By Alan Abramowitz
It’s not just Gallup’s recent national polls that appear to be out of line with the results of most other recent polls. Some of their state polls have also produced rather bizarre results. Two notable examples are Gallup’s recent polls in the key battleground states of Florida and Wisconsin.
In Florida, Gallup just released a poll showing George Bush leading John Kerry by 9 percentage points among registered voters. Wow! No other poll in the past month has given Bush a lead of more than 3 percentage points in Florida. In fact, of the 12 other Florida polls released in the past two weeks, 6 have John Kerry leading while only 3 have Bush leading, and 3 have the race tied. On average, in these 12 polls, Kerry held a lead of 0.6 percentage points. Quite a difference.
In Wisconsin, Gallup just released a poll showing Bush leading Kerry by 8 percentage points among registered voters. No other poll this month has given Bush a lead of more than 3 percentage points in Wisconsin. Of the 5 other Wisconsin polls released in the past two weeks, 3 have Kerry leading, 1 has Bush leading, and 2 have the race tied. On average, in these 5 polls, Kerry held a lead of 1.5 percentage points.
If this keeps up, when this election is over, the folks over at Gallup are either going to look like idiots or geniuses. I’ll leave to you to guess which one is more likely.

John Kerry leads George Bush 50 to 41 percent of New Hampshire LV’s, according to a Center for Applied Public Opinion Research Poll conducted 10/18-21 for Franklin Pierce College. The poll scored Bush’s approval rating at 45 percent.
John Kerry leads George Bush 50-48 percent of Florida LV’s, according to a SurveyUSA Poll conducted 10/22-24.

The new Gallup poll shows the race moving in Kerry’s direction. In their last poll, October 14-16, they showed Bush with a 4 point lead, 50-46 in their 2-way RV matchup. This poll, conducted October 22-24, has Bush’s lead shrinking to a single point (49-48).
Even Gallup’s bogus LV sample has Bush’s lead shrinking from its outlandish 8 points in the previous poll to a merely unbelievable 5 points in the current poll. (Of course, USA Today–shame on them!–leads with and heavily emphasizes the LV results in their story on the new poll.)
Subgroup analysis of the Gallup RV data shows several patterns very favorable to the Kerry campaign:
1. Kerry leads among independents by 5, 49-44.
2. Kerry leads among moderates by 18, 57-35.
3. Kerry leads in the battleground states by 2, 49-47, and Bush’s approval rating in these same states has sunk to 46 percent.
On to November 2.

By Alan Abramowitz
It isn’t just the tracking polls that seem to be fluttering randomly in the wind. An analysis of polls by six major media outlets (Time, Newsweek, CNN/USA Today/Gallup, CBS/New York Times, Pew, and Fox) that released polls during the first half of October and during the second half of October reveals that there is a strong negative correlation (-.84) between the early October results and the late October results.
In other words, the better Bush was doing relative to Kerry in the early October poll, the worse the was doing in the late October poll. Some of this might be explained by the well known phenomenon of regression toward the mean. If a poll’s early October sample had either too many Bush supporters or too few Bush supporters just due to chance, it’s late October sample should be closer to the true population mean. But these results went well beyond regression toward the mean. Every poll that was above the overall mean in early October was below the overall mean in late October and every poll that was below the overall mean in in early October was above the overall mean in late October. What this bizarre pattern suggests is that the movements of the major media polls in October, like the movements of the tracking polls, reflect sampling error and peculiarties of the polls rather than real change in the underlying preferences of the electorate.

A few days ago, I highlighted some recent polls that showed solid leads for Kerry in the battleground states as a whole, states that were split about evenly between Gore and Bush four years ago.
Since then, Democracy Corps has released new data showing more of the same (a 7 point lead for Kerry in the battleground states). And Mystery Pollster looks at a substantially wider range of recent polls and finds Kerry’s battleground performance running ahead of his national performance in every single one. As Chris Bowers points out over at MyDD, these data show Kerry averaging a 49-45 advantage in the battleground.
And, not to pile on, but check but the latest unemployment data from the battleground states. Not a pretty picture, by and large, for BC04: Wisconsin and Iowa show increases in their unemployment rates in the last month and Ohio’s remains stubbornly high at 6 percent.

The duel of the newsweekly polls continues. The new Time poll implausibly, when compared to other public polls, showed a substantial, sudden move toward Bush among RVs, going from a dead heat last week (46-46) to a 7 point lead this week (50-43).
The new Newsweek poll, on the other hand was a model of stability, going from a 1 point lead for Bush among RVs last week (48-47) to a dead heat this week (47-47). (The poll showed more movement in Kerry’s direction among LVs, but that clearly reflected differences between the two polls in who was screened into the LV sample, rather than substantial change in voter sentiment.)
Newsweek, as they did last week, provided a number of interesting subgroup horse race numbers for their 3-way RV matchup that are worth taking a look at:
1. Independents favor Kerry/Edwards by 14 points, 52-38.
2. Swing voters favor Kerry/Edwards by 8, 41-33.
3. First-time voters favor Kerry/Edwards by 3, 47-44.
4. Early voters favor Kerry/Edwards by 6, 50-44.
5. Young voters (18-29) favor Kerry/Edwards by 14, 54-40, and seniors (65+) favor Kerry/Edwards by 5, 48-43.
6. Men favor Bush-Cheney by 51-43 and women favor K/E by 49-42.
Note that this last finding reverses the rather strange reverse gender gap pattern in Newsweek‘s last poll, wher men favored K/E and women favored B/C.
Two other findings from the Newsweek poll illustrate the difficult challenge Bush faces in making the case for his re-election on two central issues. First, when asked whether “Bush’s economic and tax policies” have done more to help or hurt economic conditions in the country, just 33 percent say these policies have helped the economy, compared to 62 percent who say they’ve either hurt the economy (43 percent) or made no difference (19 percent). Second, when asked whether the war with Iraq has made Americans safer from terrorism or not, 53 percent say no and only 42 percent say yes.
Iraq and the economy: for Bush, difficult issues to defend but even more difficult to avoid.

By Alan Abramowitz
There have been 35 national polls released since the first presidential debate, not counting tracking polls. Bush holds an average lead of 1.5 percent in these 35 polls. There is no trend evident. In 19 polls released between October 1 and 15, Bush led by an average of 1.6 points. In 16 polls released since October 15, Bush led by an average of 1.4 points.
Here are the results in the 11 most important battleground states. These are the 11 states identified as the key battlegrounds by the N.Y. Times today.

Based on the average of all October polls, Kerry is currently leading in 7 states with 87 electoral votes. Bush is currently leading in 4 states with 48 electoral votes. In addition to these battleground states, The Times has Kerry favored in states with 190 electoral votes with Bush favored in states with 213 electoral votes. Adding these to the electoral votes of the battleground states in which Kerry and Bush now have the edge and you get the following: Kerry 277, Bush 261.
Obviously, neither candidate has a secure lead in the Electoral College right now–a switch of one or two states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, or Florida could change the picture considerably. But based on this analysis of recent polls in the battleground states, if either candidate has a slight edge, it’s John Kerry. And that’s without even factoring in the expected late movement of undecided voters to Kerry.
(Note: source for national and state poll results is website 2.004k.com.)

Bush leads Kerry 47-43 percent of Nevada LV’s, according to a Sun Channel/KNPR Poll conducted 10/16-19.
Bush is ahead of Kerry 49-47 percent of Nevada LV’s, according to a Reno Gazette-Journal/News 4 Poll conducted 10/19-21.

John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 48 percent of Arkansas LV’s, according to a new Arkansas News Bureau/Stephens Media Group Poll conducted 10/18-20. Kerry was down by 9 percent in the ANB poll taken two weeks ago.

Kerry leads Bush by 1 point, 48-47, among Florida LVs according to a new Research 2000 poll, conducted October 18-21.
Kerry and Bush are tied at 46 percent of Florida LV’s, according to a new Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times Poll conducted October 19-21.