Obama’s DNC Bounce?

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
Average	37.6666667	35.83333333	26.5	Democrats by 1.88%

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 and some simple manipulations to better understand the data and to break it down by voting ideology, ethnicity, and gender (those results are in bold font):

Poll	Democrat %	Republican %	Independent %	Obama %	Romney %	Margin %		Date
IPOS/Reuters	46	43	11	48		43		Democrat 3%		10-Sep
Gallup	38	34	28	50		44		Democrat 3.7%	Daily
Rasmussen	34	36	30	48		45		Republican 1.5%	Daily
NBC	34	27	36	48		44		Democrats 7%		21-Aug
FOX	42	38	18	44		45		Democrats 4%
PEW	33	22	42	51		41		Democrats 11%
CNN	40	29	31	52		46		Democrats 11%	9-Sep
CBS	31	29	34	46		45		Democrats 2%		26-Aug
TIPP	36	31	30	46		44		Democrats 5%		9-Sep
Battleground	44	40	15	48		47		Democrats 1%
Survey USA	33	27	40	46		43		Democrats 6%		30-Aug
AP/GfK	31	23	30	47		46		Democrats 8%
LA Times	39	33	26	48		46		Democrats 6%
YouGov	45	36	20	45		45		Democrats 9%		20-Aug
ABC	32	26	37	49		48		Democrats 6%		9-Sep
Democracy Corps	47	26	26	49		47		Democrats 21%	18-Aug
Resurgent Republic	37	30	30	46		45		Democrats 7%		18-Aug
American Research Group	38	34	28	46		49		Democrats 4%		7-Sep
Poll Average	37.7777778	31.33333333	28.44444444	47.61		45.17		6.444444444		2.444
2012 Model (Prediction)	38	34	28	1.0059		1.085		0.984375
Poll Scale				47.89		49.01
Poll	DO %	RO %	IO %	DR %	RR %	IR %	MO %	FO %	MR %	FR %	WO %	NWO %	WR %	NWR %	M %	F %	W %	NW %
IPOS/Reuters
Gallup
Rasmussen
NBC															48	52	74	26
FOX	88	4	32	5	92	42	40	48	48	42	36	73	53	17
PEW
CNN	97	2	40	3	96	54	48	55	47	44	42	88	55	11
CBS	89	5	40	7	90	41
TIPP	85	6	41	9	88	41	40	51	48	40	37	80	52	12
Battleground																	78	22
Survey USA	87	7	37	6	87	40	40	50	44	38	39	73	49	18	48	52	73	27
AP/GfK															49	51	74	26
LA Times															46	54	76	24
YouGov															48	52	73	27
ABC
Democracy Corps																	61	39
Resurgent Republic	90	5	37	6	93	45									46	54	74	26
American Research Group	85	5	44	11	92	49	41	51	54	45	39	84	57	16	48	52	76	24
Averages	88.7142857	4.857142857	38.71428571	6.714	91.143	44.57	41.8	51	48.2	41.8	38.6	79.6	53.2	14.8	47.57	52.43	73.22	26.78
2008 Averages	39	32	29				19.65	27.03	22.65	22.154	29.92	17.91	41.23	3.33	46.3	53.7	76.3	23.7
2010 Averages	35	35	29												47.3	52.7	78	22
2012 Model (Prediction)	38	34	28	38	34	28
															47	53	77.5	22.5
	33.71142857	1.651428571	10.84	2.5514	30.989	12.48									0.988	1.011	1.058	0.84
2012 Model Results	46.2028571		46.02	0.183			46.97		44.54	2.429	44.96		44.75	0.2093
Key
DO = Democrats for Obama				Obama	Romney
RO - Republicans for Obama			Poll Ave	47.61	45.167
IO - Independents for Obama			Poll Scaled	47.89	49.011
DR - Democrats for Romney			Poll Affiliation	46.2	46.02
RR - Republicans for Romney			Poll Gender	46.97	44.542
IR - Independents for Romney			Poll Ethnicity	44.96	44.755
MO - Males for Obama
FO - Females for Obama			Average	46.73	45.899
MR - Males for Romney
FR - Females for Romney
WO - Whites for Obama
NWO - Non Whites for Obama
WR - Whites for Romney
NWR - Non Whites for Romney
F - Female
M - Male
W - Whites
NW - Non Whites	85	6	41	9	88	41

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). For instance, the latest CNN poll had Obama up by 6 points. However, the poll claims that Romney win independents by 14 points, for this to happen the poll breakdown must give the Democrats an 11 point advantage.

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? The Gallup poll is a bit concerning for Romney, but it is not as bad as it could be. The average of the last polls by 13 firms (7 since the DNC) has Obama ahead by nearly 2.5 points. 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. 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 38-D/34-R/29-I. If that is the case when this election modeled using these numbers we get the following:

Obama – 47.9% / Romney 49%

Also, using the above data in the polls when broken out by party, gender, and race (not all polls give this data) then my models show the following (I am expecting 53% / 47% margin for women and a 77.5% / 22.5% margin for white versus non-white voters in 2012).

By Party: Obama 46.2% / Romney 46%

By Gender: Obama 47% / Romney 44.5%

By Ethnicity: Obama 45% / Romney 44.8%

There you have it. I have modeled (scaled the highly liberal polls) the polls 5 ways and Obama comes out on top in 4. If I average all 5 methods then we are really in a dead heat: Obama 46.7%, Romney 45.9% (Obama has a 0.8% lead).