-Caveat Lector-
JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY
Those Wildly Galloping Polls
The debate helped Bush, but to the tune of 18 points?
Monday, October 9, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
Trying to follow the presidential election by looking at polls
can make you dizzy. On the one hand, some continuing trends are
becoming clear. But the nightly variations in some of the polls
are enough to make you wonder if you'd have better luck using a
Ouija board to predict the election results.
First, the short-term mess. I don't mean to pick on a single
poll, but for reasons of space I'll focus on the Gallup nightly
tracking polls. The poll results are derived by conducting some
240 interviews a night and then constructing a three-day "rolling
average" so every morning four-day-old results are dropped and
replaced by the interview results from the previous night.
The Gallup poll gave Al Gore a two-point lead on Oct. 2, the
night before the first presidential debate. The next night Mr.
Gore jumped to an eight-point lead, even though the bulk of that
evening's interviews were conducted before the debate was over.
By Oct. 4 the Gore lead had grown to 11 points. Then the
turnaround. Thursday night saw Mr. Gore plummet to a one-point
lead. The next poll on Friday night--traditionally a day that
favors Democrats in polling because more of them are home Friday
nights--Mr. Bush suddenly had a seven-point lead, which grew to
eight points in Saturday night's poll.
What gives? The debate may have helped Mr. Bush, but could it
really have caused an 18-point swing in his favor? "Experts say
such a severe swing may say more about polling technique than
actual shifts in public opinion," says Ron Browstein of the Los
Angeles Times. CNN, which commissions polls from Gallup, blandly
announced the sudden Bush lead on Friday night as evidence that
"the race continues to remain close," without any explanation of
the gyrations. A noted pollster we talked with said that the
"only way you can have such an 18-point swing is for Gore to have
had a 15-point lead on the first of the three nights of polling
and for Bush to have had a 15-point lead on the last night."
In other words, you can bet Gallup is opening up the hood of its
poll. I wasn't able to reach anyone there for comment over the
weekend, but CNN reports that Gallup is now conducting "many"
more interviews. I'm also told the company may be looking at how
hard it's been pushing the "undecided" to choose a candidate,
which often creates very soft, fluid support.
Other pollsters doing tracking polls have used larger samples
than Gallup. Zogby conducts 400 interviews a night for three
nights. Rasmussen Research is expanding its nightly tracking poll
to 1,000 interviews a night this week. Voter.com's Battleground
poll, run by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and GOP pollster Ed
Goeas, does its tracking poll using a four-day average instead of
three days. It has not experienced gyrations the size of Gallup's
(it currently shows Bush with a two point lead).
As maddening as the changes in nightly tracking polls are, survey
results are more useful once you get beyond the horse-race
numbers. Rasmussen Research's poll hints that ideology may play a
larger role in Bush's recent rebound than many observers think.
About two-thirds of people identify themselves as either
"moderate" or "moderate conservative." About 66% of Rasmussen's
sample describe Mr. Bush using one of those two terms, with more
leaning towards "moderate conservative." In other words, Mr. Bush
is viewed as a centrist candidate.
Mr. Gore increasingly is not. Before the debate, the vice
president was viewed as in the political center by 42% of
respondents, with 43% viewing him as a liberal. After the debate,
only 39% saw Gore as a centrist, while 47% perceived him as a
liberal. "Gore won the debate on substance and detailed
arguments," says Scott Rasmussen. "But by winning he defined
himself as a liberal, and if this is a center-right country. he
hurt himself in the process of explaining his views in such clear
detail."
Much of the pundits' analysis of this campaign is predicated on a
basic point of disagreement. If you think this country will
easily support Gore's class warfare rhetoric and robust liberal
spending programs you'll tend to think he has a good chance of
winning. If you believe, as I do, that America is not France, you
won't be surprised if Mr. Bush wins. If the U.S. is a country in
which the center of political gravity is slightly to the right of
center, a presidential campaign that brings out the basic
differences between the parties should tilt toward the GOP
candidate the longer the campaign wears on (barring a major gaffe
or an October surprise). Indeed, a comparison of the Gallup poll
results at Labor Day with the final election results show that
the Republican candidate has done better at the ballot box than
he did in the Labor Day polls in 11 of the last 12 elections.
(The exception was 1968, when Democrats came home late to Hubert
Humphrey.)
To hear some pundits tell it, we may as well forget about the
final month of the campaign. "You can put a fork in this
presidential campaign," wrote the Chicago Tribune's usually
perceptive Steve Chapman yesterday. "The election is over, and
George W. Bush lost. Those who do not look forward to a Gore
administration--and I'm one of them--can only brace for the
inevitable."
There are two more debates to go, and Mr. Bush is capable of
making a major gaffe. But Mr. Gore is also capable of being
himself, and postdebate polls show clearly that many Americans
don't find him that appealing. This campaign remains close, but
so far Mr. Bush seems to fit the political temper and tenor of
this election year better than his opponent. A month from now,
Mr. Chapman may find himself pleasantly surprised.
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Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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