Romney 46 Obama 44 most recent poll

[Katzndogz]

War on women doesn't seem to be working. Wonder what the next manufactured platform will be....

Republicans want to prevent the sexual freedom of the Secret Service.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Except that fox had Obama ahead in every poll but two in the last 6 months.

You're gonna have to rework your bullshit to fit that fact.

And I wouldn't take those numbers as being unbiased either.

Tell me then... Who REALLY shot JFK?

Lee Harvey Oswald.

Why is the FOX poll overloaded with self-identified Republicans. How did they weigh that poll to reflect the reality of party identification.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

And I wouldn't take those numbers as being unbiased either.

Tell me then... Who REALLY shot JFK?

Dude, you know, I know, everyone knows that these things are biased according to who produces them. It's not some highly contested fact. It's a given for most well grounded people. Only those with a personal bias in one direction or the other don't realize this and account for it when viewing these sorts of polls. You have to take into account the source. Most reasonable people understand this.

I haven't promoted this poll as the be all end all. I have enjoyed your utter failure to discredit the poll based on YOUR BIAS.

I accept the poll for what it is. I also accept your mission to discredit it for what it is.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, were done here.

 

[Sweet Willy]

Tell me then... Who REALLY shot JFK?

Dude, you know, I know, everyone knows that these things are biased according to who produces them. It's not some highly contested fact. It's a given for most well grounded people. Only those with a personal bias in one direction or the other don't realize this and account for it when viewing these sorts of polls. You have to take into account the source. Most reasonable people understand this.

I haven't promoted this poll as the be all end all. I have enjoyed your utter failure to discredit the poll based on YOUR BIAS.

I accept the poll for what it is. I also accept your mission to discredit it for what it is.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, were done here.

Fox News is a biased source. That was the only point.

In other news, little Johnny's mom reports that little Johnny is an angel.

 

[Interpol]

Well, it's the week that Romney became the nominee, what with Santorum officially dropping out.

So that always bodes well for a candidate when the news about them is positive.

The problem, however, is that Romney needs to ramp up some excitement, or the even-handedness of the polls the past few months will break for the President this fall.

You can't win the White House when you're only generating enough excitement to fill the conference room at the Holiday Inn.

Most old white folks who say "Romney" on the phone need to actually show up and vote for the guy, and he's going to have a problem with them come the debates when he gets tied to the Ryan plan of scrapping Medicare, which seniors don't want done away with.

So, a 2-point lead in one poll out of many I spose is good for Romney, but as of right now, the ebb and flow back and forth continues with the President, on average, coming out on top because of the swing vote.

 

[BluePhantom]

I am posting this from another thread per Grampa's request

Phantom I just posted the most recent fox poll. What's do you take away from it?

Well the first thing I see is that it's a RV poll, which is good...not great but good. However, Independents are underrepresented. Party identification varies in the USA but as a general rule of thumb it's pretty much split into thirds between the Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. So on this poll the breakdown is:

Democrats (n = 361) ± 5%
Republicans (n = 354) ± 5%
Independents (n = 173) ± 7.5%

Now because Democrats and Republicans are reasonably even it doesn't create as much of a problem, but it is something to file away in the back of my mind. We can have a look at the crosstabs and extrapolate a bit of information.

For example in question #1 we have:

"1. Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president?"​

Well the total is 42% approval vs 51% disapproval...BUT among Independents it's 37% - 53% respectively. So if we consider that Independents are underrepresented by about 50%, in reality Obama's approval rating is probably a couple points lower than the 42% the poll suggests.

At question #8 we see a similar thing:

"8. If the presidential election were held today, how would you vote if the candidates were:"​

Now again Obama is losing in this poll 44% - 46%, BUT again the Independents are underrepresented and among that group Obama is down 37% - 43% so again the real spread is probably a couple points larger.

It's good that they asked that question early. The later you ask the question on who you would vote for the more likely it is that previous questions will bias the results. Looking at the previous questions I don't see anything from the wording that would necessarily create a bias and they are randomizing and rotating the order in which they list the candidates which is a good sign.

Question #24 for example is a real shitty question. The wording of the bolded part paints Obama in a negative light and biases the response.

"Before Barack Obama became president, the national debt was $10.6 trillion dollars. Another five trillion dollars has been added since Obama took office – or nearly a third of the country’s fifteen trillion dollar debt. If John McCain had been elected instead of Obama, do you think the national debt would be higher today, lower today or about the same?"​

Had they asked this question prior to question #8 then the results would be too biased to pay much attention to. Thankfully, they didn't do that, but anything after question #24 is now tainted goods. Fortunately, there were only two more questions anyhow, but it's a great example of a question that could have been very problematic had it been asked earlier.

I would like to see more information on the demographics of race, gender, education, etc that make up the survey sample. If 65% of the survey sample was men, for example, or 45% of the survey sample were black, then we have an issue because those are not accurate proportional representations of the demographics of the United States. Unfortunately they do not provide that information so we have to be a little careful here about the reliability of the data.

So for the poll itself I would say that spread is probably around 4% instead of 2% in favor of Romney, but because of the lack of some critical demographics information I am lukewarm on how much I trust it.

Now one of the things that I did look at is that according to this poll Obama has a 49% - 41% advantage among women. Very interesting because in other polls that advantage can be as high as 19%. Did Hilary Rosen's comments have something to do with it? No. Her comment came on April 11th which was the date that the poll was completed. It's possible that he received a bounce from Santorum suspending his election which happened on the 10th. The poll was conducted from the 9th - 11th but if he did it was not a massive one since that event happened in the middle of the poll date. However, the latest unemployment figures came out prior to the poll and they were disappointing. Obama only holds a 2% lead over Romney among women on issues related to the economy (question #10), and 94% of women said the economy was "extremely important" or "very important" (question #15). It's probable that Obama's decline among women had more to do with that than anything else.

Now if we look at other polls we can deduce some things. The Fox poll seems to be supported by the Rasmussen poll from the 11th - 13th. The ABC/WaPo poll from the 5th - 8th is problematic for reasons that Trajan and I pointed out in earlier posts. The TIPPonline poll should be completely disregarded. It's a terrible poll with very little information and online polling agencies are notoriously unreliable. The USAToday/Gallup poll on March 25th-26th is a little old at this point and unfortunately their crosstabs link is broken so there's no way to look at their demographic breakdown.

So what I would say now is a few things:

1) the Fox poll is "interesting" but I would not bet the family jewels on it until I see more polls that support its results.

2) With two polls (Fox and Rasmussen) suddenly showing Romney ahead and the trend on the Rasmussen polls showing Romney closing slowly in the past, it's an initial indication that the momentum of the race is shifting toward Romney...but again we need more polls to see if the trend is supported or not.

3) We must keep in mind that Romney will get an initial bounce after Santorum's withdrawal. In the Fox poll that probably wasn't much of an issue but it probably was in the Rasmussen poll because of the dates the poll was taken. It remains to be seen whether Romney can hold that

4) The gap among women appears to be closing. We need to keep an eye on that in the crosstabs for the next few weeks to see if a) it's actually a trend instead of just a freak accident on this particular poll, b) if it is a trend will it hold, and c) keep in mind Rosen's comments recently have ignited a large portion of women against Democrats that may only be temporary.

In a word I would say it's "interesting"...but it requires more supporting data before I get too excited about it.

 

[J.E.D]

.

Swing states.

That's all that matters.

National polls are useless. Haven't we figured that out yet?

.

Exactly

Swing States Poll: A shift by women puts Obama in lead

In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.
The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

 

[Misty]

All these polls are meaningless because of the margin of error. The country is divided pretty equally.

If Romney picks an awesome VP it might put him in the White House.

 

[BluePhantom]

Why is the FOX poll overloaded with self-identified Republicans. How did they weigh that poll to reflect the reality of party identification.

It is not. Jesus. According to Gallup and Rasmussen the split between party identification is as follows

Party.......Gallup........Rasmussen
Dem.........30%.............33.4%
Rep..........27%.............36.4%
Ind...........42%.............30.2%

Now historically Rasmussen is a bit more accurate than Gallup but just for simplicity let's average the two out with equal weight and get a more likely breakdown of:

Dem: 31.7%
Rep: 31.7%
Ind: 36.1%

This would be more in line with historical trends. Now look at the Fox Poll sample

Dem: 361 or 40.7%
Rep: 354 or 39.9%
Ind: 173 or 19.5%

The balance between Democrats and Republicans is less than 1% which is right about where it should be according to the averages of the Gallup and Rasmussen reports. But the number of Independents is over 16 points lower than it should be according to the same data. So it's not that Republicans are over-represented any more than Democrats are and frankly the Democrats are slightly more over-represented than the Republicans. It's that Independents are underrepresented.

Now this is not good news for Obama supporters because according to the Fox poll crosstabs Independents favor Romney by 6%. That means if the survey sample of Independents was in line with national averages Romney's lead in that poll would be expected to increase and not decrease.

There are several things about the Fox poll to be concerned about and I have addressed some of them in my post below, but to suggest that the GOP is over-represented is partisan hackery at best and complete ignorance at worst.

 

[The Rabbi]

Ignorance? Partisan hackery? Say it ain't so!

 

[candycorn]

Fox...giggle.

 

[skookerasbil]

Fox News poll shows the republican ahead? Really?

I'm shocked.

I agree.........just like the RCP average is bogus given the strong left tilt of the polling organizations.

Gotta keep an eye on Rasmussen if history serves. Of course, Rasmussen sucks now to the k00ks, who interestingly were falling all over themselves posting up Rasmussen polls a month before the 2008 election.

 

[Avatar4321]

its a poll. means nothing till an actual vote occurs.

Of course, those who are always touting Obama polls are making excuses now.

Grow up people.

 

[Artevelde]

All these polls are meaningless because of the margin of error. The country is divided pretty equally.

If Romney picks an awesome VP it might put him in the White House.

The choice of VP is unlikely to be that important. Ultimately it is still Obama v Romney.

 

[The Rabbi]

All these polls are meaningless because of the margin of error. The country is divided pretty equally.

If Romney picks an awesome VP it might put him in the White House.

The choice of VP is unlikely to be that important. Ultimately it is still Obama v Romney.

It's important only in a negative sense. A bad choice is a real negative while a good one only mildly positive.

 

[nodoginnafight]

"Now historically Rasmussen is a bit more accurate than Gallup... "

Lost a lot of credidibility there

 

[nodoginnafight]

"let's average the two out with equal weight and get a more likely breakdown of:

Dem: 31.7%
Rep: 31.7%
Ind: 36.1%"

The ACTUAL breakdown as of Mearch 8-11, 2012 is: Republican 27% ; Independents 42% ; Democrat 30. Republican (including leaners) 41 % ; Democrats (including leaners) 46%

 

[FloridaGirl]

The only poll that matters is election day...polls go up and down so I don't pay too much attention to them, it is a tool for media to have something to talk about all day long

 

[BluePhantom]

"let's average the two out with equal weight and get a more likely breakdown of:

Dem: 31.7%
Rep: 31.7%
Ind: 36.1%"

The ACTUAL breakdown as of Mearch 8-11, 2012 is: Republican 27% ; Independents 42% ; Democrat 30. Republican (including leaners) 41 % ; Democrats (including leaners) 46%

Jesus Christ are you really this fucking stupid? According to one poll (Gallup) that's the breakdown. Other polls show different breakdowns. The best way to get an accurate read is to combine them all and average them out. The way to get really biased bullshit information is to look for the poll with the best numbers for your party and quote only them. Fucking tool.

 

[freedombecki]

War on women doesn't seem to be working. Wonder what the next manufactured platform will be....

Republicans want to prevent the sexual freedom of the Secret Service.

Only work-related expenses should be on the government's nickel, Katzndogz. And behaviors of anything goes can be quite a serious error when drawing a paycheck at taxpayer loss.

It's only human for everyone to wish they were a millionaire. Becoming one at taxpayer expense is something that was never intended.