There's something amiss about the IBP/TIPP Poll

[DavidS]

IBDeditorials.com: IBD/TIPP Economic, Presidential Election, and Political Polls -- IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll: Day Eleven

First of all, it's one of the outliers, just like the AP poll. It has Obama up by 1. Which is good because that'll get more Democrats out there.

However...

When I go to their website, I found articles about how Obama is a socialist and what a great person Sarah Palin is.

In looking closer at their poll numbers, nearly 12% of the people they questioned are undecided. That's the largest amount by any of the polls out there.

Thier sample size is also 66% smaller than that of Rasmussen's polls and half the size of Gallup's.

I can't get past their news stories, though... to have anti-Democratic and pro-Republican news stories on the same website where you're displaying poll results....

 

[rayboyusmc]

They call that Fair and Balanced on the right.

If your down in the polls, just make up more favorable data.

 

[The Paperboy]

David,

You crack me up. Biden guarantees an international crisis with Obama as President and the NY Times makes no mention of it yet they have multiple orgasms over Palin's wardrobe. Yet I'll bet you have the NY Times/CBS poll set to refresh every five minutes on your computer.

But I do admire your spunk!

 

[Mad Scientist]

They call that Fair and Balanced on the right.

If your down in the polls, just make up more favorable data.

TippOnline.com - Welcome to America's Most Accurate Pollster

In 2004, TIPP, a Division of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, came within 3/10 of 1% point of President Bush's actual margin of victory, thus winning the title of "Nation's Most Accurate Pollster."

Yeah, you guys got nuthin' to worry about.

 

[DavidS]

David,

You crack me up. Biden guarantees an international crisis with Obama as President and the NY Times makes no mention of it yet they have multiple orgasms over Palin's wardrobe. Yet I'll bet you have the NY Times/CBS poll set to refresh every five minutes on your computer.

But I do admire your spunk!

Ahhhh!!!! Here's what I knew was wrong with the poll! This poll has John McCain leading 3-1 on kids 18-24 years old!! That is the biggest load of BS if I've ever seen it!

IBD/TIPP puts an asterisk by this result, stipulating that "Age 18-24 has much fluctuation due to small sample size".

Indeed, there may be some fluctuations when looking at small subgroups like these. That's why I generally don't pick on a poll if, say, it has John McCain winning 18 percent of the black vote when he's only "supposed" to be winning 7 percent or whatever. Fluctuations of that magnitude are going to be relatively common, mathematically speaking. In fact, they're entirely unavoidable, if you're taking enough polls and breaking out the results amongst enough subgroups.

But fluctuations of this magnitude are an entirely different matter.

Suppose that the true distribution of the 18-24 year old vote is a 15-point edge for Obama. This is a very conservative estimate; most pollsters show a gap of anywhere from 20-35 points among this age range.

About 9.3 percent of the electorate was between age 18-24 in 2004. Let's assume that the percentage is also 9.3 percent this year. Again, this is a highly conservative estimate. The IBD/TIPP poll has a sample size of 1,060 likely voters, which would imply that about 98 of those voters are in the 18-24 age range.

What are the odds, given the parameters above, that a random sampling of 98 voters aged 18-24would distribute themselves 74% to McCain and 22% to Obama?

Using a binomial distribution, the odds are 54,604,929,633-to-1 against. That is, about 55 billion to one.

So, there is an 0.000000002% chance that IBD/TIPP just got really unlucky. Conversely, there is a 99.999999998% chance that one of the following things is true:

(i) They're massively undersampling the youth vote. If you only have, say, 30 young voters when you should have 100 or so in your sample, than the odds of a freak occurrence like this are significantly more likely.
-or-
(ii) Something is dramatically wrong with their sampling or weighting procedures, or their likely voter model.

My guess is that it's some combination of the two -- that, for instance, IBD/TIPP is applying a very stringent likely voter model that removes you from the sample if you haven't voted in the past two elections, which would rule a great number of 18-24 year olds out.

A pollster could get away with a turnout model like that in 2004 (when IBD/TIPP did well in estimating the national popular vote), when the split in the youth vote was relatively small between John Kerry and George W. Bush. They can't get away with that this year, when the split is much larger.

But the basic takeaway is this: you should absolutely not assume that just because someone has published a poll, they have any particular idea what they're doing. Pollsters should be treated as guilty until proven otherwise.

 

[rayboyusmc]

You crack me up. Biden guarantees an international crisis with Obama as President and the NY Times makes no mention of it yet they have multiple orgasms over Palin's wardrobe.

What possible connection is there between the two.

Paper boy, you've been out in the rain too often.

 

[DavidS]

TippOnline.com - Welcome to America's Most Accurate Pollster
Yeah, you guys got nuthin' to worry about.

Yeah, about that...

Investors Business' Daily / TIPP

When Publishes: Mid-afternoon, usually about 3 PM Eastern time.

Key Specifications: About ~1050 likely voters over a 5-day window.

Track Record: IBD/TIPP touts itself as the most accurate pollster based on its strong result in 2004, when they nailed the Bush-Kerry numbers within a couple of tenths of a point. One good result does not a pollster make, however, and in 2000, their performance was only average, missing the Bush-Gore margin by 2.5 points. Results were slightly erratic and counterintuitive earlier this year, when for instance they showed an 11-point Obama lead in mid-May when most other pollsters showed him struggling at that time.

House Effect/Lean: Not yet enough data to reach any firm conclusion.

Features/Strengths: Pretty good internals available at the IBD website. Publishes with the decimal place included.

Quirks/Concerns: A 5-day tracking window is relatively long, and means that IBD/TIPP may be slower to react to new trends. Their D-R party ID gap has been narrower so far than that of most other pollsters (perhaps too narrow), though it does not appear as though they weight based on party ID as Rasmussen or Research 2000 does. Overall, the poll is probably fine given these caveats, but we have relatively little basis on which to evaluate it.

 

[The Paperboy]

What possible connection is there between the two.

Paper boy, you've been out in the rain too often.

Could be.

But the connection is that David only sees problems with polls that look good for McCain and ignores obviously biased polls for Obama.

I was simply pointing out how biased NY Times is (like I really needed to).

But perhaps I need to get an umbrella!

 

[random3434]

Could be.

But the connection is that David only sees problems with polls that look good for McCain and ignores obviously biased polls for Obama.

I was simply pointing out how biased NY Times is (like I really needed to).

But perhaps I need to get an umbrella!

Obama lead on McCain grows to 12 points - Yahoo! News

Show Obama up 12 Points in the Reuters/C-Span/Zogby Polls.

WHY DIDN'T YOU POST THIS newsboy?

 

[elvis]

TippOnline.com - Welcome to America's Most Accurate Pollster
Yeah, you guys got nuthin' to worry about.

that's the best news I've heard all month.

 

[jillian]

I was simply pointing out how biased NY Times is (like I really needed to).

Were you making that claim when judy miller was banging the drums of war for y'all?

didn't think so.

 

[DavidS]

Any poll that shows McCain leading 3-1 among 18-24 year old's is garbage.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Jeeze... give it a rest already! Arguing over polls is almost as big a waste of time as drinking light beer!

Only one poll that counts... November 04.

-Joe

 

[The Paperboy]

Were you making that claim when judy miller was banging the drums of war for y'all?

didn't think so.

When you say y'all I assume you mean to include Biden and Hillary.