This is really unbelievable. Gallup posted an analysis on their site yesterday about estimating election probabilities based on labor day poll data that is almost completely worthless. The reason is that they focus on Kerry’s 7 point deficit among LVs on labor day (can he overcome it?), while basing their analysis almost entirely on data about RVs on labor day.
How do I know their labor day poll data is almost entirely (prior to 1996) based on RVs? Because they published these data, clearly marked as being from RVs prior to that date, in an analysis on their own site just 6 days ago (September 3)!
Don’t they read their own stuff? Clearly it makes no sense to analyze a lead among LVs this labor day, and its possible relation to the final outcome this year, on the basis of historical data about RV leads on labor day and how much they changed by election day.
Thus, the question Gallup should have been asking is: can Kerry overcome his 1 point deficit among RVs by election day, based on historical patterns? Turns out the answer to this question–really, the only question that their data can properly answer–looks pretty darn good for Kerry.
In 17 of 17 cases, going back to 1936, the labor day margin between the candidates changed enough for Kerry to tie or surpass Bush in the popular vote and, in 12 of 17 of those cases, the change was in Kerry’s direction (i.e., that is, in the direction of the candidate who was behind among RVs on labor day).
Moreover, if you compare Bush’s position to the position of incumbent presidents who won their campaigns for re-election, it doesn’t look auspicious. In 9 cases, going back to 1936, winning incumbent presidents on labor day had an average lead of 12 points and a median lead of 11 points among RVs. The only winning incumbent president who was in a worse position than Bush is this year was Harry Truman in 1948.
Maybe I’m biased, but I have a really hard time seeing George W. Bush as Harry Truman.

I’ve certainly made no secret of my skepticism. Now consider this excellent analysis along the same lines by Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, one of the leading academic analysts of American politiics. (He sent this to me in an email and graciously agreed to allow me to share it with readers of this blog.)

1. The latest Gallup Poll has Bush ahead of Kerry by 52-45 percent among likely voters but by only 49-48 percent among registered voters. Based on the numbers of registered and likely voters in their sample, this means that Gallup is projecting that 89 percent of Bush supporters will vote but only 79 percent of Kerry supporters will vote. That seems unrealistic. It is way out of line with data from the American National Election Studies on turnout among registered Dems and Republicans in recent elections. For the past three presidential elections, the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats has averaged 3 percentage points and was never larger than 4 percentage points. The smallest gap was in 1992 (1 point), the election with the highest overall turnout. Assuming that 2004 will be another relatively high turnout election, we should probably expect a relatively small turnout gap, similar to 1992.
2. Among registered voters, Gallup shows Bush leading by one point overall, with Kerry leading 90-7 among Democrats, Bush leading 90-7 among Republicans, and Kerry leading 49-46 among independents. This means that Gallup’s sample of registered voters includes more Republican identifiers than Democratic identifiers. But in 2000, according to the VNS national exit poll (which hits the overall percentages for Bush and Gore right on the nose), Democrats made up 40.3 percent of the electorate while Republicans made up only 36.5 percent of the electorate. If you apply Gallup’s trial heat results among Democrats, independents, and Republicans to the VNS 2000 electorate, Kerry comes out with with a four point lead: 50.3 percent to Bush’s 46.4 percent.

Food for thought, eh?

Now that’s a headline you’re not likely to see in the mainstream media, consumed as they are with the storyline du jour about Bush’s Big Mo’ from the convention.
But that’s what the internals of the latest Gallup poll tell us. Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one point lead among RVs (47-46) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, now that battleground voters have had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party really stand for, Kerry leads by 5 in these same states (50-45)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one point bounce.
And wait–there’s more! The Gallup poll’s internals also show that Kerry continues to lead among independents (49-46) and that both parties’ partisans are equally polarized for their respective candidates (90-7). Note that these findings directly contradict the results of the recent Newsweek poll, which showed Bush doing much better among Republican partisans than Kerry was doing among Democratic partisans. Note also that, given the equal polarization of partisans and Kerry’s lead among independents, the only possible reason Bush has any lead at all among Gallup’s RVs must be because their sample has a GOP advantage on party ID (my guess is 5 points) that is inconsistent with almost all other polling data from this campaign season (see my recent post on the Newsweek poll for more discussion of this issue).
Indeed, if equal polarization of partisans continues and Kerry carries a 3 point lead on independents into the election, he’ll win fairly easily, since the Democratic proportion of voters in presidential elections is always higher, not lower, than the Republican proportion. In 2000, after all, Bush carried independents by 2 points and received stronger support from his partisans than Gore did from his–but still lost the popular vote by half a point.
Now that’s another storyline you’re unlikely to see in the mainstream media.

I think those of us who have expressed skepticism about the results of the Time and Newsweek polls can consider ourselves vindicated. The new Gallup poll, conducted entirely after the GOP convention and therefore the first poll that truly measures Bush’s bounce, shows Bush with a very modest bounce indeed: 2 points, whether you look at RVs or LVs. His support among RVs has risen from 47 percent before to 49 percent after the convention, so that he now leads Kerry by a single point (49-48) rather than trailing by a point.
But that’s it. Contrast Bush’s 49-48 lead among RVs in this poll to Time‘s 50-42 Bush lead and, especially, Newsweek‘s 54-43 Bush lead in the same matchup. Quite a difference.
Note also that Bush’s 2 point bounce from his convention (which, remember, is defined as the change in a candidate’s level of support, not in margin) is the worst ever received by an incumbent president, regardless of party, and the worst ever received by a Republican candidate, whether incumbent or not (see this Gallup analysis for all the relevant historical data). In 2000, Bush received an 8 point bounce. And even his hapless father received a 5 point bounce in 1992.
So that’s the big story, right–Bush got a disappointingly small bounce and the earlier Time/Newsweek polls got it wrong about the bounce and how well Bush is doing. Nope, not if you’re writing stories at USA Today. You dasn’t contravene the current CW about the campaign (Bush surges ahead!) no matter what your own data says.
That’s why we get a story like this one, “Bush leads Kerry by 7 points“, which prominently features the LV results (where Bush does have a 7 point lead) and resolutely refuses to dwell on Bush’s historically poor result from his convention or on his almost non-existent lead among RVs.
Instead, the article goes on to discuss some results from the poll that look pretty good for Bush and, of course, allow Matthew Dowd to spin the poll’s results in the GOP’s direction.
As usual, of course, Dowd does a pretty good job of spnning the poll (we gained more than we expected!), which is then followed by a very weak reply from Mark Mellman where he essentially says the GOP’s gains from the convention will fade. That’s not the right reply. The right reply is what gains and and how very disappointed the GOP must be in their historically poor performance.
But this is a persistent problem: Dowd and the people behind him relentlessly spin every poll and feed journalists various mini-analyses (can we call them “analysisoids”?) that purport to show how great Bush is doing relative to expectations, historical patterns, etc. and how bogus any poll is that shows Kerry doing well. Where are the Democrats on this one? The occasional lame quote from Mellman is not enough to outgun Dowd in this particular part of the political debate.
I don’t know whether Mellman just can’t matchup with Dowd in this department or if he simply doesn’t have the time to come up with good stuff or whether he needs a team of people monitoring the polls and coming up with analysisoids that he (or someone) can then retail to the media. Whatever the problem, it’s time the Democrats found a solution so that Dowd no longer has this particular field all to himself.
End of rant. Let me mention a few other results from the Gallup poll that suggest the relative ineffectiveness of the GOP convention.
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–the real point of the convention after all–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).
This is 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? Do voters think the Republicans got that one right? Nope. Just 39 percent think the GOP maintained the right balance between criticizing the Democrats and saying positive things about themselves, compared to 50 percent who think 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.
But this unfavorable judgement on tone for the GOP this year is not without precedent. In 1992, just 26 percent thought the Republicans maintained the right balance in their convention, compared to 56 percent who thought they spent too much time criticizing.
Sounds like W is going down the same road trod by his father. Let’s hope it produces the same result on election day.

It’s a full-time job trying to keep Democrats from hyperventilating whenever a new poll comes out! Friday, I tried to calm folks down about the new Time poll; today I’ll try to do the same about the new Newsweek poll, conducted 9/2-3, which has Bush ahead 54-43 among RVs.
Here are some important points to keep in mind about the poll:
1. It is still not a true bounce poll; only one night of the two covered by the poll actually took place after the GOP convention was over. That night is highly likely to be Bush’s best post-convention night, since it was right after his big speech and the huge media splash the next day. And, in fact, Newsweek‘s data show that Bush led by 16 points in their poll on this night and by only 6 the night before. Don’t forget that Kerry did very well in polls the night right after his speech then fell off rapidly in the next few days.
So why do Newsweek and Time insist on doing their bounce polls wrong so they’re almost guaranteed to get misleading results? Simple: their publication schedule. They’ve got to have to data in time to dump it into their print publication. If they waited to do it right the poll would be too old to put in their magazine the subsequent week.
This is especially egregious since even a poll conducted entirely after the convention needs to be viewed with caution. As Charlie Cook points out:

A week or 10 days after the GOP convention, the electorate should have stopped bouncing and settled back down enough for horse race poll results to once again have some real meaning.

2. Aside from the timing, there are other reasons to be skeptical of the Newsweek poll. As has been widely reported in various blogs, the partisan distribution of the RVs in the Newsweek poll is quite startling: 38 percent Republican, 31 percent Democratic and 31 percent independent. This 7 point lead for the GOP on party ID does not comport well with other data on partisan distribution this campaign season–which have consistently shown the Democrats leading by at least several points–and can’t be blamed on a likely voter screen since there was none.
As Chris Bowers of MyDD shows, if you assume a more reasonable distribution of party ID, Bush’s lead is about cut in half. Moreover, if you assume that the differential in partisan support rates in the poll–94-4 for Bush and only 82-14 for Kerry–is, if not overstated now, highly likely to converge toward parity in the near future (as it has been for most of the campaign), even a Bush lead of 5-6 points looks very unstable.
So how did Newsweek manage to pull a sample with a 7 point GOP lead on party ID? It is certainly possible that there has been a sudden, large shift in party ID to the Republicans; the distribution of party ID is not completely stable and does indeed change over time. But a shift of this magnitude so suddenly and so off-trend (which has been toward the Democrats) strikes me as quite unlikely. I find it more plausible that there was differential interest in being interviewed by Democratic and Republican voters over the time period and that produced a skewed distribution of partisan identifiers in their RV sample.
Does that mean I favor polls like this weighting their samples by party ID? No, I don’t, because the distribution of party ID does shift some over time and polls should be able to capture this. What I do favor is release and prominent display of sample compostions by party ID, as well as basic demographics, whenever a poll comes out. Consumers of poll data should not have to ferret out this information from obscure places–it should be given out-front by the polling organizations or sponsors themselves. Then people can use this information to make judgements about whether and to what extent they find the results of the poll plausible.
3. It’s still a long time ’til election day. People should resist the urge to push the panic button and insist that Kerry launch an incendiary campaign against Bush’s and his surrogate’s personal attacks. As John Judis points out, there are interesting similarities between this campaign and the Reagan-Carter campaign of 1980. These similarities suggest that:

….just as Bush might be wise to avoid Carter’s mistakes, Kerry might be wise to consider Reagan’s successes in 1980. He is certainly going to have to answer some of the Bush campaign’s personal attacks, just as Reagan occasionally responded to Carter–although Reagan did so in a disarming manner (“there you go again”) that put the onus of disagreeability directly onto his opponent. But Kerry needs to direct the public’s attention, like Reagan did, to the underlying reality of the economy, the Iraq war, and the threat of Al Qaeda; and he needs to propose ways to deal with each that are at least plausible, if not preferable to those adopted by Bush. If he does that, and if he shows himself to be the equal of Bush in the debates, he could discover, like Reagan did in 1980, that the voters are ready to put someone new in the White House.

Amen. End of sermon.

It must be stressed that at this point: we don’t know. Measurements of a candidate’s bounce should be based on polls taken before and after a convention. So far we have no such data–in fact, tonight will be the first night where polling can be conducted that is truly after the completeion of the GOP convention. Therefore, we won’t have real bounce data for several days.
That said, let us consider the results of polls taken during the GOP convention. The one that seems to be freaking out some Democrats is the just-released Time poll. (I continue to be amazed at how easily many Democrats are panicked by the release of an unfavorable poll; there’s been a lot of talk about whether John Kerry is tough enough–I’m more worried about whether regular old Democrats are tough enough. Sheesh.)
The Time poll, conducted 8/31-9/2, has Bush ahead by 11, 52-41 in a 3-way LV matchup that includes Nader. (Time presumably will eventually release the 2-way LV matchup. I’m doubtful we’ll ever see RV results.) How plausible is this result?
Well, it’s certainly possible that Bush was as far ahead during the convention as this poll suggests. But all other available polls taken during the convention contradict this result.
In an attempt to compare apples to apples, here are Bush-Kerry results from contemporaneous 3-way LV matchups (except Rasmussen, where only a 2-way LV result is available), with Bush’s margin in parentheses:
Zogby, 8/30-9/2: 46 Bush-43 Kerry (+3)
ARG, 8/30-9/1: 47 Bush-47 Kerry (tie)
Rasmussen, 8/31-9/2: 49 Bush-45 Kerry (+4)
In this company, 52 Bush-41 Kerry (+11) certainly sticks out. Could it have anything to do with the different dates included in these surveys, even though they are very close? Well, the Rasmussen data are from exactly same period as the Time data (8/31-9/2).
But if you are skeptical of the Rasmussen data, consider the Zogby data. The Zogby data only include an additional day (8/30) when compared to the Time data. But perhaps 8/30 was a very pro-Kerry day since the Republican convention had just started. However, for Zogby and Time to matchup (have Bush leading by 11) for the three days they share, Kerry would have to be leading by about 21 points in Zogby on the day (8/30) they do not share. I rather doubt that is the case.
The simplest hypothesis then is that the Time poll, for this period, is exceptionally pro-Bush and therefore should be viewed with skepticism.
In the meantime, we will await the release of data that actually measure the convention bounce, defined, just to be clear, as the change in a candidate’s level of support (not the margin) from the period before to the period after the convention. And while we’re waiting, here are some interesting observations that are worth keeping in mind from a just-released Gallup analysis of the bounce issue:

Based solely on history, the Bush-Cheney ticket could expect to gain five to six points among registered voters after this week’s convention. That would result in a 52% to 53% support level for Bush among registered voters, up from 47% in the pre-convention poll.
However, the results from Gallup’s post-Democratic convention poll showed that history might not apply in 2004, a year in which the electorate was activated long before the conventions (usually the conventions serve to activate voters), and a year in which relatively small proportions of undecided and swing voters are available to the two presidential tickets. Also, the post-Democratic convention poll suggested that the Democratic convention might have helped energize Republican voters. It is unclear whether the Republican convention could have a similar paradoxical effect on Democrats, or if Republicans will be activated, as is typically the case.

So, stay tuned. And don’t forget that even when we see the real bounce data, the pattern after the Democratic convention was for Kerry’s increase in support to dissipate quickly. We shall see if the same thing happens to Bush, whatever his bounce level.
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