Ed Morrissey, on the pathetic partisan (take that any way you like) breakdown (ditto) of the latest WaPo/ABC poll (46/49 Romney/Obama):
Today’s D/R/I is 32/22/38, which means this model would only be predictive for a turnout model where only 22% of voters are Republican. Just to remind readers, the 2008 turnout split from exit polls showed a 39/32/29 split, and that was considered a nadir for Republican turnout. In the 2010 midterms, the split was 35/35/30.
Take a close look at the Republican representation in WaPo/ABC polls this year. Starting in January, that has been 25%, 23%, 27%, 23%, and now 22%. The pollster seems incapable of finding a representative number of Republicans for this poll series. Perhaps that should give the two news organizations involved a hint about finding a new pollster.
Why should they? The pollster is fulfilling said news organizations’ needs perfectly.
Moe Lane
PS: Note that the needs of the WaPo and ABC are not the needs of their Democratic readers/watchers. Not to be cynical about this, but I remember that similar fiddling with the numbers took place during the run-up for 2010; that resulted in things looking… reasonably OK… for the Democrats, up to the moment when they suddenly didn’t. I imagine that the resulting panic was good for selling papers and getting viewers, but it’s a heck of a way to run a news organization.
Again they will skew the numbers now for the narrative only to shift to normal in time for the election.
Amazingly even with this sampling he is under 50%
Things looking reasonably OK for the Dems for now is fine. No need for the base to break out the check books or volunteer or anything. They can just sit back and relax.
ISTR the Powerline guys explaining that the Minneapolis paper does this every election. Up until a day or two before election day, they’re running samples that assume the whole state votes like journalism majors, then they’ll start running accurate samples at the last minute. That way they “maintain” their integrity by being able to point to their last-minute results, but can still be a propaganda tool before the votes are cast.
Rob: Yeah, pretty much everyone in the GOP up there took the bias in the “Humphrey Institute/Star Tribune” polls as a given. I doubt anyone aside from Koolaid-swilling DFL supporters or the ignorant takes those polls seriously.
Here’s the way it breaks down. Assuming the Independents, Others, and No Preference voters vote 10% other and split down the middle on the rest then Democrats have to break by 10 percentage points to Romney to get to 49% Obama / 46% Romney. If you use the 2010 split then Romney is ahead 51% to 44%. If you use the 2008 split, then Romney is ahead 48% to 47%. Either way, if you strip out the crappy sampling, Romney is ahead by any reasonable measure, probably by about 5 percentage points.