I reached out to Republican pollster John McLaughlin for yesterday’s piece on how undecided voters are likely to break, and he made some separate comments about polls, their impact on motivation for each side, and how the campaigns want to use skewed poll numbers to depress the opposition. [cont.] Jim […] Read more »
Post-convention polling gives definitive view: Obama has consolidated his lead
Before the conventions, I wrote that “If Obama still leads by 1.5 points once the convention dust has settled, it’s difficult for me to envisage how Obama will lose.” We are now past the conventions and President Obama still leads. Any individual national poll is confusing, but the aggregate is […] Read more »
Gallup and Rasmussen v. World
The polls are a bit of a mess right now, but the sources of disagreement seem a little clearer today. A big polling duel might be shaping up for November: Gallup and Rasmussen v. World. [cont.] Nate Cohn, New Republic Read more »
Obama’s Lead Looks Stronger in Polls That Include Cellphones
… Although there are exceptions on either side, like the Gallup national tracking poll, for the most part Mr. Obama seems to be getting stronger results in polls that use live interviewers and that include cellphones in their samples — enough to suggest that he has a clear advantage in […] Read more »
How party ID became partisan — and why it shouldn’t be
After the release of any — and every — swing state or national poll these days, the Fix Twitter feed and email inbox immediately fill up with messages that are some variation on this: “Party ID skewed! D+8!” That’s political shorthand for a belief that the party identification in the […] Read more »
Politicians, Pundits and Polls
Whatever its charms, the 2012 campaign isn’t doing much for politics as a career choice: Seven in 10 Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll express an unfavorable opinion of politicians, underscoring the public’s broad discontent with its leadership choices in general. … Politicians score well behind their inevitable […] Read more »