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Dear Conservatives, Stop Saying Polls Are Rigged Or Skewed
This may be a post that gets in me in trouble with some people, but if you are touting UnSkewed Polls as a legitimate source of poll analysis, you need to stop. It’s a fantasy.
I am not one like so many conservatives such as Peggy Noonan who are arguing the race is over. However, I won’t be somebody that argues Romney is “really” ahead by nearly 8 points and the polls claiming he’s not are “rigged” or “skewed” purposely to deflate Republicans from voting. Let’s be realistic here. Here’s some points:
1. Romney is currently behind. There’s no getting around that. Is he down by 7-8 points like we’re seeing in the National Journal poll or Pew poll? No. Those polls crazy. They assume Obama at this point is doing better than he did in 2008 and there is no model that can hold up under that scrutiny. More likely, Romney is down around 2.5 points with polls such as Fox and NBC at the high end with a 5 point gap and the Rasmussen and Gallup polls that show the race is tied.
2. Obama’s top level of support is not good news for him. Obama got a nice bump after the Democratic National Convention. But as we are seeing, polls are starting to return to pre-convention levels and that is where Obama is in trouble. Forget about the gap between him and Romney. Where he’s in trouble is his top level of support. If you look at the numbers, three stand out – 46, 47 and 48. That is where Obama’s support tops out. There is a great blog post written by Mark Blumenthal, writing at the time as ‘The Mystery Pollster.’ Here is what he says:
However, the incumbent rule tells us that, at any given moment, the President’s percentage of the vote relative to 50% is a better indicator of where the race stands than the margin separating Bush and Kerry. It also suggests the appropriate way to read the final polls just before the election (and these are my ranges – others may differ): If the average result of all the final polls (including undecided) puts Bush’s percentage at 50% or higher, the President will likely win. If Bush’s percentage is 48%-49%, the race is headed for a photo finish. At 47% or lower, the President will likely lose (add 1% to these ranges in any state where Ralph Nader is not on the ballot)
The main point: The incumbent’s level of support is more important than the margin.
If you go back and look at 2004. During this same time period, Bush’s level of support was always in the 48-50 range.
3. Jim Messina has showed his hand by claiming, “National polls are not relevant to this campaign.” Yikes. This is not a very smart thing for him to say. Messina probably said it because of recent swing state polling that shows Obama ahead with some comfortable margins. The problem is, for reasons people cannot explain but do not dispute, state polls often lag behind national polls. This isn’t just conservative talk, Josh Marshall of TPM says the same thing. Case in point: Two new Florida polls today, one from the Tampa Bay Times and one from the Miami Herald shows Obama leads Romney, 48% to 47%. There’s that 48 number again.
4. There is something amiss with some polling models. Even I questioned this in regard to a Quinnipiac/CBS/NY Times poll that showed Barack Obama up by 4 over Mitt Romney, despite Romney leading amongst independents by eleven points. Obama won independents 49-48 in 2006 and exit polls showed Democrats identified themselves as such over Republicans by a 6 point margin. In this poll, Democrats had a +11 advantage. As I said in my first point, it’s absurd for any pollster to use 2008 models for this election. That being said, to say, “Ignore the polls!” or to direct people to that silly UnSkewed Polls is more about wanting to ignore that their candidate is down than analyzing the race in a rational manner.
5. Do ignore the process and “Oh my God, this gaffe decides the election!” stories. Rick Wilson has a great piece in the NY Daily News which everybody should read. None of that crap matters to people out in the real world. It just doesn’t. Ask anybody outside of those who follow politics closely or outside the beltway who Stuart Stevens is and they won’t know.
So in conclusion, don’t just write off the polls so flippantly. Those who are saying the polls are purposely being rigged in favor of Obama sound like the people who claim Kerry actually won the 2004 election. Partisans then said Kerry actually did win because early exit poll data showed he was winning and after Bush rigged it so he would win, pollsters went back and changed their numbers to match the recorded vote.
At the same time, don’t despair. If Barack Obama was winning Wisconsin as easily as the public polls say he is, he wouldn’t have decided to visit the state for the first time in 220 days for a campaign rally. People like Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Joe Scarborough seem to be far more interested in making sure they continue to get invites to DC cocktail parties than they are in actually supporting the Romney/Ryan ticket so I don’t pay too much attention to their caterwauling.
This race is far from over. Get to work.
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16 Comments
[...] The Right Sphere [...]
In the last election cycle Hillbuzz was a pro-obama disinfo site and he looks like he’s running the same scam now, the supposed right wing slant gives him cover to shovel his BS.
Or stated otherwise — If you think that the Dems / leftists sound stupid with their latest breathless pronouncements on how something stupid just decided the election, know for sure that we sound the same way when outside of our same-thinking friends.
[...] The Right Sphere [...]
The data indicate that the polls are in fact skewed (intentionally or not). Oversampling of Dems by as much as double digits does not reflect any modicum of reality in the upcoming election and is causing an actual skewing of poll results. At worst, Romney is tied. At best, he is ahead by a few points.
What are you talking about? You admit the polling samples are grossly inaccurate, (+11 Dems, really?) yet you tell us to stop saying the polls are rigged or skewed? What are they then?
The MSM LIES and more and more people are finally waking up.
Your full of it, over and over they showed heavly oversampling Democrats 8, 9 one 13 percent. TOTAL BIAS, your out of touch…
Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen both confirmed their belief that major polls are skewed in favor of the Democrats by over-sampling of Democratic voters when the surveys are conducted.
http://media1.policymic.com/site/articles/15219/photo.jpg
Drive-By Media Uses Phony Polls to Concoct False Notion of Obama’s Inevitability
Did I not tell you yesterday, did I not make the case yesterday, and today it’s borne out to be true. All of this inevitability of Barack Obama is manufactured. It started in The Politico, with two guys named John Harris and Jim VandeHei. They’re the ones who got this whole ballgame running on, “Obama’s inevitable. Obama got the great bounce.” And, folks, it’s all phony. There’s nothing to it. Even the CNN poll that’s out that’s got Obama up six. It’s a joke of a poll. The Democrat sample in this poll is absolutely unbelievably high. It is a joke of a poll. In fact, there’s one aspect to this poll nobody’s reporting. Of course they’re not going to report this. In the CNN poll that has Obama up six, Romney is leading Obama in independents by 14.
Now, I’m just going to tell you something. If that holds up, and if on election day Romney wins independents by 14, we’re looking at a landslide. It’s not even going to be close. Well, I won’t say close, but it’s going to be big. If in a poll that CNN reports Obama is plus six but Romney is up 14 in independents, what does it tell you about the rest of the sample?
Continue Reading on http://www.rushlimbaugh.com …
[...] The Right Sphere [...]
Let’s kill the myths right now:
In the 274 state presidential exit polls from 1988-2008:
1) 226 red-shifted to the GOP only 1367 would normally be expected): Probability ZERO
2) 126 exceed the margin of error (only 14 would be expected at the standard 95% confidence level0: Probability ZERO.
3) Of the 126 exit polls that exceeded the margin of error, 123 red-shifted to the Republican. Probability ZERO (5E-106). Yes, that’s 106 zeros to the right of the decimal point!
DO THE MATH:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/election-fraud-an-introduction-to-exit-poll-probability-analysis/
Typo fix in 1) above: Only 137 would normally be expected (50% of 274).
Obama won the election since these polls are 100% correct, next they will tell us they won all 3 debates on the evening news tonight. Have been reading how Obama has turned our countries economy around and how there are so many jobs to choose from that there opening up the border to help fill these excess jobs. Our economy went so far over the charts that the house will pass a 10 trillion dollar spending spree for Obama to do as he pleases. The best news is, is how the rest of the World loves our dear President and there showing all this coverage over the last two weeks on most of the news around the World. You just gotta love Obama and without doubt cast your vote for him because he’s your guy.
Re distribution of wealth = The person cuts in front of you in line at the supermarket with a shopping cart full of prime rib Steaks, Lobsters and Shrimp, fresh vegetables and pays for all with a food stamp card while you have turkey hotdogs, Ramen noodles, canned vegetables, powered milk and pay for this with your hard earned paycheck that you haven’t seen a cost of living increase in 3 3/4 years and need to cut back because your obese.
[...] and so skewed towards Obama, that Romney was “really” winning. Back on September 23rd, I wrote a post about this (for which I took some heat in the comments), warning people not to fall into that [...]
NAACP took over acres home Our polling place handing out gifts pulling Obama supporters from the back of the line to the front. they overthrew the staff. Now tell me again how polls are not rigged I say this as a black conservative man from Houston that watched this event take place