Alan Abramowitz points out:

The Washington Post tracking poll seems to be suffering from the same ailment that afflicted the Gallup tracking poll four years ago, albeit on a smaller scale so far. In the past few days we have seen Bush’s lead among registered voters shrinking while his lead among likely voters has increased. This means that the likely voters and the unlikely voters are moving in the opposite direction, just as they frequently did in the Gallup tracking poll four years ago. This makes no sense, of course. With the WP tracking poll, as with the Gallup tracking poll, the registered voter results are probably a better indicator of the actual standing of the race.

Well said. It’s also worth notiing that, in 2000, the ABC/WP tracking poll missed the final vote pretty badly, having Bush up by 3 points at the very end and 3-4 points up on every night of the final week. Looks like they’re poised to repeat their fine 2000 performance.

Leading Democratic pollster and public opinion analyst Stanley Greenberg, Co-founder of Democracy Corps, has made available the following analysis of the early data from last night’s debate.

The only national representative panel survey shows Edwards with a slight edge in the vice-presidential debate among key swing groups in the electorate, though overall Cheney had a slight edge of 40 to 37 percent on who won the debate. Where it matters, Edwards had the edge.
o Among independents, Edwards by 37 to 34 percent.
o Among undecided voters (with only 60 cases), Edwards won by 43 to 25 percent.
o Among battleground states, Edwards had 40 to 38 percent advantage.
That is probably why the presidential race remained tied before and after the debate, though Kerry’s vote rose from 47 to 49 percent.
The debate produced a yawning gender gap, with Cheney winning by 16 points among men (47 to 31 percent) and Edwards winning women by 9 points (43 to 34 percent) — a 25-point gender gap.
Fully 1,000 respondents watched the debate, and completed pre- and post-surveys. Data was collected by Knowledge Networks, a survey research firm that maintains the only nationally representative web-based survey platform.
The other national survey conducted tonight by ABC News had Cheney with an 8-point advantage, but note that the survey gave the Republicans a 7-point advantage in party identification. (They did not report the presidential vote.) That is consistent with a stable race and a likely tie in the debate.
Stan Greenberg

John Kerry leads George Bush 49-46 percent of nation-wide RV’s in a head-to-head match-up, according to a Newsweek Poll conducted Sept. 30-October 2nd, after the first presidential debate. The poll also found that 61 percent of those who watched the debate said Kerry won, 19 percent said Bush won and 16 percent said it was a tie.

I’m sure many have heard about today’s full-page ad, “Gallup-ing to the Right“, in The New York Times (page 5!) by MoveOn.org questioning Gallup’s methodology and numbers. But if you haven’t actually seen the ad, by all means click on the link and take a look. I think it’s a striking and effective ad.
The numbers in the ad, which are quite eye-opening, are rock-solid. The ad says Gallup’s average LV lead for Bush this month has been 10 points, while the average of all other LV polls has been 4 (they’re clearly referring to 3-way LV results–which are by far the most numerous LV results–based on other data in the ad). That’s correct. Even taking into account data released since 9/26 (the end-date for the ad’s analysis), Gallup this month has averaged a 10 point lead for Bush among LVs in 3-way trial heats, while the other 27 3-way LV trial heats taken this month have averaged a 4 point Bush lead.
Similarly, the ad says polls released since 9/12 (that is, two weeks before the end-date of the ad’s analysis), excluding Gallup, have averaged a 3 point lead for Bush in 3-way LV trial heats. Correct again, even adding in polls released since 9/26. In the 17 3-way trial heats released since 9/12 by polling organizations whose names are not “Gallup”, Bush is averaging just a 3 point lead.

Well, our correspondent, Alan Abramowitz, has been getting into the spirt of the “How Can Gallup….” game, so I thought I’d share some of the fun he’s been having with DR readers:

It’s hard to know where to begin when it comes to all of the preposterous results in [the new Gallup poll]. First of all, they’ve got about a 10 point Republican advantage in party ID among registered voters. I am guessing that this is one of the largest Republican party ID leads in the history of the Gallup Poll. So according to Gallup, what’s happened since the Republican convention is something on the order of the New Deal realignment in reverse. If you reweight their data based on the partisan composition of the 2000 exit poll, you get something like Bush 48, Kerry 47.
Going along with the ridiculous party ID results, they’ve got Bush now leading by 15 points in the Midwest and by 21 points in the West. For Bush to be leading by 21 points in the West he’d have to actually be leading in California by about 10 points and cleaning up in Washington and Oregon as well. This is totally out of line with recent independent state polls showing Kerry leading in California by 15, leading in Washington, and running about even or slightly ahead in Oregon. According to this poll, Bush is doing better in the West as a whole than he is in Montana, where the most recent independent poll has him ahead by only 18. The Midwest result is totally out of line with the most recent independent polls in Illinois (Kerry +15) and Ohio (Bush +3).
Gallup’s own state polls are totally out of line with this result. How can Bush be 2 points ahead among RVs in states like Florida and Nevada but 13 ahead among RVs in the entire country?

How indeed? Anyway, be sure to play “How Can Gallup….” at home. Don’t let Alan and I have all the fun!

Say everybody, I’ve got a great new game to play! It’s the “How Can Gallup…..” game.
How do you play? It’s easy! Just take the latest Gallup outlier and compare it to other publicly available data that seem to contradict it. And let the fun begin!
Today’s Gallup outlier is their RV result in their latest poll. As many have no doubt heard, that result puts Bush up a whopping 13 points over Kerry in a head-to-head matchup. Maybe that 13 points sounds familiar. Well, last Gallup poll, it was their LV result that had Bush ahead by 13 and that was far away from everyone else’s results. Guess they like to spread those outliers around.
Here are some examples I’ve come up with, but the great thing about this game is that all of you can play at home and make up your own examples, so be sure to do so.
How can Gallup……have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he’s only up by 2 points among Florida RVs?–and according to their own poll!
How can Gallup…..have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he’s only up by 2 points among Nevada RVs?–again, according to their own poll.
How can Gallup….have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he’s only up by 3 points in Ohio, according to Fox News?
How can Gallup….have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he trailing by 5 points in Pennsylvania and 2 points in Michigan, according to Fox News?
How can Gallup…..have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he’s only leading in Montana by 18 points? (in 2000, Bush won Montana by 25 points)
How can Gallup…..have Bush up by 13 nationwide, when he’s behind Kerry by 15 points in California and 20 points in New York?
How can Gallup…..have Bush tied in the solid blue states (that is, the non-battleground blue states, so WI, MN, IO etc aren’t included), when he is trailing Kerry by 15 points in California and 20 points in New York?
How can Gallup…..have Bush up by 13, when he’s only leading among independents by 2 (and that was exactly Bush’s margin among independents in 2000 when, as you recall, he did not win the popular vote by 13 points)?
Not only that, Bush’s current margin among Republicans in the Gallup poll is not too far from his 2000 margin (93-6 now vs. 91-8 then) and Kerry’s margin among Democrats is identical in magnitude to Gore’s (85-10 now vs. 86-11 then).
Actually, this one is kind of easy. The only way you can produce a 13 point Bush lead with these internals is if you have quite a few more Republicans than Democrats in the sample–my guess is 7-8 points more. If you re-weight their sample to the 2000 exit poll party ID distribution (and I kind of have to do this, just to drive certain pollsters and their acolytes into a frenzy), you wind up with a modest Bush lead of 2 points.
See? This game is fun! Tell a friend about the “How Can Gallup…..” game and add a little zing to your election season.

The indefatigable Alan Abramowitz offers the following comparison of the track records of Gallup and Democracy Corps in the last presidential campaign. The results may surprise you and have some important implications for assessing recent poll results.

What should we make of the huge discrepancy in the results of recent national polls? On the one hand, the prestigious Gallup Poll has George Bush leading John Kerry by 13 points among likely voters. On the other hand, a Democracy Corps Poll released just a few days later shows that the race is a dead heat. Who should voters believe? Most people probably assume that the Gallup Poll is a lot more credible than a poll conducted by a partisan polling organization. After all, Democracy Corps is headed by two well-known Democratic political operatives: James Carville and Stan Greenberg. But if that’s what you’re thinking, an examination of the track record of these two polling organizations during the 2000 presidential campaign might make you change your mind.
On October 25, less than two weeks before the 2000 presidential election, Democracy Corps released a national poll showing Al Gore leading George Bush by 2 points. On the same day, Gallup’s national tracking poll showed George Bush leading Al Gore by 7 points. One day later, the Gallup tracking poll had Bush up by an incredible (literally)
13 points. Score one for Democracy Corps.
Okay, you’re probably thinking, maybe Gallup just had a bad day (or two or three). But six days later, on October 31, Democracy Corps released it’s final pre-election poll showing a tie in the presidential race. Gallup’s tracking poll that day still had Bush leading by 5 points.
Make it Democracy Corps 2, Gallup 0.
In its final poll, Gallup did have Bush’s lead down to only 2 points–still not as good as Democracy Corps’ poll released almost a week earlier.
Now I’m sure that Gallup and its defenders in the polling business would argue that Democracy Corps was just lucky and that the Gallup Poll was actually more accurate all along because it was picking up real shifts in voter sentiment in the final two weeks of the campaign. Maybe Al Gore really did go from a 13 point deficit on October 26 to a small lead on Election Day, maybe there really is a 6 point Republican advantage in party identification among registered voters right now, as Gallup is currently telling us, maybe Iraq will hold free and fair elections next January, and maybe the tooth fairy will pay you a visit tonight, but I wouldn’t count on it. If I had to put down a bet right now on which poll will prove to be closer to the actual results of the 2004 presidential election, Gallup or Democracy Corps, I’d put my money on James Carville and Stan Greenberg.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a backup poll, I’d recommend Fox News/Opinion Dynamics. Their final pre-election poll in 2000, released five days before the election, also showed a dead heat. Their latest 2004 poll has Bush leading Kerry by 2 points, right in line with the new Democracy Corps poll. And I don’t think anyone would accuse Fox News of having a pro-Kerry bias.

Pretty darn interesting. And if reading this has put you in the mood for a little DCorps analysis, you really must check out their latest analysis of “The State of the 2004 Race“. Highly worthwhile.

Yesterday, I highlighted analyses by Phillip Klinkner and Anna Greenberg critquing recent data-challenged newspaper stories about “security moms” and the vanishing gender gap. Today, it’s Noam Schieber’s turn over at The New Republic in his amusingly-named “Mothers of Invention” article. Here’s a taste of what Noam has to say:

If you’ve been following the presidential campaign these last few weeks, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about security moms–the erstwhile soccer moms who became obsessed with terrorism after September 11, and, in the process, began tilting Republican. The typical “security mom” story–variations of which have appeared in The Washington Post (twice), The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer in recent weeks, as well as on CNN, ABC, and NPR–cites the hair-raising effect of the recent Russian school massacre. It mentions Laura Bush’s frequent pitches to women on security matters, and notes how the Republican Convention was awash in security talk. Often the stories are larded with a testimonial by a real-live security mom, invariably a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, anti-death penalty former Gore supporter who’s convinced only George W. Bush can keep her children safe. All of them conclude that security moms could cost John Kerry the election.
Oh, and the stories usually have one other thing in common: They’re based on almost no empirical evidence.
…[I]t wasn’t until after this summer’s Republican convention that security moms became a bona fide growth industry. Suddenly, as The New York Times put it earlier this week, “an issue Mr. Bush had initially pitched as part of an overall message–which candidate would be best able to protect the United States from terrorists–has become particularly compelling for women.” Except that, well, it hasn’t–at least that part about “particularly compelling.” The problem with most of the reporting on security moms is that it fails to distinguish between Kerry’s support among women relative to men (i.e., the gender gap, which doesn’t tend to fluctuate much over short periods of time) and his absolute level of support among women (which fluctuates just like it does for anyone else). In fact, while Kerry has lost ground among women since August, he’s lost about the same amount of ground among men.

There’s lots more. By all means, check out the whole article.

ARG is polling all 50 states and DC on the race for president and today they released the final 30 or so of these polls. Here’s how ARG summarized what their data had to say (but check out all their data at their website):

How close is the race for president?
George W. Bush is at 47% and John Kerry is at 46% in the weighted national popular vote.
Bush leads outside the margin of error in 17 states with 133 electoral votes.
Kerry leads outside the margin of error in 10 states with 132 electoral votes.
Bush has any lead in 29 states with 253 electoral votes.
Kerry has any lead in 20 states with 270 electoral votes.
Bush and Kerry are tied in Wisconsin and West Virginia.
Bush needs to defend small leads in 5 states – Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
Kerry needs to defend small leads in 5 states – Maine, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.
Among men nationwide, 51% say they would vote for Bush and 42% say they would vote for Kerry.
Among women nationwide, 42% say they would vote for Bush and 50% say they would vote for Kerry.

And here’s a brief take from Alan Abramowitz on these data:

The results of the new 50-state ARG poll appear to be very much in line with other recent polls in the same states. Using today’s National Journal Scoreboard, I found other polls conducted by independent, nonpartisan, or bipartisan polling organizations during approximately the same time period in 22 states. On average, support for George Bush was 0.6 points lower and support for John Kerry was 1.8 points higher in the ARG poll compared with the poll conducted closest in time to the ARG poll.
ARG’s conclusion that the national race is a virtual dead heat is consistent with the results of other recent state polls conducted by independent, bipartisan, and nonpartisan polling organzations.

Alan promises a more detailed analysis on Friday, so look for his further thoughts then.

Those who defend the sudden tilt toward the Republicans in registered voter samples as a real political trend and not any kind of sampling problem, like to point toward the post-9/11 period as an example of a recent shift in the party ID distribution. If it happened then, they say, why shouldn’t we give full credence to the shift we’re seeing now?
But there is a very serious problem with this logic. After 9/11, despite the immensity of the rally effect behind the president and his party, the shift in party ID toward the Republicans was substantially less than what we’re seeing now. What polls showed then was not a shift toward a 4-5 point (or more) Republican advantage in party ID–like we’re seeing in some current polls–but rather a simple reduction in the Democratic edge or at best parity. Moreover, even this modest shift took place over several months, rather than over several weeks, like the shifts we’ve seen in some recent polls. (Note: these Republican gains were given back in a year or two, so the Democrats this year have had their a party ID edge at about the same level they had in 2000 and early 2001.)
Given this, how believable is it that we would now be getting not a gradual reduction in the Democratic party ID advantage (as we did after 9/11) but a much more sudden, much larger shift in party ID to produce an actual Republican advantage of 4-5 points or more? Are we really to believe that the GOP convention was such an earthshaking event that it had a bigger effect on the underlying sentiments of the electorate than did 9/11 and Bush’s six months of 80+ approval ratings in the post-9/11 period?
And this from a convention that poll data said was viewed with a distinct lack of enthusiasm by the public! According to the Gallup poll, Bush’s acceptance speech, which the media fawned over so ostentatiously, was not rated any better by the public than was Kerry’s–in fact, it received slightly worse ratings. Kerry’s acceptance speech was rated excellent by 25 percent and good by 27 percent; Bush’s was rated excellent by 22 percent and good by 27 percent.
In terms of whether the Republican convention made voters more or less likely to vote for Bush, there were almost as many saying the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush (38 percent) as said it made them more likely (41 percent).
That was actually quite a poor performance. The Democratic convention this year had a substantially better 44 percent more likely/30 percent less likely split. In fact, looking back to 1984, which is as far back as Gallup supplies data, no candidate has ever had a more likely to vote for/less likely to vote for split even close to as bad as Bush’s this year.
Well, what about the tone of the convention? Did voters think the Republicans got that one right? Nope. Just 39 percent thought the GOP maintained the right balance between criticizing the Democrats and saying positive things about themselves, compared to 50 percent who thought they spent too much time criticizing the Democrats. By contrast, in 2000, 45 percent thought the GOP maintained the right balance in their convention, compared to 38 percent who thought they spent too much time criticizing.
Can anyone seriously maintain, then, that this year’s GOP convention was such a blockbuster that it could produce a surge in Republican party ID that dwarfs that produced by 9/11? It just does not compute.
Still not convinced that party-weighting should at least be considered to correct for sudden partisan imbalances in polls? I close with the words of Charlie Cook in his latest online column:

…Pollsters acknowledge variances from one poll to the next in gender, race, income and education, and they correct for it, but refuse to acknowledge that partisan numbers fluctuate just the same, and need to be corrected.
My own view is that samples should be weighted by party to the average party breakdown in a combination of the polls for the last several months, linking it to a very large sample of combined surveys to reduce sampling error. While this method might be a bit sluggish if party identification is changing dramatically, it would mean that when a candidate is gaining or dropping, it is most likely because they really are, not because of a sample that is too tilted in favor of one party or the other. If Republicans are indeed gaining in party identification, it will show up after a couple of polls in the average.

You tell ’em, Charlie.