For someone who does not like horserace poll coverage, I seem to be writing about them today. Had I seen the ABC News/WaPo poll last night, I could have included it in my post on the NYT/CBS poll, but there are some nuggests to be gleaned here beyond the horserace.
HotAir’s Ed Morrissey notes the Democratic skew in the sample, but the 13%-14% gap is not much more than the 8.5 % party ID gap that Rasmussen has been getting. Moreover, party ID is more an indicator of how comfortable people are in admitting a party affiliation than voting behavior. In the current environment, some de facto Republicans identify as Independents, while sone de facto Dems move out of the Independent column to the party label.
Second, while both ABC and the WaPo headline an eight-point Obama lead, that is the number for registered voters. The poll also shows that among likely voters, the Obama lead shrinks to 3% — a statistical tie in this case. Why? Because the numbers of those saying they are “certain to vote” has not dropped among Republicans since the last ABC News/WaPo poll (83%), but the number of Dems certain to vote has dropped from 82% to 66% since March. The number of seniors saying they are certain voters has dropped from 79% to 73%, while the drop among the 18-29 year-olds is from 66% to 46% — an ominous sign for Obama, as the youth vote is a key part of his coalition. If the youth vote cools to Obama, it could also erode the effectiveness of the social networking he has made part of his heretofore impressive organizational efforts. That is not a foregone conclusion, though; overall attention to the election has dropped off, but will certainly pick up once the conventions and the final leg of the general election campaign arrive.
The WaPo analysis rightly notes the significant lead Obama enjoys on the economy. But the WaPo fails to mention — and ABC News buries — just how volatile the swing vote remains. The downloadable report notes:
Nearly three in 10 Americans say they could change their minds (or have no current preference). That seems to be evidenced by night-to-night variability in preferences; in this four-night poll, Obama held a much larger lead Sunday compared with Thursday through Saturday results. This nightly variability could be one reason some recent polls have differed; e.g., Newsweek had a 15-point Obama lead in a two-day poll in mid-June, when other contemporaneous polls did not; and Newsweek had that tighten to 3 points this past weekend, again in a two-day poll.
Thus, the currently tight race could break big either way, either from greater voter focus as the election draws closer — or from a currently unknown unknown.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
And if you poll late at night after people have been drinking, the percentage for McCain probably rises. The GOP get out the vote drive ought to include lots of buses from bars, I figure.
See Ann Coulter’s article from last week. She suggests setting up a Vot-For-McCain drunk parties on each of the coasts.
“the drop among the 18-19 year-olds is from 66% to 46%”
Karl,
Is that supposed to be 18-29? I’ve never seen a 18-19 split before. If it’s 18-29 it’s really rather surprising because I thought that “the young and dumber than a sack of hammers” contingent would hold up a bit better. The ObamaJugend sure aren’t as stout as their predecessors. Maybe Team Obama got the shade wrong on the Green Shirts?
Buyer’s Remorse is a terrible thing to see – especially if you’re a pol and election day is still months away.
#3: Yes. Correcting it now.
It’s a terrible lesson and one the Dems do not seem to be able to grasp. You can win the nomination by appealing to the dumb as a sack of hammers youth group but you cannot keep them if you adopt policies more appealing to the rational voters.
Yay! Clarice sighting!
Indeed. I get jealous when I see her commenting elsewhere here, while snubbing me…
(sniff)
Also, I had a HUGE crush on her in that Rankin-Bass thing.
Karl and Dan
You don’t get to keep Clarice or Rick. They belong to me.
Dan,
Indeed. Not just cute, but sensitive.
*Sigh*
There’s always tomorrow . . .
Clarice and Rosset and Melanie Phillips and Fallaci and . . . there are so many great woman journos out there, right now. We’re lucky that way.
“We’re lucky that way.”
– Do let us know if you actually get lucky with any of them. /snark
um, Dan, isn’t one of those you named, “pining for the fjords”?
Dumb as scissors, sharp as rocks, loyalty thin as paper. Now get to work on policy, kids.
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[…] prior polling showing a big drop among the 18-29 year-olds saying they are certain to vote. In a prior post noting the drop, I noted this could be a temporary lack of attention during the summer doldrums. […]