Stunning news, I'm sure.
On the heels of the ABCNews/Washington Post poll that showed Obama with a 7 point lead over Mitt Romney, some analysts were correct to note that the poll oversampled Democrats, which led to a skewing of the numbers.
The poll breakdown was: 34% Democrats 23% Republicans 34% Independents, which should have shown Obama with a much larger lead given the +11 advantage his party had.
The same can be said for the FOX News Poll which was released yesterday showing Mitt Romney with a 46%-44% lead over Obama, and a -9% deficit for Obama's job approval rating. The problem for Romney is that he should have been farther ahead given the breakdown of the poll.
FOX used a 40% Democrat 39% Republican 19% Independent population. With a far greater Republican representation in the poll (16% more than ABC/WaPo), Romney should have a much greater lead over Obama. They also under-represented Independents, who are usually around 30-33% of the electorate, at a time when other polls are showing Obama with a lead over Romney with those voters.
Given this, the top line number of Romney ahead +2 is good news for the president.
Oh, and be careful with FOX News. They can sometimes lean a bit to the right.
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Other than pandering to viewership, was there any scientific logic behind FOX's mix of people polled? If it's widely known what the ratios are, why would any polling agency not follow them (unless the client says otherwise)?
ReplyDeleteThey use an outside polling firm, so I don't believe it's deliberate on their part. It's just who answered the phone on the nights they made the calls.
ReplyDeleteWow. Surprising there's no attempt to "normalize" the data. Sheesh.
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