By Alan Abramowitz
A new Gallup poll has George Bush leading John Kerry by 8 points among likely voters. A new Democracy Corps poll has Kerry leading Bush by 3 points among likely voters. Who should you believe? Hint: If you’ve been following my previous messages, you should know the answer to this question.
Remember, in 2000, Democracy Corps’ final poll, released five days before the election, was right on the money. In fact, every D.C. poll in the final weeks of the 2000 campaign showed the race to be very, very close.
Remember, a Gallup poll released on October 26, 2000, less than two weeks before the election, had George Bush leading Al Gore by 13 points! Numerous Gallup polls during the final weeks of the 2000 campaign had Bush with ludicrously large leads.
And this time, Gallup has Bush ahead by 8 among likely voters but by 3 among registered voters. This is just too large a gap between registered and likely voters.
It looked for a while, after the first debate, like the Gallup Poll was getting reasonable again. Looks like they were just teasing us.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 26: Kennedy Now Taking As Many Votes From Trump As From Biden
Polls are showing a subtle but potentially important shift that I discussed at New York:
For a while there, the independent ticket of ex-Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan seemed to be taking crucial votes away from Democrat Joe Biden, at least as indicated by comparing three-way and five-way (with Cornel West and Jill Stein) polls to head-to-head matchups of the incumbent and Donald Trump. Now, even as Biden has all but erased his polling deficit against Trump, he’s getting some more good news in surveys that include other candidates.
Two recent major national polls show Biden running better in a five-way than a two-way race. According to NBC News, Biden moves from two points down to two points up when the non-major-party candidates are included. In the latest Marist poll, Biden leads Trump by three points head-to-head and by five points in a five-way race. Since left-bent candidates West and Stein are pulling 5 percent in the former poll and 4 percent in the latter (presumably taking very few votes from Trump), you have to figure Kennedy is beginning to cut into the MAGA vote to an extent that should get Team Trump’s attention. And it has, NBC News reports:
“Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he’s confident that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will pull more votes away from President Joe Biden than from him — a net win for the Republican’s candidacy.
“’He is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine,’Trump wrote on Truth Social late last month. ‘I love that he is running!’
“Behind closed doors, however, Trump is less sure. A Republican who was in the room with Trump this year as he reviewed polling said Trump was unsure how Kennedy would affect the race, asking the other people on hand whether or not Kennedy was actually good for his candidacy.”
Politico notes that Kennedy is drawing higher favorability numbers from Republican voters than from Democratic ones, which could indicate a higher ceiling for RFJ Jr. among Trump defectors. And it’s generally assumed from his past performances that there is a lower ceiling on Trump’s support than on Biden’s; he needs to be able to win with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote, as one Republican told Politico:
“’If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,’ Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. ‘They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.’”
One likely reason that Kennedy could be appealing to Republicans is the residual effect from the positive attention he received from conservative media when he was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries; his identification with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories also resonates more positively on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. So it’s in the interest of Team Trump to begin telling the former president’s sympathizers that RFK Jr. is actually a lefty, and that started happening recently, as the New York Times reported: “Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, pointed in particular to Mr. Kennedy’s views on climate change and the environment, writing on his social media site that Mr. Kennedy was more ‘radical Left’ than Mr. Biden.”
The idea, of course, is not only to discourage potential Trump voters from drifting toward the independent candidate, but to encourage potential Biden voters to consider a Kennedy vote.
If Kennedy continues to draw votes from both Biden and Trump, each of their campaigns will need to make a strategic decision about how to deal with him: Do you ignore him and count on the usual fade in support afflicting non-major-party presidential candidates as Election Day nears, or do you attack him as too far left (if you’re Trump) or too far right (if you’re Biden) and try to make him a handicap to your major-party opponent? The more aggressive approach has become common among Democrats seeking to intervene in Republican primaries (or in the recent case of the California Senate race, a nonpartisan top-two primary) by loudly attacking candidates they’d prefer to face in the general election, encouraging Republicans to flock to the supposed menace to progressivism. This kind of tactic — if deployed with some serious dollars — could have an effect on Kennedy’s base of support.
Certainly Trump seems to be considering it. With his usual practice of saying the quiet part out loud, Trump opined: “If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”
Trying to minimize losses to Kennedy and maximize opposite-party votes for Kennedy could become a routine practice down the stretch. Where and by whom this strategy is pursued will depend in part on where RFK Jr. is ultimately on the ballot. Right now he has nailed down ballot access in just two states, Utah and Michigan. CBS News reports the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is close to securing a spot on the November ballot in a number of other states:
“Kennedy’s campaign says it has completed signature gathering in seven other states in addition to Utah and Michigan — Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nebraska and Iowa.
“The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, says it has collected enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.”
Coping with Kennedy could become a game of three-dimensional chess between the Biden and Trump campaigns. But if it begins to look like RFK Jr. has become an existential threat to Democrats or to Republicans, you can bet they’ll go medieval on him without even a moment’s hesitation.
Gallup interviewed too many conservatives… if you correct for that error… Bush leads by 1. Zoby has the best poll. Rasmussen is pretty good, too.
Gallup Sample of likely voters vs. 2000 Election
By Political Ideology:
Conservative: 41% (29%)
Moderate: 41% (50%)
Liberal: 18% (20%)
Party ID:
GOP: 39% (35%)
Dem: 35% (39%)
Ind: 25% (27%)
Income:
Over $75,000: 32% (28%)
$50-75,000: 16% (25%)
$30-50,000: 26% (24%)
$20-30,000: 11%
Under $20K: 9%
Race:
White: 85% (81%)
NonWhite: 15% (19%)
Black: (a subset of NonWhite) 8% (10%)
You might be interested in the polling graphic at our web site, http://www.democratsforum.com. We average the national polls (job approval) and graph them. We started in 2000 so you can get a long trend line from it.
The flap over Mary Cheney is ridiculous. When John Edwards referred to her in the debate with her father, Cheney thanked him for his graciousness. This is more Republican hypocrisy as they try to divert attention from the real issues.
JY
In response to a previous comment, I have problems with the very idea of making likely voter models based on previous election turnout levels, regardless of what the results are. Assuming voter turnout similar to 2000 is not a good idea, as time does not stand still. But assuming it similar to 2002 is even worse, as presidential elections naturally attract higher turnout than off year elections.
Add in the massive upsurge in new registrants, plus the question of who is motivated to vote (with so much new registration, there may be a lot of highly motivated first time voters who don’t show up in likely voter models) and the likely voter models are nearly useless as accurate predictors of this year’s vote.
Gallup has become America’s faith-based pollster.
In response to the person who asked about the response to the ‘who did you vote for in 2000’ question: isn’t it the case that only a few weeks after the election, polls showed a majority for Bush that had no bearing on the popular vote totals? I certainly remember hearing something along those lines.
In any case, I don’t think it’s an oversampling so much as people not wanting to disclose that they backed the losing candidate in 2000.
I got the Gallup internals tonight, posted over at my blog.
I suspect there is more truth to em hansen’s opinion that any of us would like to believe. The crux of that issue is not, as the Cheney’s are claiming, that Kerry ‘politically used’ Mary’s lesbianism. It is that a large number of Americans still feel that, while that Ellen has a pretty good talk show, it’s just unseemly to bring up this lesbian in the Veep’s closet yet again, when it could have been avoided.
I think many people still feel that, like alcoholism and mental illness and maybe disfiguring neuromuscular diseases, you just don’t talk about the gayness of individuals in someone’s family in public. When Edwards brought it up, Cheney was right there — it was seen as more relevant, and more ‘manly’ to do it to his face. But enough was enough. To bring it up again on national TV was crossing the line for some people, and that’s what Kerry did.
The embellishments Cheney has added to his ‘outrage,’ such as the ‘Kerry will say anything to get elected’ line, do not stick here. But the ‘why did Kerry have to go and try to embarass the Cheneys by talking about their, you know….’ may hang around a bit.
I would have to challenge you on one thing. In 2000, I checked in to the Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen, and Battleground 2000 polls every single day in the closing weeks of the 2000 campaign and I don’t remember Gallup having Bush ever being ahead by more than thin margins in the closing weeks of campaign 2000. I remember Battleground had him that far up, and Rasmussen had him up but only slightly, whereas Zogby and Gallup both pegged it pretty close to accurate (Zogby closest of all, but Gallup well within the margin of error, erroneously having Bush up by perhaps a point or two but, as I say, well within the margin of error and clearly “too close to call.”).
I’d like to hear what Ruy thinks about Mickey Kaus’s musings on the “landslide factor” possibly introduced by poll results.
JY
Could it possibly be the media’s obsessive focus on the lesbian comment? Sensible minds say no, but we also thought the swift boat campaign in August wouldn’t amount too much and look what happened with that.
That makes no sense. I wonder if the phrasing of the question didn’t confuse people. Perhaps the following explains it:
Without their candidate on the ballot, many of the supporters of Nader and other candidates move to Kerry, which is what you’d expect (although I think 54% high). But fully 30% of all respondents are now either undecided, inclined to “other,” or refuse to answer the question.
I wonder if many Bush supporters weren’t confused. Concluding that somehow Bush was no longer on the ballot, they had trouble dealing with the question. “Other” (10%) and “refused” (7%) may be code words for “I won’t vote.” This rationale, of course, doesn’t explain why Kerry’s people would not have had the same problem. But I think something like this must be at work. Taking other candidates off the ballot should have had no effect on either candidate’s core support.
I think most polls will probably show Bush in the lead from here on. This is just a function of the assumptions and methods traditional pollsters have relied on for decades. The Democrats’ main challenge will be to keep their voters motivated in the face of the daily media drone of “Bush has it wrapped up”. I thought many weeks ago that the DEmocrats should have moved aggressively to discredit polls like Gallup, but I think we got distracted by the debates and the evening up of the polls. It is too late for that now.
One way to do something would be to get higher visibility for polls that do show the race tied or Kerry ahead. For example, if every Kerry-supporting talking head had upto date talking points on polls such as the DC (as well as the shortcomings of the Gallup, ABC etc.), they could keep things relatively even by mentioning these polls at every opportunity. Otherwise, CNN et al. are going to run away with this. My biggest concern is that if the “Bush is ahead” meme gets established, a Kerry win on election day could be demagogued successfully into controversy by Republicans.
I would also like to say that, given the recent results from several polls, there does seem to have been a tick up for Bush over the last few days — not the 10 point swing shown by Gallup, but probably a 2-point blip which is now subsiding. I think it can be attributed almost entirely to a widening of Bush leads in solid red states, but this is just a hunch.
Let’s see what the Fox News poll shows. Paradoxically, I find that poll to be the least hysterical and therefore most credible among the media polls.
We’ve been in the survey business for 20 years, during which time the Gallup organization has degnerated from a respected, serious research firm to a shoddy polling company focused mostly on currying favor with broadcasters. The last time we looked, their custom research business was in the toilet. Real companies wanting real insight about consumer opinion do not vote for Gallup with their pocketbooks.
I think I’ve come up with a new term now. Whenever someone tries to reinforce their position within a particular argument or discussion with reference to some-such poll. I’ll just respond: Are you trying to pull a “Gallup” on me?
I am just going to lend my voice to the chorus to say that I simply don’t believe the gallup poll in the face of Zogby, Newsweek, WaPo, Time, Ramussen, and on and on. Please focs on GOTV – that’s what these last 2 weeks are about- I am doing phonebanking this week- I hope everyone else is etierh doing door to door or phonebanking or some other aspect
I read Chris Suellentrop on Slate talking about Kerry’s downward trend in the polls. He suggests it was because of Kerry’s statement about Mary Cheny in the debate. If that were true, it would seem Kerry’s positives would go down. I haven’t this in any of the few polls I looked at. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I have refrained so far from joining in the Gallup-bashing, but the information in the USA/Today article, albeit sketchy, is enough to show that their likely voter model is simply indefensible.
They say: “The likely voter model assumes a turnout of 55% of national adults. The likely voter sample is weighted down to match this assumption.”
This approach has all the disadvantages of weighting your sample to party ID and none of the advantages. Weighting to party ID gets rid of most of the systematic errors in the sampling and weighting process, and puts in one big systematic error if party ID has shifted from what you assumed. Weighting to party ID also significantly reduces sampling error in the presidential race (from 3.1% to 2.1% in a sample of 380 Ds, 340 Rs, and 280 Inds with reasonable assumptions about voting preference). Adjusting your likely voter model to an assumed turnout doesn’t get rid of any of the systematic errors and still adds a big systematic error if you guess the turnout wrong. And it doesn’t do anything to reduce sampling error.
Depending how they do it (which we don’t know), Gallup’s “weighting down” of the likely voter model could even enlarge biases. What it seems to mean is that when they score you on several dimensions to decide whether you are a likely voter, you need “more points” to be counted as likely. If being counted a “likely voter” depends less on whether you say you voted in 2000 and more on whether you say you voted in 2002, it could mean that instead of assuming an electorate like 2000 (what CBS/NYTimes does), Gallup is assuming an electorate like 2002, or more precisely somewhere between 2000 and 2002.
Reviewing the DC poll, I had two observations/questions. First, it appeared to me that minorities may have been underrepresented in the poll. Second, in rating the candidates, the questions seemed focused mostly on John Kerry rather than balanced between the two. Are these worthy of comment/explanation?
I found the results very interesting, and for the most part pleasing (obviously I support John Kerry ). I’m still puzzled, with as many people disenchanted as they say they are with Bush, and as much as Kerry leads in so many important aspects, why there are still so many planning to vote for Bush. Is the act of voting, in the end, for many a popularity contest (e.g. who’d be more fun at a party), no matter the reasoned judgments? Or are certain of the wedge issues overpowering the others? Or does it all come down to the terrorism issue?
I’d like to see a more detailed poll about just what concerns people re Kerry vs terrorism. Do people not see him as “tough” enough? Resolute enough? Do they see “war on terror” as strictly or mostly a military matter? Do they understand the homeland security issues and factor that into their assessment? Do they still see criticism of the Iraq war as “being soft on terror”? Are they hung up on–and perhaps misunderstand– Kerry’s long-ago anti-Nam activities? Some analysis of this might be helpful in the campaign. It seems to be the last sticking point with many.
A thought about polls, somewhat analogous to the Heisenberg Principle: does the act of responding to such a poll tend to nudge the respondent into one direction or another? (By this I don’t mean push-polling, just the respondent being forced to examine perceptions and make decisions issue by issue instead of a global “gut-level” response.)
Thank you. I very much appreciate your analyses.
I think it is interesting that CNN, which has their name on this poll as of yet has pubished its results. They continue to run a story about a Time poll showing the race deadlocked. Is it possible this poll is too weird for them to publish?
One really odd thing about the DCorps survey is that it has Kerry +40 for who would win if the election were held today (57 – 17). Can anyone explain this impossible result?
With this latest poll Gallup has lost all credibility. A few days ago they had Bush sinking to new lows of support – now he’s Superman. There’s just no way the third debate gave him an eight point bump.
Gallup is starting to scare me…have they ever responded to Moveon.org’s complaints about their sampling procedures?
Sigh, I guess Gallup is at it again.
Any internals for the Gallup poll? I would guess heavily weighted Republican.
I find it odd that only days after Gallup shows an even race they then show this. I mean could 10 percent of the elctorate change theor minds in only days? And based on what exactly?
Any word on the party affiliation of the latest Gallup poll? I’d guess it’s a 5 to 10 point advantage for the R’s.
The Gallup name has been around for so long that it carries some weight, albeit any credibility it has, based on recent results, is unearned. I believe a campaign to educate people about the Gallup slant is in order. It’s in the same league as Fox, as I see it.
The Democracy Corps Poll, towards the end, asks who they voted for in 2000. There is a significant tilt towards Bush in that response, 51-43. Now the actual vote was close to even, so is this poll oversampling Replublicans and still giving Kerry an edge? Or am I missing something?