Tag: statistics

#rsrh A general suggestion to pollsters, particularly D-leaning ones.

Triggered by flipping through this Hot Air post… STOP MUCKING ABOUT WITH THE SAMPLE’S PARTISAN ID PERCENTAGES.  That trick doesn’t work any more.  Everybody knows by now to look to see whether the partisan breakdown of the poll matches the actual voter percentages in the last few elections; and when they don’t (like they didn’t in the last National Journal poll) the impact of the poll is thus diminished.  Also: it’s not like skewed polling makes a difference, either: there were a lot of polls in 2010 that effectively failed to downplay just how badly the Democrats were going to do that year.  Finally: don’t just not release the partisan ID numbers, either.  People WILL ask where they are.

Seriously, all that using skewed polls is doing at this point is convincing half the country that you’re not to be trusted as far as you can be thrown.  Keep that in mind.

Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

I stopped doing this in the middle of 2010, once it became clear that the real question of 2010 was how many hits to the head with the snake the Democrats were going to take before it was all over.  As the answer was “a lot,” I feel that this was a wise prioritization of my time.

But it’s a new cycle, so let’s look at the numbers – both the latest ones, and May’s.  Short version: Republicans are scoring better in nine out of ten topics that Rasmussen charts, and there’s a ten point lead on the economy.  Which, not incidentally, is the most burning issue for Americans these days. Continue reading Crunching the July 2011 Rasmussen trust numbers.

Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!

I suspect that the Democratic party probably doesn’t want to ever see this sentence from a Harvard statistical survey appear in a news story:

Taken together, the results indicate that Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican party.

…for fairly obvious reasons .  Short version: going to Fourth of July celebrations (using a statistical rule of thumb* of good weather = participation) as a child results in an increased possibility of voting Republican as an adult (it apparently doesn’t move the needle at all when it comes to voting Democratic).  Oh, and progressives are why the Fourth became a public secular holiday in the first place**.  Lastly: if you want to zap your kids into patriotism and/or Republicanism, the key dates to get them to a parade are from 7 to 10 for later partisan identification, and 15 to 18 for increased voter participation. Continue reading Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!

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…

#rsrh The surprisingly DOOMish Politico/GWU poll.

Like all good poison pills, this poll from Politico/GWU looks like good news to the Democrats on the surface.  Admittedly, ‘good news’ is a slippery concept – it shows +5 GOP on the generic ballot – but that’s better than the Democrats have been managing lately and is at least no worse than the last one.  But, as always, it’s the stuff below the lede that’s the killer.  Consider:

  • Never mind Obama’s 46/51 (underwater) favorable/unfavorable numbers; the real interesting numbers here are Pelosi’s (36/56) and Boehner’s (18/15).  It’s like the Democrats’ attempts to demonize Boehner have completely failed, while the Republicans’ attempts to link the Speaker to individual Democratic races has been remarkably successful.  Actually, it’s not ‘like’ that at all; that’s pretty much what happened.
  • Speaking of favorable numbers: according to this poll, it works out like this: Republicans 50(!)/41, Tea Party 41/38… and the Democrats underwater at 42/50. Continue reading #rsrh The surprisingly DOOMish Politico/GWU poll.

So, DSCC: which candidate will you abandon…

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

…to firewall Connecticut?

Propelled by Connecticut likely voters who say they are “angry” with government, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, is closing in on Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat, and now trails just 49 – 46 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 51 – 45 percent Blumenthal lead in a September 14 likely voter survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll, conducted by live interviewers.

Personally, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Kentucky and Missouri – actually, if I were still a Democrat I would recommend Nevada, but Reid’s still too powerful in his caucus to make that feasible. Of the other Republican-held Senate seats, New Hampshire’s probably not been dedicated enough money anyway, everybody knows that Ohio’s a lost cause, and the Democrats don’t dare dump Meek in Florida at this point.  This is not the year for Democratic gains.  Which is fine by me: the Democrats do not deserve gains.

One last note: isn’t it just hysterical that it’s the Democratic party that needs to make hard financial choices in the homestretch?  This is why I stopped looking at the cash-on-hand totals; it became irrelevant once it became clear that the Republicans would have enough money to fight on the battlefields of our choosing and that the Democrats wouldn’t have enough money to defend everywhere simultaneously.

Linda McMahon for Senate.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: The Democrats should also decide whether they’d rather risk losing Connecticut, or Delaware.

The poll that scares the Democrats most.

It’s this one, from the never-to-be-sufficiently-hated-by-the-Left Rasmussen: and on its face it’s innocuous enough. It’s the partisan identification poll, and it currently lists Democrats at 35%, Republicans at 33.8%, and Neither at 31.1%. Unsurprising, based on recent events, right? – Also, it’s a poll of adults, so this probably means a Republican advantage among likely voters, as that’s the usual rule of thumb for these things. So, nothing really unusual here, right?

Wrong. If this poll is accurate, it’s a harbinger of DOOM for the Democrats. Continue reading The poll that scares the Democrats most.

The August Rasmussen Trust Numbers.

The latest Rasmussen trust numbers are out, after what was an odd formatting thing that made me decide to stop reporting them until things settled down.  Short version: Rasmussen has replaced Abortion with Afghanistan in the top ten category; the GOP won all ten, including that perennial heartbreaker Government Ethics; and the numbers nonetheless show a shift away from July’s numbers, mostly because July’s numbers were uniformly awful for the Democrats. Continue reading The August Rasmussen 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.