Friday, August 10, 2012

How Accurate Are the Presidential Election Polls (8/10/12)

Here is how the past few election cycles voted based on exit polls in terms of political ideology:

Year

Democrat %

Republican %

Independent %

Notes

2000

39

35

27

Gore Wins by 0.1% Popular Vote

2002

38

40

22

Republicans pick up a few House seats

2004

37

37

26

Bush by 3%

2006

38

36

26

Democrats make big gains in the House

2008

39

32

29

Obama by over 7%

2010

35

35

29

Republicans make big gains in the House

The difficult thing to measure is what is going to be the breakdown in political ideology in the 2012 Election. Here are some poll figures:

Poll

Democrat %

Republican %

Independent %

Obama %

Romney %

Notes

IPOS/Reuters

46

43

11

49

42

Democrat 3%

Gallup

46

46

Democrat 3.7%

Rasmussen

43

47

Republican 1.5%

NBC

35

23

39

49

43

Democrats 12%

FOX

44

35

20

49

40

Democrats 9%

PEW

33

22

42

51

41

Democrats 11%

CNN

59

41

52

45

Democrats 18%

CBS

46

47

To determine the ideological breakdowns of some polls I needed to carefully decipher these numbers from the questions within the polls (the information is not readily available).

Although Republicans are not overly excited by Romney, polls indicate they are more energized than Democrats because they do not want another 4 years of Obama. The generic congressional ballot between Democrats and Republicans is even and that is good news for Republicans because they historically trail in this poll. Are the poll models above correct? Many polls have Obama winning by similar margins as 2008. Obama may be much more popular than Romney, but the economy is in the dumps and not getting better so it is hard to believe that Obama will win independents as he did in 2008. If all these polls are averaged Obama has a large lead of over 4%. However, many of these polls seem to be oversampling Democrats by large margins when compared to historical trends outlined above. What’s worse, many of these same polling outlets are making the same mistake in state election polls. My best guess at an ideological breakdown in 2012 is 36-D/34-R/31-I. If that is the case this election will be a dead heat.

2 comments:

  1. For me, the polling above confirms something I always suspected. “Independent” really means wishy-washy.

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  2. Independents are certainly the hardest to figure. I am an Independent, because I will not join a political party, but my vote always favor the more fiscal conservative candidate. I am sure there are only a small portion of independents that will swing one way or the other.

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