About Those Warped Media Polls Showing An Obama Lead

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Dick Morris is calling out the WaPo today over their headline:

Three Polls Show Obama Widening Lead Over Romney

The MSM is doing their best to show some Obama Lovin’ and put some momentum in his corner but the numbers cited by WaPo are ridiculous.

The real numbers, of likely voters are found in the Rasmussen Polls which had Romney ahead by three yesterday and four today. Gallup, which surveys registered voters (as opposed to likely voters) has the race tied at 46-46.

There are several factors which explain the difference:

1. Obama’s voters don’t want to come out and vote for him. They are only lukewarm and are not people who always vote. Cynical and apathetic, they do not begin to approximate the intensity of the Romney voters or even of the 2008 Obama backers.

2. Black turnout is traditionally 11% of the total vote. In 2008, rose to 14%, providing Obama with more than half of his margin of victory. Current polls suggest a reversion to the pre-2008 turnout level, but polling firms that do not measure voter intention can’t tell that and weight the black vote up to 12, 13, or even 14 percent, padding Obama’s vote artificially.

3. Likewise with Latino vote which was 7% of the vote and grew to 8.5% in 2008. Their votes this time show signs of returning to historic norms

4. Polls of registered voters tend to weight up the Democratic respondents, according their opinions more weight in the poll. That’s because their data usually shows fewer Democrats in their sample than in national registration figures. But, in weighting for party, they obscure the fact that a great many registered Democrats have left the Party, particularly in the past few years, a finding that is obliterated by the weighting.

Then we have RCP:

Today’s RCP average shows Obama with a 4.4 point lead nationally. The average is based on nine recently released polls. Five of these, four of which show outsized leads for Obama, have serious partisan skews favoring Democrats. The Pew “poll,” which shows Obama up 10, has a D+19 skew. FoxNews Poll is D+9, NBC is D+9 and CBS is D+7. The CNN poll, which I discussed today, seems to have a D+10 skew. None of these partisan breakdowns is an accurate prediction of what the electorate will look like in November, yet they do impact the current RCP Average.

The four polls with more reasonable assumptions of partisan breakdown show a much closer race. Still, only two of these poll “likely voters”–Rasmussen and Democracy Corps. Registered voter polls inherently give Democrats a 2-3 point edge in results. Factor all these variables in and the race is probably a wash, with the probability of a slight Romney edge.

And yet, most pundits and analysts are taking the current average and declaring that Obama is clearly in command of the race. That may in fact be the case, but when the average is impacted by a number of highly skewed polls, its not a conclusion on which I would wager a lot of money.

It humorous to watch these “analysts” declare Obama the leader…Rasmussen is pretty much the only reliable polling firm out there today since they use a sample population of “likely voters” instead of “adults” as well as the fact they don’t oversample democrats by 10 points. Meanwhile Obama’s approval rating is down to 43%, the Obama mystique has been utterly destroyed, and the economy is in shambles.

What media bias?

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This is the first time I’ve heard anyone seriously suggest that the FOX News poll is skewed in favor of democrats.

Another thing we see in these polls is what has been termed, ”the Bradley Effect.”
If you recall, Bill Bradley was the first black man to run for Gov. of CA.
He was already mayor of Los Angeles and a veteran of the LA Fire Department.
He had a distinction-filled career in both those previous jobs.

So, what to do?
People were polled back then, just like today.
The polls gave Bradley a big margin to win.
Even the EXIT POLLS said he had won!

But Bradley lost.
People LIED.
They were ashamed to admit they were not voting for this black man.
So, they lied.

I think a great number of seeming Obama supporters are lying now.
The polls cannot be trusted, for a wide variety of reasons.

One thing these polls have in common, including the skewed ones, is that if you compare the percentage of votes Obama gets, it is close to his approval rating in that particular poll which adds strength to the belief that the best indicator of how well an incumbent president will do is his approval rating on election day. The state by state Gallup polls has Obama’s approval rating at 50% or above in 13 states plus D.C. putting him 90 shy of the total needed to win. Last week there was an article (it may have been an interview with Scott Rasmussen) that pointed out that right now most polls use RV’s but after Labor Day most switch to LV’s like Rasmussen which will give a more accurate picture. The person said once the switch is made, to expect to see the polls shift towards Romney assuming of course there isn’t some game changer prior to that. At this point, any poll showing either candidate with a lead of more than 4 or 5 points is very questionable. The only one that matters is November 6th.

@Greg:

If Fox has Shepard Smith, then why not a Democrat-slanted poll as well? One of the things Fox does is take up a little bit of the slack in the unfulfilled market for an alternative to state-aligned media, but it’s only one thing among many. They are in business to make money. Getting people to watch, whether it’s a trainwreck or plane crash or Kim Kardashian whatever, is the whole point.

The Democrat strategy: (1) Cling to the base, the Leftist true believers, by pandering to each special interest group; (2) Put more people at the government trough by destroying private sector employment while extending welfare; (3) Fill everybody else with contempt and disgust at politics, and make them hopeless about alternatives to the Democrat Chicago mob, so they’ll stay home instead of voting. The slanted polls are in support of part (3)

NanG Bill Bradley played pro basketball for the N.Y. Knicks. Tom Bradley a former Police Officer, was the first black mayor of L.A and lost his race for Gov. The “Bradley Effect” has no bearing on national politics in 2012.

Paul Ryan is Mitt’s pick

@Richard Wheeler:

Thanks for the correction RW.
Tom Bradley was the man I meant.
But, as to the Bradley Effect not going national, remember that the reason Nixon won was that there was a vast majority of Americans who preferred not to publicly express their opinions. They were dubbed the ”Silent Majority.”
Another national example happened when the UK had it’s election in 1992 and pollsters and exit polls were WAY OFF.
That was called the ”Shy Tory” factor.
8.5% of people polled lied about their intentions.

Obama has been fostering a ”that’s racist,” factor for over a year now.
How can anyone think that people who know their only private place is inside the polling booth believe that these same people will be utterly honest outside that booth, if they might be called racist for going against Obama?
Just because the media SAYS SO does not make a bandwagon full.
When one side is over-sampled (as was so well shown in the initial post) it is merely wishful thinking passing itself off as science.

I campaigned for Reagan in 1980, and I clearly remember the polls coming out showing the boob Carter being almost neck and neck with Reagan. The LSM had not grown so blatant in skewing their polling numbers back then, because Fox News wasn’t around to give even the slightest challenge to the leftist bias of the big three. The outrageous lying ads the leftists are spewing out now are an ever-growing indicator of how desperate they are. They will cheat in increasingly egregious fashion, hurl out the nastiest falsehoods and play on the most irrational fears of the uneducated to hold their dying grip on power. I never thought the democrats would put forth a worse president than Carter, but they managed to foist upon us Obama.
If I had my way for just a year, Holder, Napolitano, Chu, Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Obama, and Geitner and many other members of this current un-American regime would all be brought up on charges of treason, and if convicted, properly punished as dictated by law. What these criminals have done to our constitutional republic is repulsive.
If Obama is able to cheat and shackle us all with another communist befouling of the White House, all the parasites who follow the collectivist ideology will be invited to choke on their access to “free” government health care while I and my colleagues find positions outside the field of medicine.
I am a slave for no man.

Agree with Nan G. but slightly different reasoning. People do’t want to be pressured and/or threatened. It is much easier to lie than to face the Union thugs, black panthers, Code Pinko, etc… Easier to go along and you get a twofer. Get rid of BO and suprise him with the landslide. I think Bo and his thugs actually know what is happning tp them.

In the United States, the population of Blacks is not more than 11%. You’ve been watching too many commercials if you think it’s more.

Of the 11%, less than half of that are adults; children under 18 years of age make up more than half of the Black population. Then, of the approximately 5.5% of adult Blacks, not all will vote; perhaps only 3.5 to 4.0%, maybe not even that.

So, what influence can 3.5% of the voting Black population have that is not surpassed by the majority of Whites. This time around, with unemployment of Blacks at 25% or more; and that of Black young adults at almost 50%, Obama can be justified in his disappointment — those Blacks will not be voting for Obama, they will just as well stay home.

Of the smaller percentage of Blacks that might vote, many honorable, religiously faithful persons will not be voting for Obama. Black community church leaders have said they will not vote for Obama because of his despicable and amoral encouragement of gays and same-sex-marriage. Obama has also lost the support of many Christians who voted for him previously. The Catholic church alone is mounting a serious effort to encourage their members not to vote for Obama on their belief that Obama has lost his way morally.

Add to Obama’s loss of following — those voters who have since 2008 learned what a liar, despot and literal criminal Obama really is. Hiding his personal records, including his academic information — as his first edict when he became president — Obama has turned millions of his followers into persons who will simply not be won over by Obama again. Ever.

Hispanics have just about as much complaint on Obama for his dismal performance with the economy. They are not only straddled with loss of jobs, but foreclosures, high fuel prices, higher food prices and the loss of economic certainty. These folks will probably just stay home rather that vote for 4 more years of dismal loss of hope.

It matters very little how much Obama seeks to distract the electorate. When people go to the polls in November, they will be voting their wallets. By then, just the renewed hope of change with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, given Romney’s experience and prowess with fiscal matters, a majority of voters will simply want to give Romney and Ryan a chance to make things better.

Live by the polls, die by the polls. Polls can and have been manipulated forever. Obama in this election is cast as Jimmy Carter. No amount of distraction will relieve the American people of the literal hurt that Obama’s failures and socialist flings have cost. Obama will fall by the weight of his undeniable failures, lies and gigantic waste of public monies.

I would like to see it mandatory that the ones who give poll results have to disclose several things:

(1) What are the EXACT words of the poll question?
(3) How many polls were taken before they got the results of the LAST poll?
(4) How many people were polled?
(5) What areas of the country were polled?

For years I have said that you could have four or more groups taking the same poll, but using different phone numbers, and come up with four or more different results. Also, how do we know ANY phone calls were even made? What is it about the Polish people that makes their opinion so trustworthy?

I would like to know how many people who voted for Obama will vote for him again.

Frankly…I don’t believe a word in the Washington Post or the New York Times. They are partisan liars. As someone above has pointed out…in 1980 the race was “too close to call” 24 hours before the Reagan landslide.

Actually…as Pat Caddell…Carter’s polling guru says today…the Carter campaign knew ten days out that Carter was going to lose…and lose big. The liberal media would not report this movement because they feared a Reagan landside.

The liberal media lies all the time.

@VoteOutIncumbents: #11
There are two ways you can tell if the propaganda media are lying:

(1) If they print something.
(2) If they say something.

I had some lady call me last week asking me to vote for Obama. She started talking about how Romney would bankrupt this country. When I told her that was not true. She started screaming at me.

Then she “axed” me to please vote for Obama.