An Insider's Tip Sheet To Gauge Polls

From Seattlepi.com, Steve Kircher writes:
We're less than two weeks away from Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall presidential campaign. So it's a good time to take a breath and understand what the polls can tell us as Election Day nears and where they may mislead or even be wrong.

As a pollster for 30 years, I generally trust election polls, but I know they're not infallible. At first blush, there seemed to have been a lot of errors this year. After all, weren't the polls wrong in primary after primary?

Well, here is the first fact check: Of 26 Democratic primary contests this year, the polls were correct in 23 states and wrong in three (New Hampshire, California and Missouri).

You remember New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama when every poll said Obama would win. That was a high-profile primary, coming shortly after Obama's win in the Iowa caucuses, so when all the polls indicated Obama would win comfortably, political commentators pounced, declaring the New Hampshire Democratic primary as evidence that polls cannot be trusted.

On the contrary, I think it's remarkable how accurate polls are, given all of the ways they could differ from the actual election results. And let's be aware of this important caveat: I'm talking only about scientifically designed polls that use random sampling, not Internet surveys or other amateur efforts that do not purport to represent an entire electorate.

That said, here is a user's guide in what to watch for in the polls to come and what can cause a poll to go wrong.

Low response rates: Most interviews are conducted over the telephone, and a big challenge for pollsters is reaching someone to be interviewed. One major national poll, ABC News/Washington Post, reported a 32 percent response rate in one survey. That means they were able to interview one of every three people they called. The good news is that studies have shown that the lower response rates do not lead to major differences in survey results. The biggest challenge is getting someone to answer the phone. Many of the phone numbers dialed just reach an answering machine, which means no one is at home or if someone is at home, they are screening their calls. Older adults and women are more likely to be interviewed and most polls "weight" or adjust their data so this bias is corrected.

Cell phones: In 2007, one in every seven homes had only a cell phone and no landline. Many polls do not include cell phones because it's more complicated and costly to conduct cell phone interviews. Fortunately, cell-phone-only households are similar to landline households in political attitudes. But this may not hold true as the number of households with only cell phones grows. Some pollsters, such as CBS News/New York Times, are interviewing people with cell phones.

Online and recorded interviewing: While most survey interviews are done over the phone with a live interviewer asking questions, some pollsters conduct interviews over the Web or use recorded voices to ask the questions. Pollsters who use these approaches claim their methods are better than the traditional live-phone interview. I'm skeptical. People who participate in online surveys volunteer to participate and they tend to be more motivated and less of a cross section of voters.

Lying: As we can best determine, people are truthful in public opinion surveys, but there are times when the truth is stretched a bit. A recent Wall Street Journal story reported that in a 2005 Harris Poll, 58 percent of interviewees told a live telephone interviewer that they exercise regularly, but in an online survey only 35 percent reported exercising regularly.

People are known to exaggerate when it comes to sensitive matters such as education, household income and sex, and that normally doesn't matter in getting accurate answers in political surveys. But this year may be different because of Barack Obama's racial background. Some people are reluctant to say they're voting against a candidate because of race and as a result, polls tend to overstate the level of support for a black candidate by five to 10 points. This gives an advantage to the more anonymous polls, such as the Rasmussen poll, which uses a recorded voice rather than a live interviewer to ask the questions. In early August, Rasmussen had Obama ahead by one point, while an average of other national polls had him ahead by four points.

Likely voters: Nearly every national poll interviews only registered voters, but some try to identify those people who are most likely to vote. Of eight national polls in early August, five polls of registered voters showed Obama ahead by five points; three polls of likely voters showed Obama ahead by less than a point. That's been the pattern this season, with John McCain doing better among surveys of likely voters.

The likely voter surveys are considered to be more predictive of the actual election results because about six of every 10 registered voters will go to the polls in November. On the other hand, the "likely voter" models tend to discount the candidate preferences of younger voters and since younger voters favor Obama over McCain, the "likely voter" polls may be understating Obama's support if younger voter turnout is higher than in prior presidential elections.

Convention "bounce": John Kerry gained about three points coming out of the 2004 Democratic convention and he kept a lead over George W. Bush until just before the Republican convention. Bush gained three points after the Republican convention and kept that point lead until he won the November election. The Democrats will hold their convention first this year, starting Aug. 25. Any bounce for Obama is likely to be short-lived because Republicans will meet just a week later. The size of any McCain postconvention bounce may be a good clue of how strong a candidate McCain will be.

It's also been the pattern that polls trend in favor of Republican presidential candidates after Labor Day, but that might not hold true this year given the unusually high unpopularity of President Bush and with Republicans losing several congressional races earlier this year in areas that usually favor Republicans.

Timing: Timing looks like it was a major factor in why polls were wrong in three of the 26 Democratic races last spring. In California and Missouri, three polls were wrong and one was right. In both states, the poll that correctly predicted the election included interviews up to the day before the election, enabling it to capture last-minute changes in voter opinions. The polls that were wrong conducted their last interviews two to five days before the election. If one day makes such a difference in poll results, how accurate can polls be three months before an election?

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund recently observed that summertime polls often differ from the actual election results. In 1976, Gerald Ford was far behind Jimmy Carter in the summer, but lost by only two points. In 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush during the summer, but lost by eight points. In July-August 2004, Kerry led George W. Bush by two to three points, but he lost by 2.5 points.

Why conduct surveys so far in advance of the election? Cynics will say it helps fill the cable news channels and political columns of newspapers. While that's a likely factor, more important is that polls generally are accurate, and even this far out they are helping to track the dynamics of the presidential race, even if the dynamics today are quite a bit different from what they will be in November.

Polls: Obama Falters With Working-Class Whites

The AP reports:

Barack Obama's problem winning votes from working-class whites is showing no sign of going away, and their impression of him is getting worse.

Those are ominous signals as he hopes for strong performances in the coming week in Indiana and North Carolina primaries that would derail the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Those contests come as his candidacy has been rocked by renewed attention to his volatile former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and by his defeat in last month's Pennsylvania primary.

In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in April, 53 percent of whites who have not completed college viewed Obama unfavorably, up a dozen percentage points from November. During that period, the numbers viewing Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain negatively have stayed about even.

Huge preference for Clinton

The April poll — conducted before the Pennsylvania contest — also showed an overwhelming preference for Clinton over Obama among working-class whites. They favored her over him by 39 percentage points, compared to a 10-point Obama lead among white college graduates. Obama also did worse than Clinton among those less-educated voters when matched up against Republican candidate John McCain.

"It's the stuff about his preacher ... and the thing he said about Pennsylvania towns, how they turn to religion," Keith Wolfe, 41, a supermarket food stocker from Parkville, Md., said in a follow-up interview. "I don't think he'd be a really good leader."

Just before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama said many small-town residents are bitter about their lives and turn for solace to religion and guns.

Recent voting patterns underscore Obama's continued poor performance with these voters, who are often pivotal in general election swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In Democratic primaries held on or before Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, whites who have not finished college favored the New York senator by a cumulative 59 percent to 32 percent, according to exit polls of voters conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks.

In primaries since Feb. 5, that group has favored Clinton by 64 percent to 34 percent. That includes Ohio and Pennsylvania, in which working-class whites have favored Clinton by 44 and 41 percentage points respectively.

The AP-Yahoo poll shows less educated whites present a problem to Obama in part because of who they are. Besides being poorer, they tend to be older than white college graduates — and Clinton has done strongly with older white voters.

'Lacks content'

Yet political professionals and analysts say more is at play. They blame Obama's problems with blue-collar whites on their greater reluctance to embrace his bid to become the first black president, and his failure to address their concerns about job losses and the battered economy specifically enough.

Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said Obama lost among working-class whites in the state because his message of how this generation's time has come did not address their economic needs.

"While it's incredibly motivating and passionate and compelling, it lacks content," Madonna said. "Hillary would come in and relate to them, talk about the specifics of her policy."

Pennsylvania also illustrated the problems racial attitudes among less educated whites are causing Obama.

In exit polls, one in five of the state's white voters who haven't completed college said race was an important factor in choosing a candidate, about double the number of white college graduates who said so. Eight in 10 of them voted for Clinton over Obama, and only about half said they would vote for Obama over McCain in November.

"The scab is peeled back off," Democratic pollster John Anzalone, not working for either presidential candidate, said of the latest attention focused on Wright and Obama's denunciations of him. In video clips of past sermons, Wright has damned the United States for its history of racism and accused the government of spreading the HIV virus to harm blacks.

Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said that while working-class whites have favored Clinton, the fact that huge numbers of them and other voters have participated in Democratic contests boded well for the November election.

"I don't think there's going to be erosion in the fall of a core group of Democratic voters," Belcher said.

While less educated whites tend to vote less frequently than better educated voters, they are important because of their sheer number.

Exit polls show they have comprised three in 10 voters in Democratic contests so far, a group that cannot be ignored in a contest that has seen Obama maintain a slim lead. They made up 43 percent of all voters in the 2004 presidential contest, when they heavily favored President Bush over Democrat John Kerry.

Underlining his need to connect with these voters, Obama has geared some television ads in Indiana toward economic issues. In recent days he has turned to small events, rather than his trademark huge rallies, concentrating on the economy, including lunching with a blue-collar Indiana family while discussing their problems.

He has let cameras record him playing basketball in hopes of connecting with the passionate fans of the sport who populate Indiana and North Carolina.

The findings from the AP-Yahoo News poll are from interviews with 863 Democrats on a panel of adults questioned in November and April. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it free.

The exit poll is based on in-person interviews with more than 36,000 voters in 28 states that have held primaries this year in which both candidates actively competed. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1 percentage point, larger for some subgroups.

Polling the New Hampshire Primaries: What Happened?

At the Huffington Post, John Zogby writes:

There was no shortage of polls going into the New Hampshire primary in 2008 and it looks like we all missed the mark on the Democratic side. This will require a lot of scrutiny in the coming days and weeks, but here are some initial thoughts on what has been happening:

1. According to the exit polls, 18% of the voters said that they made up their minds on primary day. That is just an unprecedented number. I have polled many races, especially close ones, where 4% to 8% have said they finally decided on their vote the day of the election and that can wreak havoc on those of us who are in the business of capturing pre-election movements and trends. But nearly one in five this time?

2. It looks like the always feisty voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire have rejected pre-election coronations. In the case of Iowa, Democratic voters said that Mrs. Clinton is not inevitable, while in New Hampshire they were not ready to endorse the Obama train without checking the engine.

3. The compressed schedule of the two events may have had an impact. Normally the winning candidate gets an initial big bounce out of Iowa, and then plateaus. Then the next primary race begins. With less than five full days, Obama got his bounce in New Hampshire, then the settling down period began on the last day -- under the radar screen.

4. My polling showed Clinton doing well on the late Sunday night and all day Monday -- she was in a 2-point race in that portion of the polling. But since our methods call for a three-day rolling average, we had to legitimately factor the huge Obama numbers on Friday and Saturday -- thus his 12 point average lead. Unfortunately, one day or a day-and-a-half does not make a trend and we ran out of time.

5. Going into the New Hampshire primary, we certainly did see Clinton holding on to a significant lead among women and older voters. But we were focusing on Obama's massive lead among younger and independent voters. We seem to have missed the huge turnout of older women that apparently put Clinton over the top.

6. We expected that Obama would receive the lion's share of independents and drain the Republican primary of these voters. It now appears that, perhaps with a sense that Obama had a lock on the Democratic side, independents felt free to vote on the Republican side and reward their hero, John McCain.

We will pour through the data and try to come up with something more definitive, but those are my early observations. There is much speculation that Senator Clinton's crying incident may have offered voters -- especially women -- a peek at the human side of someone who is often seen as scripted. I think she also scored points during the ABC debate Saturday night when she declared, amid a discussion about the country's desire for a change in direction, that electing a woman would represent a big change in itself. Her numbers did go up in that last 24-hour period.

On the other side, most of us did a whole lot better coming close to the numbers on the Republican side of the aisle. But this is one of those cases that remind us that pre-election polls are guides to voter attitudes and shifts. All things considered in this and other cases, we pollsters still do a creditable job.

Zogby Poll: 54% Lack Confidence in Bush's Ability As Commander-in-Chief

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President

Zogby International latest polling numbers:

A majority of American adults (54%) lack confidence in President Bush’s ability as Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, a new UPI/Zogby Interactive poll shows. A majority (60%) said they do not trust the president’s judgment when it comes to the war, while 38% say they have faith in his military decisions.

Just 24% give the president favorable ratings of his performance in handling the war in Iraq, but confidence in Congress is significantly worse – only 3% give Congress positive marks for how it has handled the war. This lack of confidence in Congress cuts across all ideologies. Democrats – some of whom had hoped the now Democrat-led Congress would bring an end to the war in Iraq – expressed overwhelming displeasure with how Congress has handled the war, with 94% giving Congress a negative rating in its handling specifically of that issue.

The online survey was conducted July 13–16, 2007, and included 7,590 respondents. It carries a margin of error of +/– 1.1 percentage points.

To best show support for the troops, 42% believe Congress should fully fund the war in Iraq to maintain current troop levels, while 34% would favor attaching requirements for phased withdrawal to Iraq war funding. Just 18% said cutting all funding for the war in Iraq to bring troops home would be the best showing of Congressional support. Congress has proposed a bill continuing funding the war in Iraq, but that would require the withdrawal of the majority of troops there by Spring of 2008 – a plan favored by 49% of Americans. But nearly as many (45%) are opposed to this plan.

Slightly more than half (54%) believe the U.S. should set a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and 55% believe the U.S. should begin the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that funds the war in Iraq that also sets a date to begin withdrawing U.S. troops, but 52% would disagree with a presidential veto, while 44% would approve.

More than half (55%) believe if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq that it will be considered a defeat, while 41% disagree.

Half of Americans (51%) believe the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq incites anti-U.S. sentiment and creates a greater likelihood of a terrorist attack within the United States. But 44% believe the U.S. troops in Iraq are fighting terrorists within Iraq so that the U.S. does not have to fight terrorists here at home.

Overall, slightly more than half (55%) said they oppose the war while 44% say they support it. While the vast majority of Democrats are in opposition to the war (93%), slightly more than half of independents (55%) and just 14% of Republicans take the same stance. Self-described conservatives (87%) and very conservatives (93%) show strong support for the war, but support among moderates (25%) is significantly less.

Dissatisfaction with how the war in Iraq is being handled is also considerable among past or current members of the military and their families – nearly three in four (71%) give the president negative ratings on his handling of the war and than half (54%) said they don’t trust the President’s judgment when it comes to the Iraq war. Nearly half (47%) say they lack confidence in Bush’s ability as Commander in Chief – 41% said they have no confidence in him at all. The vast majority (96%) also have a negative view of how Congress has handled the war, but there is disagreement about what Congress should do to support the troops. While half said Congress should fully fund the war in Iraq to maintain current troop levels, 29% would favor attaching requirements for phased withdrawal to Iraq war funding and 16% believe Congress should cut all funding for the war in Iraq and bring the troops home.

Those with military ties are split over setting a timeline for withdrawal – 48% would favor withdrawal but 50% would oppose such a plan. There is a similar split when asked if the U.S. should begin the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year – 50% agree while 46% disagree. Slightly more than half (57%) believe withdrawal from Iraq would be considered a defeat, but 38% disagree with that perspective. Two in five (40%) favor a proposal by Congress to continue finding the war in Iraq, but that would require the withdrawal of the majority of troops by the spring of 2008. Half (51%) would support a Presidential veto of a bill that funds the war by sets a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops, although nearly as many (46%) would oppose a veto.

Those with military ties mirror the feelings of Americans overall. While half (51%) believe U.S. troops in Iraq are fighting terrorists within Iraq so that the U.S. does not have to fight the terrorists domestically, nearly as many (45%) believe the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq incites anti-U.S. sentiment and creates a greater likelihood of a terrorist attack here at home.

Bush also gets low ratings in dealing with veterans – two-thirds (67%) give Bush negative ratings for his performance in providing adequate health care for the veterans who have returned home from the ward in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among those who have or are currently serving in the military and their families, nearly as many agree (62%), while just 30% believe Bush has done a favorable job of providing health care for veterans.

For a complete methodological statement and a list of the questions asked on this survey, please visit: http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1203