By Alan Abramowitz
If you just look at their results for registered voters, there has actually been very little change in the Gallup Poll results since early October. Bush had a 1 point lead then, he has a 3 point lead now. Not that different from what most other polls have been showing. Almost all of the change since their last poll is in the results for likely voters. Unfortunately, the likely voter number is the only one the media will focus on now.
So how do you go from a 3 point lead among registered voters to an 8 point lead among likely voters? By projecting that 89 percent of registered Bush supporters will vote but only 81 percent of registered Kerry supporters will vote. But as we know, this is totally unrealistic.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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February 7: Musk is Bad, But Russ Vought May Be Worse
In watching and trying to make sense of Trump 2.0, I sought at New York to focus on the low-key but very radical man controlling the “nerve center of the federal government.”
His reputation for being “Trump’s Holy Warrior” during the 45th president’s first term didn’t stop him. His intimate involvement with the Project 2025 agenda for Trump’s second administration, which became so controversial that the Trump campaign all but disavowed it, didn’t stop him. His espousal of radical ideas about presidential power during his confirmation hearings didn’t stop him. His suspected association with a wildly unpopular federal funding freeze imposed by the agency he was nominated to run didn’t stop him. And Senate Democrats, who belatedly mobilized a boycott of the a committee’s vote endorsing him and then launched an all-night “talk-a-thon” on the Senate floor to warn of his malevolent designs, couldn’t stop him. And so on Thursday night, with a vote along party lines, Russell Vought was confirmed to return to the directorship of the Office of Management and Budget, which he has described as the “nerve center” of the federal government.
With this vote a very important piece of the Trump 2.0 machinery was snapped into place. Other Cabinet-rank appointees are much flashier and get more attention. Their departments do things that everyone understands and that touch millions of lives directly. But far beyond his specific responsibilities (preparing the president’s budget and reviewing fiscal and regulatory decisions), the new OMB director is a particularly valuable player in the planned MAGA transformation of the federal government. To borrow a sports term, Vought is a “glue guy.” He’s the team member who lifts the performance of everyone around him without necessarily being the big star himself. And if you are alarmed by the counter-revolutionary ambitions of this administration, that should make him a very scary man for real.
In the shake-up of the federal government that MAGA folk generally call an assault on the “deep state,” there are three main forces. One is a Congress controlled by a Republican Party that has sworn an unusually intense allegiance to Trump, and that has its own ideological reasons (mostly related to the need to pay for tax cuts and Trump’s mass deportation program, while making at least a stab at reducing deficits and debt) for taking a sledgehammer to the parts of the federal government that don’t involve GOP sacred cows like Social Security and defense. Another is DOGE, Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency that is already wreaking havoc in agency after agency as he applies his radical corporate-takeover methods to the public sector with a giant social-media troll army at his back. Each is engaged in demolition work that could be at least temporarily stopped by federal court orders (in Musk’s case) or by internal wrangling (in Congress’s). Vought’s OMB is the third force that will make sure Trump’s agenda moves forward one way or the other. And he is perfectly equipped to coordinate these disparate forces and supply blows to the bureaucracy if and when others fall short.
The funding freeze showed us what a single memo from OMB can do, spawning nationwide chaos and panic. A more sustained effort, and one that relies less on “pauses” and more on a true freeze of grants and contracts backed up by explicit presidential executive orders, can do a lot more damage to the programs and services that MAGA folk don’t like anyway. Meanwhile OMB can exchange intel with DOGE on potential targets in the bureaucracy, while OMB will definitely guide congressional Republicans as they put together massive budget-reconciliation and appropriations bills.
Vought’s personality, worldview, and experience make him a lot more pivotal than his job description, believe it or not. He’s in sync with deep wellsprings of the conservative infrastructure as a committed Christian nationalist (he is a graduate of the old-school fundamentalist Wheaton College, and is closely associated with the theocratic neo-Calvinist wing of the Southern Baptist Convention), a think-tank veteran (at the Heritage Foundation and his own Center for Renewing America), an heir of the budget-slashing tea-party movement, and as someone who perfectly synthesizes the hardcore right of both the pre-Trump and Trump eras.
Just as importantly, Vought is the one person other than Trump himself who may be able to keep his budget-cutting allies working together and not fighting for power. He spent many years working on Capitol Hill and knows the House GOP culture particularly well; he is a natural ally of the fiscal radicals of the House Freedom Caucus, who currently have enormous influence (and perhaps even control) of 2025 budget decisions thanks to their willingness to blow up things if they don’t get their way. But he’s also as radical as Musk in his antipathy to the deep state, as the chief apostle of the idea the president should have vast powers to usurp congressional spending decisions if he deems it necessary. And unlike Musk and his team of software engineers, he knows every nook and cranny of the enemy territory from his earlier stint at OMB. Vought has also forged personal links with the turbulent tech bro, according to The Wall Street Journal:
“A senior administration official said Vought and Musk have been building a partnership since just after Trump’s victory in November.
“’They share the same passion for making the federal government more efficient and rooting out waste, corruption and fraud, so I think they are very aligned,’ said Wesley Denton, a longtime adviser to former Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and a Vought friend.”
So Musk may get the headlines, and Mike Johnson and John Thune may flex their muscles on Capitol Hill as they compete to turn Trump’s lawless impulses into laws. But the hand on the wheel may really belong to Russ Vought, who is trusted implicitly by a president who isn’t interested in the details of governing and appreciates a loyal subordinate who shuns the spotlight as much as his radical views allow.
Coldeye can write for himself. But I took him to mean that 89% of registered Reps voted vs. 81% of the registered Dems voted in the election he was referring to. Someone please correct me if I’ve got it wrong, but that seems totally consistent with there being 4% more self-identified Dems than Reps among those who voted.
An example, using made up numbers, to show how this can be so:
Out of 1000 people who vote in our hypothetical election:
390 self-identify as Dem
350 self-identify as Rep
Turnout among registered Democrats is (rounding the numbers):
81% x 481 registered Dems = 390 self-identified Dems voting
89% x 393 registered Reps = 350 self-identified Reps voting
It is again not true that there were a higher percentage of republicans in last election. In fact in 1996 and 2000 the break down was 39% democrat, 35% republican, and 26% independent. That is what the zogby poll uses when he is weighing his daily poling.
“Hey, I’m with Kerry but it is true that historically, Republicans turn out in greater PERCENTAGES (read my prior post) than Democrats. Thus it may be appropriate to weight according to 89% R vs 81% D turnout.”
Um, but if you do this while assuming a 50-50 split between the parties, wouldn’t you get a strong over-representation of Republican voting intentions? Wouldn’t you almost *have* to weight by party ID first?
coldeye:
saying something several times does not make it true. if you have some historical analysis to make that is counter to what is CW of both what I know from my own research, and what I have seen by reading other posts and on other political sites, please provide your sources. thx.
Hey, I’m with Kerry but it is true that historically, Republicans turn out in greater PERCENTAGES (read my prior post) than Democrats. Thus it may be appropriate to weight according to 89% R vs 81% D turnout. I agree that in absolute numbers, more Democrats turned out last time. But given a group of Republicans and a same sized group of Democrats, history says more of the Republicans will vote.
Could someone please explain to me why pollsters continue to assume Bush voters are more likely to turn out??? I live in a conservative Republican area and even here that is just obviously not true. Many Bush voters here are not that enthusiastic, while Kerry voters are fired up, even the ones who don’t like Kerry that much are determined to vote against Bush. And Dem volunteers have come out to every residence in my area getting out the vote, but I have never even seen a Republican volunteer.
I obtained the Gallup internals tonight and have them posted over at my blog.
We will not know whether Bush is really ahead by 8 until state polls show up. Right now, only Rasmussen tracks the state polls and they essentially show a tie. State polls have been scarce in recent days although a Research 2000 poll shows Kerry ahead by 4 in NH as of saturday October 16.
I really think volatility is in play for polling….
It can drive you crazy to sit that close to day to day poll numbers. I think the key is to just keep pushing GOTV efforts and doing voter education.
Emphasize Kerry’s strengths and that he at least has a vision of how to extricate us from an increasingly unpopular war.
It is not true that there was more republican turn out than democratic in 2000 election. In fact according to moveon.org and other groups there was actually higher democratic turn out. Also those likely voter results in the polls are very suspect since it is based on whether you have voted in 2000 election. In fact there has been a huge voter registration drive particularly for democrats. Who really knows what will happen in this election.
Weirdly, there is a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) note up on yahoo news, only 90 minutes old at this posting, that the Washington Post finds Kerry leading by 10% in a dozen swing states. I don’t see anything about it on the WP site, but maybe the Washington Post will discover its own poll results from the CBC and post them later.
There is a dimension to this that I know, having had statistics, but that I still can’t “get into my thick head” in terms of having a dispassionate view of these poll results. I want Kerry to show a solid lead.
But suppose the electorate is divided 50-50, or for that matter, you have a jar with 1/2 white balls and 1/2 black balls, 50 million of each, all mixed up. As you sample groups of five or six hundred, you will get one sample “leaning black” and another sample “leaning white.” The more you sample the more the sum of all the samples will resemble a normal distribution.
In other words, it’s only a matter of time, if you keep doing all these voting samples, before one “random survey” yields 90% of the country for Bush and another yields 90% for Kerry, with no underlying change in the voter preference. That would be something like a 1,000 chance of occuring, and we see three polls a week for 12 weeks (only 36 polls) we are not likely to see it at all–in fact the polling organization would probably suppress such a skewed result and try again. But in fact such an occurence (90% one way or the other) would become a certainty with enough polls. And this 1/1000 or “z3” event aside, it is a much greater probability that we will see Bush or Kerry up or down by 5% as time goes on. That’s within the limits of the methodology.
Variance of this kind also applies to reported party membership and such.
Although this purely statistical measurement effect is supposedly captured in the +/- figure given by each poll, that figure does not capture the “normal distribution of polling results” which will occur with repeated polls. And this latter distribution figure would INCLUDE the sum of all error measurements as carefully discussed by this site’s host and commentator. (This is an unpleasant truth of the social sciences too. If you get 2,000 political scientists testing variable significance for arcane theories, at least 5% of the variables will be found significant–and make a career, purely by chance: every now and then someone who bets on a single number at roulette wheel wins, ya know).
In sum, the polls aren’t telling us anything other than that their measurement accuracy is not sufficient to gauge the underlying distribution of real votes, which by the way, will also be skewed by voter suppression effects–in other words the actual election will not represent voter preference. It will simply be the largest sample, but maybe not even the best one.
Well I’m reading that the billionaires are pushing more money into the Party of Mordor so I guess I’ll go donate again to the DNC (my way of making sure some money goes to Senate and House candidates). I sure hope there are 2 or 3 million other people like me out there. I need the company to get my $50 and $100 contributions to matter.
Coldeye:
I was under the impression from several of these polling sites, and from what I can remember from my studies in this area, that actuallly historically the number of Democrats has been higher than Republicans. Hence, the arguments back and forth about party ID. Also, it really is telling to see the results from 2000 in terms of the polling for Gore and Bush. Finally, I firmly believe that likely voter models are a waste of time. Stats are an inexact science as it is. Adding this extra layer of guess work to it in my mind increases the chances that the final numbers are wrong- now it could be wrong in our favor, or against us- so I am not saying this as a partisan, but as someone who wonders how valuable it is to create a few extra degrees of modeling that is trying to guess at where voters will be on Nov 2, 2004 v. where they were in a different historical context of Nov 2000 or Nov 1996. For me, it depends too much on trying to use stats to understand human psychology- this has often been the error of the social sciences anyway- to treat a very soft science as though it were studying Genetics or Physics where these mathamatical models would have greater predicative value because the variables would be more definable. I wish people had a greater understanding of the limitations of using stats in a social science setting v. hard science setting b/c I believe this is a central issue regardless of all the stuff with cell phones, etc that people bring up and explains why so many of these polls were wrong 4 years ago. I forget the exact number, but aren’t these models suppose to have a 97 percent or something like that confidence value that the outcome will not change from one group to another- well we are dealing with people here- it simply isnt that simple and certainly not that simple when you add in a lot of additional complicating questions trying to determine the likihood of human behavior.
So frustrating. It’s like people have no memory. They see Kerry debate Bush, they say Kerry won the debate handily, but two days later they swing back to Bush.
Why won’t people wake up?
I follow your blog regularly and when I saw the Gallup Poll for today I knew it was bogus. This race is tied at a minimum. But, I suspect Kerry is way ahead.
what are the internals on this poll
Yes, but the real question is WHAT IS THE BREAKDOWN in the new Gallup poll. Does that three point RV lead mean that Bush is ahead by three, or is the result skewed one way or the other by the sampling? ALSO, did you notice no RV totals on WAPO today. Just a disturbing widening 50-46 in you-know-who’s favor.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic – Democratic turnout is historically lower, on a percentage basis, than Republican turnout.