Donkey Rising: "CBS News/NYT Poll Has It Close to Even!"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/000687.php

September 17, 2004

CBS News/New York Times Poll Has It Close to Even!

Well, that is if you weight their data to conform to the 4 point Democratic party ID lead which we have good reason to believe is the underlying distribution in the voting electorate. As many have already heard, the new CBS News/New York Times poll, conducted September 12-16, gives Bush an 8 point lead (50-42) among RVs--but also gives the Republicans a 4 point edge on party ID. Reweight their data to conform to an underlying Democratic 4 point edge (using the 39D/35R/26I distribution from the 2000 exit poll) and you get a nearly even race, 47 Bush/46 Kerry.

Nearly even. That goes along with the the 46-46 tie in the Pew Research Center poll (which gave the Democrats a 4 point edge on party ID without weighting) and the 48-48 tie in the Gallup poll (once weighted to reflect an underlying Democratic 4 point edge). Not to mention the two other recent national polls (Harris, Democracy Corps) that show the race within one point.

Perhaps all this is just a coincidence, but the pattern seems striking. Once you adjust for the apparent overrepresentation of Republican identifiers in some samples, the polls all seem to be saying the same thing: the race is a tie or very close to it.

Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 10:34 PM

[Zynx]

1. They are correct.

[unfrigginreal]

2. We are getting so royally screwed by these misweighted polls

The guy from Hotline was on Hardball last night and basically said what we've been saying around here for so long, that these polls are swaying the voters on who they think will win.

We need to get more Zogby polls into the press, he has a much better track record with weighting polls than all of these others. Maybe a 527 should hire his organization to publish a daily tracking like Rassmussen is doing.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. And it's not JUST the polling outfits, it's the media reporting it.

[agingdem]

5. Polls...

Polls have become background noise...kind of like Muzak, annoying when too loud but mostly ignored.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. I Don't Think There Has Been An Presidential Election

I don't think there has been a presidential election in the last seventy years where more Republicans voted than Democrats so how can your model for 04 have more Republicans than Democrats voting.

[LTR]

6. You brought up a great point, and it begs the question

What are the percentages of Republicans vs. Democrats who vote?

I think it would be interesting to see some statistics on that.

[flpoljunkie]

7. Well, Ruy states in 2000, it was 39% Dem, 35% Rep and 26% Ind.

...using the 39D/35R/26I distribution from the 2000 exit poll) and you get a nearly even race, 47 Bush/46 Kerry.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. That Makes Sense...

Even in elections where we got creamed... 72 and 84... it was because Nixon and Reagan got sizeable crossover votes not because there were more Republicans than Democrats voting....


If polls showed twenty, thirty percent of Dems voting for AWOL I'd be concerned....