett.

On Friday, Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray speculated that Daggett faces the challenge of being "buried on the ballot" amidst the many independent candidates, while Corzine and Christie always appear first. The Suffolk question, which shows Daggett at only 7%, provides some suggestive evidence to support that hypothesis.

P.S.: Speaking of Murray, he notes on his blog today that the Suffolk poll "appears to have weighted party ID to party registration, a common mistake by pollsters unfamiliar with the New Jersey electorate." He says that because the Suffolk party question -- "Q1. Which political party do you feel closest to - Democrat, Republican or Independent?" -- has results that match New Jersey's voter registration (34% Democrat, 21% Republican, 46% independent or unaffiliated). I'll let Murray explain:

Being "unaffiliated" in one's registration is not the same as being "independent" in one's thinking. We consistently find that at least 1-in-5 unaffiliated New Jersey voters actually see themselves as partisan.

This is a byproduct of New Jersey's semi-open primary system. Why bother registering with a party if you can wait until primary day and do it on the spot? And why bother to vote in primaries if they are rarely competitive? So, New Jersey ends up with a lot of "party-line" voters who never bother to register with their preferred party. They just see no need.

Having done my share of polling in New Jersey, I can confirm Murray's finding. Many New Jersey voters registered as unaffiliated think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans. Murray's post on understanding unaffiliated voters is worth reading in full, especially if you're a pollster hearing this for the first time.

P.P.S.: Democratic pollsters PPP are teasing partial results from a new New Jersey survey that will finish interviewing tonight.  PPP's Tom Jensen describes a big increase in Daggett's unfavorable rating among Republicans and says the independent "has the same level of support he did two weeks ago, but now he seems to be hurting Jon Corzine more than Christie."

Gallup's quarterly Obama job approval slips to 53%.

Democracy Corps responds to Glen Bolger's posts on their "semi-secret" poll; Bolger adds more.

Charlie Cook reviews intensity of opposition to Obama in Democracy Corps focus groups

Sarah Dutton examines polling on the public option.

Jon Cohen finds strong support for restricting pay of bailed out executives.

Jennifer De Pinto assesses whether Obama can help Corzine.

Gary Andres weighs the Democrats' Debt Dilemma

Tom Jensen tests a generic congressional vote offering independent/third party as an option.

David Hill is long on Apple, not its politics.

Mark Mellman celebrates a GOP brand in tatters.

Chris Cillizza ponders the rise of independent identification.

Charles Blow fawns over Michelle Obama.

David Paul Kuhn looks forward to an Obama decline below 50%.

Kevin Drum asks about "poll flippery;" John Sides responds.

James Joyner considers the Gallup marijuana poll (via Sullivan).

Andrew Gelman finds older wealthier Americans oppose government health care nationwide.

Junk Charts finds even obviously wrong charts leave many confused.

PPP polls on, what else, balloon boy.

Mary Landrieu suggests an alternative public option poll question.

Evans McMorris-Santoro shares the Bill Clinton polling quote of the week.

And a pollster that can sing! Kristen Soltis channels Janis Joplin (at around 2:42):

When you are finished, here are some other challenges that got left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. Let's call them items seven through nine (since the column includes a list of six):

7) Ballot position - Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray points out via email that Daggett's name will be harder to find on the ballot.

Daggett is an independent who will be buried on the ballot. NJ gives the first two lines on the ballot to the D[emocratic] and R[epublican] nominees (randomly assigned). The remaining candidates (there are 9 this year) are all relegated to a 3rd line - again randomly assigned, which means Daggett's name will be buried amidst a bunch of no hopers and thus very difficult to find.

I'm not sure how the ballot order was handled in Minnesota in 1998.

8) Attitude and Turnout -- Former Star Tribune polling editor Rob Daves argues that a key to Ventura's success is that he "ran on attitude and not agenda." In other words, he used his celebrity persona to stake out a different sort of message, one less about traditional issue positions and more about what one biographer called a "down to earth," non political attitude. That message helped Ventura surge among younger voters who do not typically vote in off year elections. As the Almanac of Politics (2002) put it:

In a year when turnout nationally mostly sagged, turnout surged in Minnesota, especially in the outer counties of the Twin Cities media market; in many counties turnout rose 40% or more from the last off-year election, and was even above the presidential year of 1996. This was the area where Ventura ran best, with 45%, to 34% for Coleman and only 21% for Humphrey.

By contrast, as Patrick Murray notes, it was Chris Christie that tried to run on attitude rather than agenda in New Jersey this year:

Christie tried to use his prosecutorial reputation to paint himself as someone who would be tough with the special interests. And therefore New Jersey would be a better place.

This had two effects. One, it opened him up to opposition research on his character. And it emphasized for voters that his campaign was lacking specifics. That opened up a hole for mild-mannered Daggett to fill with his very specific proposal to address New Jersey's number one issue - property taxes. The kind of specifics that some anti-Corzine voters were looking for, but were not getting from Christie.

Whether this contrast makes Daggett's task easier or harder relative to Ventura remains to be seen. The point is, they are running very different races.

9) Same Day Registration -- Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report passes along one more difference: Minnesota had same day registration in 1998, which helped enable the surge in turnout that Ventura's campaign produced. New Jersey in 2009 does not.

Update 10/23 2:05 PM: As a point of comparison (per Jinchi's comment on my blog), a Fox News poll in June 2008 asked "How much do you think Barack Obama loves America?" (rather than "Do you think that Barack Obama loves America?"). 27% of Republicans said "a great deal," 34% said "somewhat," 14% said "not much," 12% said "not at all," and 14% said they didn't know. Though the question and response options varied slightly, those responses are substantially more positive than those found by PPP.

Update 10/25 8:42 PM: Per MartyB's comment on my blog, it's worth clarifying that the reason I compared the two posts above. While the two claims obviously differ in terms of the extent to which they can be disproven, both polls demonstrate that Obama is not viewed as a legitimate president by much of the GOP base.

(Cross-posted to brendan-nyhan.com)]]> http://www.pollster.com/blogs/ppp_poll_on_obamas_love_of_cou.php http://www.pollster.com/blogs/ppp_poll_on_obamas_love_of_cou.php Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:04:10 -0500 mark@mysterypollster.com (Mark Blumenthal) by Mark BlumenthalSelf promotion alert: Tomorrow (Friday), I'm participating in briefing on Capitol Hill -- "Public Opinion on Health Reform: What Do the Polls Mean? -- sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform. The other panelists include Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Humphrey Taylor, chairman of Harris Interactive; and Mollyann Brodie, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Brodie will be presenting new results from Kaiser's October Health Tracking Poll.

The briefing will be held at the Hart Senate Office Building from 12:15 to 2:00 PM, and I am told that on site registration will be available. Click here for more details. Hope to see you there.

Let's start with the text of the ABC/Post question: "Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?" Their most recent survey of adults, conducted October 15-18, found 57% supporting the proposal, 40% opposing it and 3% with no opinion.

A chorus of conservative critics jumped on the question language:

• Pollster Ed Goeas: "Nowhere does this question indicate that the program would be government run, and it is a quite a stretch to conclude that the 57% support is for the public option.
  

• Blogger Jay Cost: "ABC News/WaPo presents the idea that the government insurance plan would 'compete' with private insurance plans. This is a contested notion, as Republicans think that the public option will drive private insurance away."
  

• Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson: "That's a little bit different than "do you support the government run option or not ... saying 'do you like the government run option. That would be more straightforward."

• Pollsters Gary Andres and Whit Ayres: "When Americans are asked a one-sided question about whether they support a public option that competes with private insurance, it's not surprising a majority says 'yes.' It's just another 'choice,' 'more competition' and it's perceived as a way to make health care more affordable. Why wouldn't a proposal like that generate wide support? Just like 'world peace' or 'ending poverty.'"

There is some truth to this criticism. Given that only 56% of Americans are able to associate the phrase "public option" with the health care debate, it is safe to assume that with questions like the ABC/Post public option measure are closer to testing reactions to possibly unfamiliar concepts than to measuring pre-existing attitudes about the "public option." When you do that, the results are very sensitive to question wording.

In July, for example, the Kaiser Family Foundation found 59% in favor of "creating a government administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private insurance plans." But when they threw one-sided arguments against the public option at supporters and one-sided arguments for it at opponents, they found they could push support as low as 35% or as high as 72% (something I reviewed in August in a post that Andres and Ayres linked to yesterday).

I am not opposed to questions that test reactions to unfamiliar concepts. They are part of understanding public opinion on many subjects, including the health care debate. Americans may want something, after all, even if they are not familiar with the terminology. When we test reactions, however, my own preference runs to questions -- mostly shunned by media pollsters -- that present both sides of an argument using the rhetoric typically lobbed by partisans. That's why this passage in the Andres-Ayres post caught my eye:

[I]n our Resurgent Republic Health Care poll we provided voters real world arguments about proposals - the up sides and the down sides - before asking for a response . . . We have no doubt that public attitudes about a public health insurance plan could change. But that all depends on the information presented. As is evidenced from the three questions in the Resurgent Republic health care poll, providing voters with more background and arguments produces mixed results for the public plan option.

"Mixed?"

I had forgotten about Resurgent Republic's June health care poll so I pulled up the toplines. Here are the results to those three questions:

Q15:

-47% agree: Congressman A says Americans need a public health insurance plan administered by the federal government to expand choices and control costs by competing with private health insurance companies.

-45% agree: Congressman B says a government-run health insurance plan will use taxpayer subsidies to undercut private insurance rates, and force private companies out of business, resulting in everyone going into a government-run plan.

-8% unsure

Q16:

-57% agree: Congressman A says a public insurance plan will allow people to keep the plan they have now if they want, or give them the choice of a public plan. It will shift power from insurance bureaucrats to consumers.

-38% agree: Congressman B says a public insurance plan will inevitably force everyone into a "one size fits all" government-run plan that will take away choices. It will shift power from consumers to government bureaucrats.

-5% unsure

Q17:

-53% agree: Congressman A says a public insurance plan is a limited option to allow citizens to have one more choice for health insurance and will force private plans to stay competitive on costs and services.

-43% agree: Congressman B says a public insurance plan is the first step toward a government take-over of health care similar to Europe and Canada, with fewer covered procedures, long wait times for surgery, and more government bureaucracy.

5% unsure

With the possible exception of the first question, these are not results I would describe as "mixed." All three show more support for the public option than opposition. The last two questions produced majority support among registered voters in June that is fairly close to what the ABC/Post poll found last week among all adults. (I also assume that most public option advocates would react to the language of Q15 as conservatives reacted this week to the ABC/Post question. Does "expand choices" really capture the promised benefit as much as "give them the choice of a public plan?" But I digress...).

The main point here is that a group of Republican pollsters took their best shot at a set of questions that would capture both the costs and benefits of the public option, presenting the very arguments so many found lacking in the Post/ABC question this week. In all three instances, more voters favored the public option than opposed it.

I wonder if they tried "to get the same amount of Democrats and Republicans" in their sample, to be "fair and balanced" and all?

P.S.: To be fair, the Resurgent Public poll was conducted in June, just as general opposition to health care reform was increasing most rapidly. Public Option questions included in polls conducted at about the same time by ABC/Washington Post and CBS News found support that was 5 to 10 percentage points higher than on their most recent surveys. Still, I would expect far more stability in measures like those tested by Resurgent Republic that provide respondents with far more information.  And even if a few points closer than what they found in June, the Resurgent Republic tests suggest more robust support for the Public Option than some assume.

The complaint from Gingrich drew a response worth reading from ABC News polling director Gary Langer, so I'll start there. The tempest was probably triggered by findings highlighted in the last two paragraphs of the Washington Post's front page poll story:

Only 20 percent of adults identify themselves as Republicans, little changed in recent months, but still the lowest single number in Post-ABC polls since 1983. Political independents continue to make up the largest group, at 42 percent of respondents; 33 percent call themselves Democrats.

The wide gap in partisan leanings and the lack of confidence in the GOP carries into early assessments of the November 2010 midterm elections: Fifty-one percent say they would back the Democratic candidate in their congressional district if the elections were held now, while 39 percent would vote for the Republican. Independents split 45 percent for the Democrat, 41 percent for the Republican.

Gingrich responded by telling a Salt Lake City radio station that he considered the ABC/Post poll "deliberately rigged." According to Langer, when asked about the finding that only 20% of Americans consider themselves Republican, Gingrich replied:

Well, it tells me first of all that the poll's almost certainly wrong. It's fundamentally different from Rasmussen. It's fundamentally different from Zogby. It's fundamentally different from Gallup. It's a typical Washington Post effort to slant the world in favor of liberal Democrats.

Langer produced the following table, showing that the ABC/Post estimate falls roughly in the middle of other recent national surveys of adults:

Now as both Langer and PPP's Tom Jensen point out, Gingrich was conflating two issues: Concerns about party identification and about the so-called generic house vote. In the same radio interview, for example, he pointed to a recent Gallup poll showing a closer margin in the national House vote and, according to Langer, emphasized the generic vote in a second interview later in the day,

Here Gingrich is on somewhat firmer ground: The polls that he cites -- especially Rasmussen and Zogby -- report on "likely voters" that tend to look more Republican than the adults sampled by other pollsters. While neither pollster provides much information on how they currently define likely voters, the universe of actual voters in 2010 will likely be far more Republican than the full adult population. Keep in mind, though, that the generic ballot is a blunt instrument that tends to produce wide variation among pollsters even in the week before the election when all are doing their best to identify or model the likely electorate. Bottom line: While the generic ballot is a useful measure (see these posts on efforts to use it to model the outcome) it is not infallible.

Back to the argument about party ID. Why does Langer leave out Rasmussen and Zogby, two of the three pollsters that Gingrich cites as looking fundamentally different? The implied answer is that ABC News considers neither pollster "air-worthy" (they explain their standards here), but even if you quarrel with that judgement, there are good reasons why such a comparison would be foolish.

Let's start with Zogby. First, Zogby reports results among "likely voters," not adults. Second, they do not -- as far as I know -- report their party ID results to non-subscribers (if readers can point to recent examples to the contrary, or to results from behind their subscription wall, I will gladly correct this post). Third, unlike the organizations listed in Langer's table, Zogby weights every survey by party ID, usually to match the estimate from exit polls in a prior election. So there is no point in comparing Zogby's weighted party ID numbers to those from recent polls of adults, even if they were available. It's like comparing an apple to fruit cocktail.

And what about Rasmussen? Like Zogby, Rasmussen typically reports results among likely voters and weights by party. However, Rasmussen does a service by routinely releasing their monthly party identification numbers among all adults, weighted only by demographics. Their results for September do look a lot different from any of the other pollsters: 37.5% Democrat, 32.1% Republican, 30.4% other.

Why might Rasmussen's party ID results look so different? It might be because of the kinds of people they sample as compared to other polls, but there are two other huge differences to consider. Rasmussen calls with a different mode (automated rather than live interviewer) and asks a different question. Other pollsters begin by asking respondents what they "consider" themselves to be, prefaced by the phrase "generally speaking" or "in politics, as of today," with the options typically Republican, Democrat, independent or "something else." Rasmussen simply asks:

If you are a Republican, press 1. If a Democrat, press 2. If you belong to some other political party, press 3. If you are independent, press 4. If you are not sure, press 5

If you believe that party ID is like eye color, that we are all either Democrats, Republicans or something else and that we will always provide the same answer under any circumstances, even if shaken awake during a deep sleep, well...it probably doesn't matter how the pollster measures it. But there is a ton of evidence that although the aggregate party ID numbers change very, very slowly, at the individual level all sorts of things can alter the answers that respondents give, especially if they are borderline between independence and identifying with a party: the wording, when the question is asked, what questions come before, how hard the interviewer pushes for an answer, and so on. So it is quite possible that people are willing to report their party identification differently when asked by an automated recording rather than a live interviewer, especially when the text of the questions differ. Comparisons between Rasmussen and other pollsters on this score prove little.

Was the ABC/Post poll right that Republican identification among adults is lower than ever? There we do have some pretty convincing evidence. As our Party ID chart (above) shows, their result was far from an outlier. Even with the sensitivity set to low (to diminish short term statistical noise from "house effects), the downward trend in both Democratic and Republican identification is evident. Click on the red dots below (to connect-the-dots for individual pollsters) and you will see that almost every pollster shows a decline in Republican identification over the course. The clear rise in independent identification may not help us forecast the results of the 2010 elections, but the trend is nevertheless undeniable. The notion that ABC and the Post "rigged" their result is laughable.