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On Tracking Polls: Gallup vs. Rasmussen
We've seen a wide range of results in national polls released over the past twenty-four hours. The most interesting results come from the two daily tracking polls: the robocalls from Rasmussen show Hillary's lead widening, while the Gallup Organization's three-day tracking poll, just posted, shows Clinton 46%, Obama 44%. That’s a statistical dead heat.
From the write-up:
“Clinton appeared to reverse the trend toward Obama with a strong day on Feb. 1 -- the first day of interviewing after the Thursday night debate between the two candidates in Hollywood. But Saturday's polling showed a strong day for Obama, bringing the candidates back closer together in the latest three-day rolling average.”
That's more than a little interesting. Rasmussen and Gallup both showed Clinton widening the gap right after the debate. That means that most pundits (myself included) got the debate wrong. Once again, America's women found themselves drawn to Hillary when she wasn't spending her time launching attacks.
But in yesterday's sample, Rasmussen and Gallup produced very different results. Why would that be? The obvious answer is that it was Saturday, the toughest day of the week for polling. (Mark Blumenthal has eloquently detailed the challenges associated with Saturday polling at pollster.com, for the curious.) In general this cycle, Saturday polling has hurt Obama. It tends to undersample those who are out and about, and has a particularly large effect in robopolls, where many respondents hang up when they're busy. Gallup has a much more robust methodology, and though the poll is fairly new, we've seen much less variation between its Saturday and weekday samples that with Rasmussen.
So if I were a betting man, I'd wager that Gallup is closer to the mark here, and Rasmussen, too, will show a tightening race tomorrow. Worth noting: Sunday is the best day of the week for pollsters. Look for the final day of tracking polls to show this race tightening back up (Rasmussen) or evenly split (Gallup). And, because we're talking about trends, look for Obama to ride that surge into a better than expected performance on Tuesday.







Comments (3)
Thanks for the commentary.
February 3, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
sound thoughts. with the way proportional allocation of state delegates works, dont be surprised either if obama gets more delagates from IL+NY than Hillary. If he can reach the coveted 2/3 percentage in some IL CDs he can shut her out. I dont see her pullling the same thing off in NY, bc where Obama is strong, he is VERY strong (IL y 30%+) and where Hillary is strong she wins by 10-15% (women). fortunately, there are no CDs that are 75% women, but there are certainly some that fall right in line with Obama;s main demogrphic.
If you break it down statistically, Obama's "race" plays better in the delagate race than Hillary's "femnism" bc one demographic concentrates itself in certain CDs.
February 4, 2008 3:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP:
Thanks for reading.
bravo6:
Appreciate the feedback, but to understand why I find that scenario improbable, I'm afraid we've got to get down into the weeds of the delegate allocation process. Even if a candidate wins 2/3 of the votes in a given CD, they won't receive all of its delegates. In order to sweep a CD, a candidate needs to hold all of his or her opponents below the 15% threshold for qualification. So if, for example, Obama takes a CD 67-33%, he'd actually split the delegates (3-1, 3-2, or 4-2, in a 4, 5, or 6 delegate CD).
Of course, the same is true of Hillary. The upshot is that district-level delegates divide more evenly than state-level delegates. My guess is that Obama will do better in New York than Hillary will in Illinois. On the other hand, there are 153 delegates up for grabs in the Land of Lincoln, and 232 in the Empire State.
There're a couple of different ways to work the math. Let's assume an incredibly rosy scenario for Obama: He takes Illinois 65-35%, and loses New York 55-45%. At the statewide level, he'd grab 70 delegates to her 64 - but at the district level, she'd probably take a dozen or so more than he would. And that's an optimistic scenario.
The point is, the two states should roughly offset. California looks poised to split its delegates. New Jersey is neck-and-neck again in today's Zogby poll. So this is likely to come down to the size of small-state margins.
February 4, 2008 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
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