New Polls Show McCain Ahead: “No Sh*t, They Polled More Republicans”

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Over the past 48 hours I have heard right wing commentator after right wing commentator, as well as just about every single news outlet in general wet their pants over the latest nationwide polling numbers which show John McCain ahead of Barack Obama. The glee in their voices, and contrived aloofness (“how can this be?”) promptly followed by over analyzing every aspect the shows time slot allows them to are both annoying and petty. Unfortunately for these so called “political experts” the polls they are clamoring over are flawed in more ways then just one.

So you may be asking yourself what is it that makes the latest polls, the ones showing McCain up by a handful of points invalid? And too that my answer is simple – the pollsters conducting these lopsided studies are simply sampling a larger republican population in a way that leaves the results numerically impossible to show anything less then a McCain lead.

Earlier today Seth Colter Walls published a piece over at the Huffington Post which sheds some light on the tampering going on in regards to the pollsters overall sampling sizes which of course hinges (in a macro sense) on ones Party Identification. The pollsters (for reasons unknown by myself) are flat out oversampling Republican voters, and in some cases, are doing so at an obnoxious rate. Walls explains this phenomenon in great detail, stating:

“In a year in which Democrats have a lead of 11 million registered voters over Republicans, and have been adding to that advantage through a robust field operation, are pollsters over-sampling Republicans?

Despite a raft of advantages in the electorate for Democrats, in September’s first Gallup tracking poll, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats were surveyed (including “leaners”) from Sept. 3-5, compared to a 10-point Democratic identification advantage two weeks ago. That partisan makeup of the polling pool resulted in a 5-point lead for McCain in Sept. 5 tracking poll. Meanwhile, the new CBS poll features a 6-point swing in partisan composition toward Republicans, which plays some role in the poll’s two-point lead for McCain. Finally, the latest USA Today poll, which claims a four-point edge for McCain, was arrived at after a 10-point swing in partisan makeup toward GOP respondents.”

This practice is not new to electoral politics, however it is arguably receiving more attention, or in this case scrutiny, due to the fact people can look into the raw data taken into account for whatever specific poll is in question. The reasons they do this are simple – to create a “close race” with the dramatic “ups and downs” which subsequently leads to a peaked interest in the weekly/daily numbers which then spikes the overall demand for their product – the polls:

Norman admitted that the GOP identification in the latest survey has spiked. “The party ID in our most recent poll does show a shift away from what Gallup has been getting in earlier polls, going all the way back to 2005,” Norman said. “But previous conventions — the Republican one in 1988, the Democratic one in 1992, the Democratic one in 2000 — have also shown shifts in party ID toward the party that had the convention, and those shifts seemed to last, to greater or lesser degrees, though the election. Further, I’ve been told by Gallup that their tracking poll has shown a similar shift in party ID since the Republican convention. … I guarantee you we will be watching closely in all of our polls between now and election day to see whether there are further shifts in party ID in either direction.”

Still not convinced? Well don’t just take my word on it, here is what Adam Abramowitz, a world renound political scientist who is currently a professor at Emory University has to say about the latest gaggle of polls we saw released over the past two days:

Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz is highly skeptical of the new Gallup, USA Today and CBS polls. About the latter, which showed a statistically insignificant two point lead for McCain, Abramowitz said: “One reason for the dramatic difference between the two recent CBS polls is that the two samples differed fairly dramatically in terms of partisan composition. The first sample was 35.2% Democratic, 26.2 percent Republicans, and 38.6 percent independent. The second sample was 34.9% Democratic, 31.1% Republican, and 34.0% independent. That’s a change from a 9 point Democratic advantage to a 3.8 point Democratic advantage. That alone would probably explain about half of the difference in candidate preferences between the two [CBS] polls.”

So with the argument laid out quite clearly, I think it is important that we look at a handful of other polls, which are being released by major publications. Granted they don’t offer the same “excitement” factor the other trumped up ones do, they seem nonetheless to be a tad more accurate – at least in the sense of their sampling ratios:

• American Research Group (ARG):

• Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll:

• NBC/Wall Street Journal:

It is clear that John McCain has made up some ground in the polls, I am in no way refuting that. I am however pointing out that the grossly negligent numbers that showed McCain leading by as many as 10 points were in fact doctored to appear how they did.

So before you (and by you I am talking to the Republicans who have had a nonstop orgasm the past 2 days) go on with your gloating please take into account the fact that the polls in which you are bragging about simply overloaded the sampling with GOP voters.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, Battleground, Breaking news, Cbs Poll, doctoring the polls, ELECTION, Gallup Poll, joe biden, john mccain, John McCain ahead in polls, john mccain leads in the polls, new polls, new presidential polls, obama ahead in the polls, Politics News, Poll Madness Mccain Takes Lead, polls, President, Presidential Polls, Sarah Palin, unfair polls, USA Today Poll, Vote, ]