The Template Trumps All
So far Jim Geraghty is the only member of the “pajamahadeen” (I don’t wear pajamas myself, so I guess I’d have to be grandfathered in or something…) to pick up on the two-headedness of the most recent Pew Research polls that came out this week.
The first version, taken September 8-10, showed Bush leading Kerry by a whopping 54%-38%. But then, for some reason, they immediately did another survey over the next three days, and this one showed Bush with a razor-thin, statistically insignificant 47%-46% edge.
Their explanation?
I could buy some or all of that if their first poll had produced the results they got the second time around. Convention bounces do fade (of course, Bush wasn’t supposed to get one at all, but I digress…), and there are a number of polls that do show a tighter race. But that doesn’t explain the first survey’s results, or the haste with which they went out and did a second one. Nor does it remotely explain how poll #2 could possibly produce a fifteen-point “lurch” toward Kerry.
It’d be easy and pat to write it off to liberal bias. And while that’s undoubtedly a factor to some degree, I think what happened here ties back to the conventional wisdom of this campaign and the greater political landscape ever since the 2000 election: “50/50 nation.” We’re split right down the middle, rigidly polarized, and every election from here on out is going to be a photo-finish, regardless of candidates or issues or anything else that used to affect election outcomes.
I’ve never bought that and I still don’t. If not for the Dems’ last-minute DUI story four years ago, Bush wins by four or five points and a hundred or so electoral votes and that monolithic paradigm never sees the light of day.
That’s not to say that I deny that the electorate is evenly and gapingly divided. I just think that its effect will be to reduce the scale of election margins rather than automatically dictating that they’ll be razor-thin. I.e. the 60-40 blowouts of Johnson-Goldwater, Nixon-McGovern, and Reagan-Mondale would today be, say, 55-45. And the 54-46 spread of Bush41-Dukakis would be 52-48. And so on.
Consequently, when Pew did their initial canvass and got a 16-point Bush lead, I think they figured it had to be skewed because everybody knows that this is going to be a “close election.” So they jimmied their sampling Kerry-ward and the second run produced the result that fit their preconceived notion.
Is Bush up by sixteen? Probably not, though Gallup shows him up fourteen. But I don’t believe for a moment that it’s tied, either, as Harris and Investor’s Business Daily claim. My guess is it’s somewhere between my polling composite of four points and RCP’s current six point average. Or you could just take the two Pew results and split the difference, producing a 51-42 Bush advantage. Which is precisely what the latest CBS/NYT poll shows.
It’s also worth pointing out that, with the exception of Newsweek, the polls showing larger margins (ABC/WaPo, CBS/NYT, Time) have not shown any fade of GDub’s post-convention uptick. And Gallup shows Bush’s lead doubling since last week. And if, as mentioned yesterday, Bush is within six in New York, four in Illinois, and leads by four in New Jersey, the bigger-spread polls are probably a lot closer to reality.
The first version, taken September 8-10, showed Bush leading Kerry by a whopping 54%-38%. But then, for some reason, they immediately did another survey over the next three days, and this one showed Bush with a razor-thin, statistically insignificant 47%-46% edge.
Their explanation?
As more time has passed since the Aug. 30-Sept.2 Republican convention, Kerry's unfavorable ratings have receded somewhat. And while Kerry no longer holds the big advantage he once had on most issues, his standing relative to Bush has rebounded slightly on the economy.
The second wave of polling also finds less acceptance of Republican criticism of the Democratic candidate. Fewer voters agree with the statement ‘John Kerry changes his mind too much.’ Fewer think the chances of terrorism would increase if Kerry is elected. In addition, a substantial majority of voters (66%) believe Vice President Cheney went too far when he suggested recently that risk of terrorism would increase if voters ‘make the wrong choice.’ That opinion remained steady through the polling period.
I could buy some or all of that if their first poll had produced the results they got the second time around. Convention bounces do fade (of course, Bush wasn’t supposed to get one at all, but I digress…), and there are a number of polls that do show a tighter race. But that doesn’t explain the first survey’s results, or the haste with which they went out and did a second one. Nor does it remotely explain how poll #2 could possibly produce a fifteen-point “lurch” toward Kerry.
It’d be easy and pat to write it off to liberal bias. And while that’s undoubtedly a factor to some degree, I think what happened here ties back to the conventional wisdom of this campaign and the greater political landscape ever since the 2000 election: “50/50 nation.” We’re split right down the middle, rigidly polarized, and every election from here on out is going to be a photo-finish, regardless of candidates or issues or anything else that used to affect election outcomes.
I’ve never bought that and I still don’t. If not for the Dems’ last-minute DUI story four years ago, Bush wins by four or five points and a hundred or so electoral votes and that monolithic paradigm never sees the light of day.
That’s not to say that I deny that the electorate is evenly and gapingly divided. I just think that its effect will be to reduce the scale of election margins rather than automatically dictating that they’ll be razor-thin. I.e. the 60-40 blowouts of Johnson-Goldwater, Nixon-McGovern, and Reagan-Mondale would today be, say, 55-45. And the 54-46 spread of Bush41-Dukakis would be 52-48. And so on.
Consequently, when Pew did their initial canvass and got a 16-point Bush lead, I think they figured it had to be skewed because everybody knows that this is going to be a “close election.” So they jimmied their sampling Kerry-ward and the second run produced the result that fit their preconceived notion.
Is Bush up by sixteen? Probably not, though Gallup shows him up fourteen. But I don’t believe for a moment that it’s tied, either, as Harris and Investor’s Business Daily claim. My guess is it’s somewhere between my polling composite of four points and RCP’s current six point average. Or you could just take the two Pew results and split the difference, producing a 51-42 Bush advantage. Which is precisely what the latest CBS/NYT poll shows.
It’s also worth pointing out that, with the exception of Newsweek, the polls showing larger margins (ABC/WaPo, CBS/NYT, Time) have not shown any fade of GDub’s post-convention uptick. And Gallup shows Bush’s lead doubling since last week. And if, as mentioned yesterday, Bush is within six in New York, four in Illinois, and leads by four in New Jersey, the bigger-spread polls are probably a lot closer to reality.
posted by JASmius at 2:35 PM
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