gallup – Page 2

Gallup: (nervously looking around) …DOOM?

Gallup did a voter enthusiasm poll, and the results are either gorgeous or hideous, depending on how you look at them. Essentially, it goes like this:

In 2004, Democratic voter enthusiasm was at 68% and Republican voter enthusiasm was at 51%. The GOP happened to win that election, sort-of kind of in a squeaker; then again, this poll is of adults, so you can expect a skew towards the Democrats.
In 2008, the Democrats dropped to 61%… and the Republicans plummeted to 35%. The GOP proceeded to lose that election, and not in a squeaker. It was, in fact, almost a rout.
And today, in 2012? The Democrats’ voter enthusiasm is 39%… while the Republicans are back to 51%.

Continue reading Gallup: (nervously looking around) …DOOM?

#rsrh Gallup & The Hill bury the lede on Romney/Obama veteran poll.

They both go with “Veterans Give Romney Big Lead Over Obama.” Well… yes. This is not particularly surprising. Mitt Romney is what we call “the Re-pub-li-can nom-in-ee.” Barack Obama is “a lib-er-al Dem-o-crat.” That military veterans default to preferring the former over the latter is a ‘revelation’ roughly equivalent about the one about water tending to flow downhill. Admittedly, 28 points is a fairly large deal, but this is a difference in degree, not in kind.

No, what they should have used for the title was “Romney & Obama tied in April, May.” Continue reading #rsrh Gallup & The Hill bury the lede on Romney/Obama veteran poll.

#rsrh Is this the November results map?

…Maybe.

Map generated via 270 to Win: and it’s based, more or less, on this Gallup report that the Democratic party’s partisan affiliation advantage has taken a nose-dive in state after state. I say more or less because I looked at the numbers, noted that they were based on registered voters, then applied the usual rough-and-tumble conversion (essentially, you add or subtract two points in favor of the GOP to any registered voter sample to get an idea of what the likely voter results are going to be). This gives us a 272/266 squeaker in favor of the GOP… and a photo-finish in Florida. Continue reading #rsrh Is this the November results map?

Gallup: Obama slips with African-Americans, Hispanics…

…unexpectedly.

Gallup mentions the most obvious point – the President has slipped from his historical approval rating among African-Americans (usually around 92%) all the way down to 85%* – but it kind of obscures a detail on the graph with regard to Hispanic voters. They acknowledge that the President is currently at a low with 54% of those voters, but Gallup does not point out that Obama’s approval rating dropped by double digits with those voters over a year ago and hasn’t really come back since. For that matter, the real story from that graph is that the President has a 39% approval rating among whites; his approval rating among those voters at the beginning of his term was somewhere just above 60%.

Andrew Malcolm is right to couch all of this in terms of it merely being worrisome for the President; after all, it’s early days yet. But he’s also right that Obama should be worrying about this, given that hyper-enthusiasm is precisely what his campaign needs if they seriously plan to raise a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign. In fact, i think that the billion-dollar number is going to end up being a bit of an albatross for the President: it will require a constant, probably grueling, emphasis on fundraising in order to work, and it has already forced the President to formally re-enter the electoral arena months early. In other words, the President may have been better off if he had decided not to try to beat his high score. Continue reading Gallup: Obama slips with African-Americans, Hispanics…

Gallup: Big Media’s underwater trust numbers.

Add me to the list (Ed Morrissey and Andrew Malcolm) of people unsurprised at the Gallup report that trust in the media is at its lowest in… forever. 57/43 distrust/trust, for those keeping track: and it’s only been in the last few years that the media’s been underwater.

It’s interesting to compare the two reactions to it represented in the above links. Ed, who is a New Media type who has expanded into radio and print, pins this long-term shift onto the outrageous attempt in 2004 by the media to smear the President with fake documents (an attempt so clumsy that a child* could see through it). Andrew, who is a print journalist who has taken quite happily to New Media, instead waxes hysterically sarcastic on the very idea that people don’t take the mainstream media seriously: Continue reading Gallup: Big Media’s underwater trust numbers.

Gallup whispers DOOM in 2010.

With less than four months to go before the fall elections, the greatest growth industry in the country right now is the tea importation business: everybody who has any interest in the November results is trying his or her hand at precognition. Gallup is no exception:

This year’s low approval ratings for Congress are a potentially ominous sign for President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress. Gallup has found greater party seat change in Congress in midterm elections when Congress has had low approval ratings.

Specifically, in the five midterm elections in which Congress’ approval ratings at the time of the election were below 40%, there was an average net change in seats of 29 from the president’s party to the opposition. That includes the 1994 and 2006 elections, when the net change in seats was large enough to pass control of the U.S. House from one party to the other.

They currently track Congress’s approval rating at 20%. Continue reading Gallup whispers DOOM in 2010.

RCP: November continues to loom for Democrats.

Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics – an underrated blogger, possibly because RCP is such a good site generally that its bloggers get overshadowed – still holds his opinion from April that the House is going to flip big in November:

The bottom line is that Democrats are on pace for an ugly November. They’re increasingly running out of time to change the dynamic, and it looks about as likely that things will get worse as that they will get better. If the elections were held today, the balance of the evidence suggests they would lose 50-60 seats. If you think the political environment will improve for Democrats, you can adjust your expectations accordingly, but if you think they will get worse, you can do the same.

He’s basing that on a few things: the Gallup and Rasmussen generic ballot polls, and the NPR analysis. Continue reading RCP: November continues to loom for Democrats.

#rsrh Gallup does not bring the DOOM.

DOOM implies a lack of giggling.

An average of 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have said they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with past elections, the highest average Gallup has found in a midterm election year for either party since the question was first asked in 1994.

Via Jim Geraghty. Just try not to giggle at that article.

Try.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Gallup does not bring the DOOM.

What Gallup didn’t do with their enthusiasm poll.

And they should have done this, too.

Gallup just published a poll on voter enthusiasm, broken down by age. The main point – younger voters are showing fairly typical enthusiasm levels towards the 2010 elections (i.e., low ones) – is interesting (and entertaining), but there’s another important bit that did not get particularly addressed. And it’s an even more entertaining point. Continue reading What Gallup *didn’t* do with their enthusiasm poll.

Brent Budowsky and the poll-watcher’s delusion.

I don’t normally fisk, but let’s unpack this passage, shall we? This article – called, amusingly enough, “Matt Drudge and the Republican delusion” – was dated March 25th, 2010 (today is March 30th, 2010):

Recently a Gallup poll, of course highlighted on Drudge, found that Obama’s numbers had (then) turned more unfavorable than favorable.

Presumably this one: 46/48 favorable/unfavorable.

This has (now) dramatically changed, unreported by Drudge, with Obama’s favorables now well above his unfavorables.

Presumably this one: 51% favorable. March 25th, 2010.
But not this one: 47/50 favorable/unfavorable March 29th, 2010. That’s USA/Gallup: the current regular Gallup three-day has him at 48/46 favorable/unfavorable; check back again at 1 PM EST, but I don’t expect a massive jump.

The generic Democratic vote is leading the generic Republican vote in the last Gallup congressional election survey.

He means this survey: 47/44 Dem/Rep. March 16th, 2010.
Not the latest one: 44/47 Dem/Rep. March 30, 2010 (no story yet).

The healthcare bill has passed and the president’s polls have moved up. Democratic numbers have crept up.

And, as you can see, they have crept right back down again. Let’s add two more from Gallup, since we’re here: when they polled on reactions to the bill on the 23rd, the poll numbers were 49/40 in favor… and when they polled it again on the 29th, the numbers were 47/50. Continue reading Brent Budowsky and the poll-watcher’s delusion.