Friday, September 24, 2004

Gallup Polls: biased?

Friday :: Sep 17, 2004
Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe Other Gallup Polls As Well
This morning we awoke to the startling news that despite a flurry of different polls this week all showing a tied race, the venerable Gallup Poll, as reported widely in the media (USA Today and CNN) today, showed George W. Bush with a huge 55%-42% lead over John Kerry amongst likely voters. The same Gallup Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get discouraged by these results, you should be more upset that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these polls and present a false, disappointing account of the actual state of the race. Why?

Because the Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat. You read that correctly. I asked Gallup, who have been very courteous to my requests, to send me this morning their sample breakdowns by party identification for both their likely and registered voter samples they use in these national and I suspect their state polls. This is what I got back this morning:

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Registered Voter Sample Party IDs – Same Poll
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 1022
GOP: 381 (38%)
Dem: 336 (33%)
Ind: 298 (30%)

In both polls, Gallup oversamples greatly for the GOP, and undersamples for the Democrats. Worse yet, Gallup just confirmed for me that this is the same sampling methodology they have been using this whole election season, for all their national and state polls. Gallup says that "This (the breakdown between Reeps and Dems) was not a constant. It can differ slightly between surveys" in response to my latest email. Slightly? Does that mean that in all of these national and state polls we have seen from Gallup that they have "slightly" varied between 36%-40% GOP and 32%-36% Democrat? I already know from an email I got from Gallup earlier in the week that in their suspicious Wisconsin and Minnesota polls they seemingly oversampled for the GOP and undersampled for the Dems. For example in Wisconsin, in which they show Bush now with a healthy lead, Gallup used a sample comprised of 38% GOP and 32% Democratic likely voters. In Minnesota where Gallup shows Bush gaining a small lead, their sample reflects a composition of 36% GOP and 34% Democrat likely voters. How realistic is either breakdown in those states on Election Day?

According to John Zogby himself:

If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000.

So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has not been higher than 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven’t been at since a strong three-way race in 1992?

Folks, unless Karl Rove can discourage the Democratic base into staying home in droves and gets the GOP to come out of the woodwork, there is no way in hell that these or any other Gallup Poll are to be taken seriously.

How likely is it that the Democrats will suffer a seven-point difference against the GOP this November or that the GOP will ever hit 40%?

Not very likely.

The real problem here is that Gallup is spreading a false impression of this race. Through its 1992 partnership with two international media outlets (CNN and USA Today), Gallup is telling voters and other media by using badly-sampled polls that the GOP and its candidates are more popular than they really are. Given that Gallup’s CEO is a GOP donor, this should not be a surprise. But it does require us to remind the media, like Susan Page of USA Today, who wrote the lead story on the poll in the morning paper, and other members of the media who cite this poll today, that it is based on a faulty sample composition of 40% GOP and 33% Democrats.

Steve Soto :: 10:46 AM :: Comments (128) :: TrackBack (49)
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Bush Sees a Chance to Win Piece of Maine

THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Bush Sees a Chance to Win Piece of Maine
The state's electoral votes can be shared by Kerry and the president. So the chief executive flies in to rally the Republican faithful.
By Nick Anderson
Times Staff Writer

September 24, 2004

BANGOR, Maine — President Bush dashed to this central Maine city Thursday to challenge the Democratic grip on the northeastern state where his family often vacations — or, at least, to position himself to snatch one of its four electoral votes.

Bush's trip cast a spotlight on Maine's quirky presidential election system. Unlike 48 other states, Maine does not use a winner-take-all method to allot its votes in the electoral college. Instead, it awards an electoral vote for every congressional district that a candidate carries, plus two to the statewide winner. Nebraska does the same.

With that equation in mind, Bush chose to visit a principal city in Maine's vast 2nd Congressional District, which he has the best chance of winning. At 29,904 square miles, it is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River, spanning swaths of forests and lakes and touching the Canadian border.

Bush managed to inject his Maine ties — his family has a seaside summer home in Kennebunkport — as he zipped through a 45-minute version of his standard campaign speech, promoting his tax cuts and his vision for democracy in Iraq.

"I'm honored to be back in this beautiful state," Bush told a crowd of prescreened Republican loyalists at Bangor International Airport. "I wasn't sure I'd be invited back after the last time I came. I didn't make the bed."

Polls show Maine leaning slightly toward the Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry. But political analysts say it remains competitive. Its handful of electoral votes could prove important in a tight election. The state has two popular Republican senators, and its voters are famously independent.

"Maine is still a battleground state, for the most part," said Anthony J. Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in nearby Waterville, Maine. "The Bush campaign and the Republicans hope the closeness of the race will perhaps give them an opportunity to pick off a vote in the 2nd District, even if they don't win the state."

The possibility of an electoral vote split here echoes a similar situation unfolding in Colorado.

On Nov. 2, Colorado will vote on a referendum to switch from winner-take-all to proportional distribution of its nine electoral votes. If Amendment 36 passes, it is expected to take effect immediately, barring court intervention.

That, in turn, could benefit Kerry. Even if Bush won the Republican-leaning state, Kerry could still get a significant consolation prize of as many as four electoral votes. The statewide winner would take at least five.

The Colorado referendum underscores a little-known fact about presidential elections. Although the electoral college is written into the Constitution, the winner-take-all system by which most states award their electoral votes is not. States are free to decide how to choose presidential and vice presidential electors.

Since Maine switched to its district-based system in 1972, it has never split its electoral votes. But that almost happened in 1992, when Ross Perot ran strongly here, and in 2000 as well.

The 2000 Democratic nominee, Al Gore, carried the state with 49% of the vote to Bush's 44%. But Gore prevailed only 47% to 46% in the 2nd Congressional District. If Bush had picked up a few thousand more votes in the rural north, he would have taken an elector from Gore.

Working in Bush's favor is the district's heavy rural vote and its orientation toward the timber industry, which is influential within his administration. In his speech Thursday, Bush took pains to thank loggers.

Also, the district tends to be socially conservative. Its congressman, Democrat Michael Michaud, is a freshman who favors gun-owner rights and opposes abortion rights, stances that dovetail with Bush's.

Working against the president, potentially, are economic anxieties. Many jobs in the district have been lost in recent years to global trade, particularly in the textile and shoemaking industries. Potato harvests are down, and the Air Force shut down a base near here 10 years ago.

Mindful of such economic concerns, Bush tailored part of his address to jobs. He noted that unemployment in Maine was lower than the national average and plugged his tax-cut agenda.


If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

funny website

What If?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cole24sep24.story
COMMENTARY
If the War Were in the U.S. ...
Last week alone, more than 3,000 Americans would have been killed.
By Juan Cole
Juan Cole is a history professor at the University of Michigan. This article originally appeared on his website.

September 24, 2004

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis were refuting the pessimists, and he implied that things were improving in that country.

What would the United States look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the U.S. is more than 11 times that of Iraq's, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Violence killed 300 Iraqis last week; the equivalent, proportionately, of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray and aerial bombardments in just one week? That is a number greater than the deaths on Sept. 11.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, mostly in the capital of Washington, but also in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire and those inside were fearful of stepping outside?

What if all the reporters for the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be about 25,000 insurgents in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies of 275,000 men — armed with machine guns, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous areas of cities all over the U.S.? What if these militias so completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha that local police and federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the last year, the secretary of State (Aqila Hashimi), the president (Ezzedine Salim) and the attorney general (Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the U.S. were racked by crime, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries and carjackings?

What if the Air Force routinely bombed Billings, Mont.; Flint, Mich.; South-Central Los Angeles; Philadelphia and other areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs" but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery and were bombarded by U.S. warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial over on the Mall? What if there were no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially the interstates from Richmond, Va., to Washington and up to Boston? If you went anywhere along that more than 500-mile stretch of highway, you would risk being carjacked or kidnapped or having your car sprayed with gunfire.



What if no American had electricity for more than 10 hours a day, and often had to make do with less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled monthly?

What if unemployment hovered at about 40%?

What if militia veterans who had been at places like Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you needed tough guys in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were canceled and cliques close to the new "president" were quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors"? What if several of these governors were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by insurgents?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States were, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and assured them that freedom and democracy were just around the corner?


If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

What If?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-cole24sep24.story
COMMENTARY
If the War Were in the U.S. ...
Last week alone, more than 3,000 Americans would have been killed.
By Juan Cole
Juan Cole is a history professor at the University of Michigan. This article originally appeared on his website.

September 24, 2004

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis were refuting the pessimists, and he implied that things were improving in that country.

What would the United States look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the U.S. is more than 11 times that of Iraq's, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Violence killed 300 Iraqis last week; the equivalent, proportionately, of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray and aerial bombardments in just one week? That is a number greater than the deaths on Sept. 11.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, mostly in the capital of Washington, but also in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire and those inside were fearful of stepping outside?

What if all the reporters for the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be about 25,000 insurgents in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies of 275,000 men — armed with machine guns, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous areas of cities all over the U.S.? What if these militias so completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha that local police and federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the last year, the secretary of State (Aqila Hashimi), the president (Ezzedine Salim) and the attorney general (Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the U.S. were racked by crime, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries and carjackings?

What if the Air Force routinely bombed Billings, Mont.; Flint, Mich.; South-Central Los Angeles; Philadelphia and other areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs" but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery and were bombarded by U.S. warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial over on the Mall? What if there were no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially the interstates from Richmond, Va., to Washington and up to Boston? If you went anywhere along that more than 500-mile stretch of highway, you would risk being carjacked or kidnapped or having your car sprayed with gunfire.

What if no American had electricity for more than 10 hours a day, and often had to make do with less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled monthly?

What if unemployment hovered at about 40%?

What if militia veterans who had been at places like Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you needed tough guys in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were canceled and cliques close to the new "president" were quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors"? What if several of these governors were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by insurgents?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States were, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and assured them that freedom and democracy were just around the corner?


If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

A Funny Poster for the Election