The Most (and Least) Accurate Polls

As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, we're likely to be inundated by a spate of poll results from all kinds of different organizations, and if, well, everything is any indication, then different pollsters are likely to show very different things about the state of the race in key swing states. There may be no point in trying to make sense of mind-bogglingly contradictory survey results, but in case anyone is interested, I took a look at the polling done in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and constructed a little table on which pollsters came the closest to foretelling the election results in states that are now considered "battleground" territory and which missed the mark.

I measured polling accuracy by looking at the results of the last public poll of each race by each pollster and comparing the margin between the two highest-polling candidates (sometimes the only two candidates) to the eventual winner’s margin of victory over the second-place finisher. If there was more than one poll tied for most or least accurate by this metric, then I compared each candidate’s individual poll position in the survey results with their eventual share of the final vote. This is why PPP is listed as having the most accurate poll of the Florida governor’s race despite the fact that their final pre election poll had Alex Sink (D) leading Rick Scott (R), the eventual victor, 48% to 47%. This was rated "most accurate" notwithstanding Scott’s victory because it underestimated Scott’s eventual share of the vote (48.9%) by only 1.9 percentage points, while overestimating Sink’s vote share (47.7%) by only 0.3 points. The next-most accurate survey of this race was conducted by Rasmussen Reports, which had Scott leading by three points heading into Election Day.

Race	Most Accurate Poll	Least Accurate Poll
Ohio Gov.	Columbus Dispatch*	CNN/Time
Pennsylvania Gov.	Rasmussen Reports	Franklin & Marshall
Florida Gov.	PPP (D)	Suffolk University
Colorado Gov.	CNN/Time	Magellan Strategies (R)
Colorado Sen.	Denver Post/SurveyUSA	McClatchy/Marist
Florida Sen.	Rasmussen Reports	TCPalm.com/Zogby
Iowa Sen.	Des Moines Register	KCCI/Research 2000
Nevada Sen.	Suffolk University	Rasmussen Reports
New Hampshire Sen.	WMUR/UNH	ARG
North Carolina Sen.	PPP (D)	SurveyUSA
Ohio Sen.	PPP (D)*	Suffolk University
Pennsylvania Sen.	Susquehanna	McClatchy/Marist
Wisconsin Sen.	McClatchy/Marist Rasmussen Reports	PPP (D)
Wisconsin Gov.	McClatchy/Marist	Rasmussen Reports Reuters/Ipsos
Nevada Gov.	PPP (D) Suffolk University	CNN/Time
Iowa Gov.	KCCI/Research 2000	Rasmussen Reports
New Mexico Gov.	Daily Kos/PPP (D)	SurveyUSA
Michigan Gov.	EPIC-MRA	Rossman/Team TelCom
New Hampshire Gov.	WMUR/UNH	ARG

*Nailed it! (Poll results conformed exactly to election results.)

Of course, not all these races were as close as the presidential race is this year. The Senate races in Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire, and the gubernatorial elections in Colorado and Michigan, were all blowouts. Take that however you like. Also notice that the above table does not include any data from Virginia, which had neither a U.S. Senate race nor a gubernatorial election in 2010. In the 2009 race for governor there, SurveyUSA was right on the money; its final poll before Election Day showed Bob McDonnell (R) leading his Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds, by eighteen points 58% to 40%. McDonnell won that election with 59% of the vote to 41% for Deeds. That was three years ago, however, so it may not be worth much.

Finally, there are a handful of states that are assuredly not up for grabs in the presidential election but are experiencing heated U.S. Senate and/or gubernatorial races. For those who are interested, here are my findings on polls of 2010 races in those states.

Race	Most Accurate Poll	Least Accurate Poll
Connecticut Governor	CT Capitol Report/MRG	Suffolk University*
U.S. Senate – Connecticut	PPP (D)	Rasmussen Reports
Maine­ Governor	PineTreePolitics/MECPO	Critical Insights
Massachusetts Governor	Suffolk/7News	Rasmussen Reports
U.S. Senate – Washington	FOX News/POR-Rasmussen	PPP (D)

Obama’s Ad Blitz Failing in Iowa and Out West, Working Elsewhere

President Obama has spent more money on ads per electoral vote in Iowa than any other state, but it doesn’t seem to be paying off.

The latest poll results out of the Hawkeye State show Mitt Romney leading the president, 47% to 44%. That’s within the margin of error, but if you’re an incumbent trailing your opponent by three points, then it also has to be worrisome.

Following the Republican National Convention, the Romney-Ryan campaign hit Iowa with this ad:

As you can see/hear, the ad is not very good. I think this, however, is a better ad:

Just imagine what effect more ads like this one would have on the polls. 

The Desert West Deserts Obama

In 2008, President Obama won Colorado by nine percentage points and Nevada by twelve points. Polls have shown the presidential race this year to be a dead heat in both states. Rasmussen Reports shows Romney with a two-point lead in Colorado, 47%-45%, while the president leads him by the same margin in Nevada. (The president has a one-point lead in Colorado, according to a Quinnipiac poll, and a CNN/Opinion Research survey puts his lead at three points in the Silver State, 49%-46%,.) Nevada is a particularly interesting case because, while polls have shown the president with a consistent lead in the state for months, he can't seem to break 50%. In any other state, this would portend inescapably bad news for the incumbent in what is essentially a two-way race, but Nevada is unique, in that it allows voters to cast their ballot for "None of these candidates." Thus, Obama's sub-50% approval rating need not be drag on his campaign if he can convince enough voters that Romney is an unacceptable alternative.

There's a lot of stupid people out east.

The money the president's campaign has been pouring into other swing states has yielded more appreciable dividends, however; he's opened up a small but obvious lead over Romney in Ohio and Virginia, and Michigan--which once looked like a swing state--now appears to be out of play. The Obama campaign has not been spending a lot of money in Michigan, but outside groups and labor unions have been covering for them, and the polls indicate a marked shift toward Democrats. The Detroit News poll has Obama up leading Romney by 14 points in Republican's the native state; last month, that lead was six points. EPIC-MRA also shows the president widening his lead over Mitt Romney in Michigan; late last month, their poll showed Obama ahead by just three points, 49%-46%, but their latest poll of likely voters in Michigan gives the incumbent a ten-point lead, 47%-37%. (Note that both candidates have lost support, though Romney has lost a lot more than Obama.) Republicans aren't convinced Michigan is a lost cause, however; Restore Our Future, the conservative super PAC that boosted Romney in the primaries, will be running ads in several media markets throughout the state through October 2nd. 

I'll cover Ohio and Virginia in a separate post, but I wanted to also mention that the presidential race remains a dead heat in Florida, which has expectedly been the largest recipient of campaign spending this election cycle, and of course, Obama's campaign has outspent Romney's, while pro-Romney/anti-Obama groups have slightly outspent pro-Obama/anti-Romney groups on the airwaves. With less than seven weeks to go before election Day and early voting already underway, the question becomes whether Romney, Ryan and their allies can overpower the president's machine (which I'll be posting about next week), especially with voters in some swing states feeling overwhelmed by all the attention focused on them. As November 6th draws closer, the effectiveness of campaign ads becomes more and more limited. Let's hope the Romney campaign makes the most of the next few weeks.

Obama's Post-Convention Bounce Is Gone

Earlier today, I had an experience I honestly never thought I would have. It involves a former member of Congress and violating the law, but that's not what I wanted to blog about.

If you watched any news show with a panel or round-table discussion in the past week and a half, then you've probably heard something about the Obama-Biden ticket getting a "bounce" in the polls following a hugely successful Democratic National Convention. Well, as of today, we can definitively state that that post-convention bounce is g-o-n-e.

As of today, Obama is back to his pre-convention poll positions in both the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls. (As of right now, Gallup and Rasmussen are the only two pollsters conducting tracking surveys of the pesidential race and publicizing the results.) The president leads Mitt Romney by one point, 47%-46%, in the Gallup poll and trails him by two, 45%-47%, in the Rasmussen poll. That's exactly what these two polls showed two weeks ago, right as the Dems were starting their convention in Charlotte.

Beyond these national poll numbers, the news today was mixed: Rasmussen also published the results of a survey showing Romney up two points on Obama in Colorado, 47%-45%, which is not good news for the president, who won the Centennial State by nine points in 2008. Gravis Marketing, which has been regularly polling voters in select swing states more frequently than any other independent pollster since the conventions, has Romney leading Obama by a statistically insignificant point in Florida, 48% to 47%. More significant than that, perhaps, is that their poll shows the U.S. Senate race there to be a dead heat, with Rep. Connie Mack (R., Fla.) leading Sen. Bill Nelson (D) by one point, 43%-42%. (This is one race that may hinge on which party's presidential candidate carries the state.)

The good news for Obama came from a Washington Post poll that gave him an eight-point lead in Virginia and an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that shows him leading Mitt Romney by five nationally (50%-45%). The Virginia results are especially stunning--and suspicious--as they are out of line with what every other poll of the race in that state has shown. Rare is the case when such a salient outlier is correct, but the same could be said about the Gravis Marketing survey that gave Romney a five-point lead over Obama, 49%-44%, in Virginia last week.

In my view, two states have been severely underpolled in the last week: Iowa and Wisconsin. Only once in the last six presidential elections has a Republican ticket carried either of these states, but the most recent polling data we have shows that they are both very much in play this election cycle. Now that the effects of the Democratic National Convention have worn off--at least as far as polls reflect--survey results from these and other swing states should be considered more accurate. Ordinarily I advise people with strong preferences in an election to avoid fixating on poll numbers, but from this point forward, I think it's worth it.

Can Huntsman make a Santorum-style surge in New Hampshire?

The biggest story to come out of last night's Iowa caucuses last night--apart from Mitt Romney's unprecedented eight-vote margin of victory--has to be Rick Santorum's amazing (and, for most, unexpected) performance. The former Pennsylvania senator had been polling in the single digits in Iowa and barely registering nationally. Then, about a month ago, his poll numbers in the Hawkeye state began creeping up, and by last week, he was nipping at the heels of Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, who were locked in a virtual dead heat atop most surveys. In no poll did Santorum register more than 18% support, however, making the 25% of the vote he pulled in last night's caucuses all the more impressive.

Never taken seriously by the media and most primary voters, Santorum long ago decided to focus almost exclusively on Iowa, and he still had to stretch his miniscule campaign treasury pretty thin (as evidenced by the pickup truck he traveled the state in). He didn't have much, but he had a message--and an m.o. (Sorry for the alliteration; I can't help it.): visit every county; talk to anyone who will listen; speak from the heart; perform the occasional exorcism. (I might not have that exactly right, but I wasn't there. This is all being relayed secondhand.) It's a strategy reminiscent of Mike Huckabee's 2008 campaign, which peaked when the former Arkansas governor won the Iowa GOP caucuses, only to flame out like a supernova.

It's also strikingly similar to another candidate's strategy this year. Jon Hunstman, Jr., the former Utah governor and veteran diplomat, is trying in New Hampshire what Santorum tried (successfully) in Iowa. He's devoted more time to the state than anyone left in this race (which, as of this morning, does not include Michele Bachmann), but he still lags way behind Romney in the polls there. (Even worse, he hasn't even gained as much support in the state as Ron Paul.)

This is not to say that all of Huntsman's time and effort in the state has been for naught. As is so often the case, the numbers tell the tale: Eight weeks ago, Huntsman and Gingrich were tied in the RCP average of polls in New Hampshire. As Gingrich began to gain steam, he pulled away, and soon moved into a firm 2nd place behind Romney in the Granite State. One month later, the former Speaker peaked at 24.3% in the RCP average. (Romney was at an even 36%.) Huntsman, meanwhile, crept up to 11.8% by Christmas, by which time Gingrich was down to 20%. Since then, however, Huntsman hasn't gained much traction; he's actually down slightly, at 10.3% as of today. (Gingrich sits at 11.3% and will probably sink even further before next Tuesday's primary.)

Today, the media's primary focus shifts from Iowa to New Hampshire, and the results of a Suffolk Tracking poll did not provide welcome news for Huntsman, who I maintain is the best candidate we've got. He registered only 7% support in the survey of 500 "likely GOP primary voters," a distant 4th behind Romney, Paul and Gingrich. That's actually his worst showing in a New Hampshire poll in nearly two months. If Huntsman is hoping to pull off a Santorum-style surprise, then he's going in the wrong direction.

Huntsman's best argument against the plutonian picture painted by the polls (There's that alliteration again! Damn!) may be that all polls taken in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses greatly underestimated Santorum's performance there, by anywhere from seven to ten percentage points. He may also want to point out that, six days before the caucuses, Santorum was at 9.8% in the RCP average of polls there, half a point lower than Huntsman's current position in the New Hampshire poll average.

It's highly unlikely that anyone other than Mitt Romney will win the 2012 New Hampshire Republican primary, but there's still a very good chance that Jon Huntsman will finish a strong second. The days ahead will be critical; if no one even comes close to Romney in the polls and he wins the primary by double digits, then he'll be in very good position going into South Carolina, with a ten-day buffer to shore up his support there.

To the anybody-but-Romney crowd, I say: you've gone through everyone else; if you don't want to vote for Mitt, then your only choices are Santorum, Huntsman or Dr. Paul. (C'mon, do you really even need to think about this?)

One Week To Go...

Are you sick of hearing about the impending Iowa caucuses?

Me neither. One week from today, voters in the Hawkeye State will kick off the 2012 election cycle with their mystifying mêlée of...whatever. Anyway, before parsing the polls out of Iowa, I'd like to discuss an interesting development in the race for the 2012 Republican nomination.

It seems that neither Texas Gov. Rick Perry nor former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (who until recently the undisputed frontrunner in the GOP primary campaign) have been able to collect and submit the 10,000 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot in Virginia. For Perry, this is not that big a deal; he wasn't going to be the nominee anyway (thank God), and it will be pretty pathetic if he hasn't dropped out of the race by the time Va. holds its primary. But for Gingrich, not being on the ballot in Old Dominion is a pretty big embarrassment, not least because it's his home state.

Yes, the former Speaker spent twenty years representing an Atlanta-area district in Georgia, but he currently resides in the state that has already delivered us more presidents than any other (eight, to be exact). I recently made the acquaintance of one Bryan Eppstein, a legend in Texas politics. Bryan's reputation as a political shark is such that politicians here have been known to retain him, even if they have no need for his services; they just don't want him working for an opponent's campaign. He told me that Al Gore did not lose the 2000 presidential election because he lost Florida; he lost the election because he failed to carry his home state of Tennessee.

I can remember watching the returns roll in on Election Night 2000, and while the race was still up in the air, I remarked that Bush had won Tennessee. (For the record, Bill Clinton carried Tennessee twice.) I wasn't as politically astute back then as I am now, but I found it strange that the election was so close when one candidate couldn't even carry his home state.

Gingrich's failure to make it onto the Virginia primary ballot is all the more galling when you consider that he's been leading the polls there. In a protracted race for the nomination, every delegate counts, and if Newt and Mitt are still duking it out come February, then effectively conceding a state with more delegates than New Hampshire and Iowa combined before any votes are cast will go down as one of the greatest campaign blunders of all time.

The Gingrich campaign didn't do their candidate any favors with their apparent sour-grapes attitude yesterday. Campaign director Michael Krull:

Only a failed system excludes four out of the six major candidates seeking access to the ballot. Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates.

I agree; voters should have the right to vote for any top contender, which is why Virginia, like all states, has certain requirements that candidates must meet in order for their names to appear on the ballot. Newt Gingrich failed to satisfy all the necessary requirements, so I don't think excluding him from the Virginia primary ballots evinces a "failed" system.

Back to Iowa: Gingrich's decline in the polls has not been matched by an equal surge in one candidate's numbers; instead, it appears that his loss is Mitt Romney's, Ron Paul's, Rick Santorum's and Michele Bachmann's gain. Every poll out of the state in the last two weeks has shown either romney or Paul leading; this has pundits buzzing about the prospect of the 76-year-old Congressman and cantankerous old coot winning (or even finishing a close 2nd in) the Iowa cacuses. Such a result would be in affront to the political narrative that the Iowa GOP caucuses are dominated by social conservatives. (Hence, the impressive performances of Mike Huckabee in '08, George W. Bush in 2000 and Pat Robertson in '88.) One interesting quirk in the run-up to the caucuses this year is the failure of any one candidate to lock in the evangelical vote; Michele Bachmann was the early favorite to win this group, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, and now it appears evangelical Christians are torn between Bachmann, Santorum, Perry and Gingrich. The latter two have had their moments as King of the Hill, and I highly doubt that either of them are coming back. Ditto Bachmann, but swap "Queen for a Day" for "King of the Hill." Santorum, however, has never topped the polls in any state and may just be the next candidate to surge. He's arguably devoted more time and energy to Iowa than anyone else, and his fervent appeal to church-going folk in middle America while running his campaign on a shoestring budget conjures up memories of Huckabee four years ago. (For the record, it was in December of 2007 that the former Arkansas governor surpassed Mitt Romney in the polls in Iowa, where Romney had held a steady lead for months.) My predictions: Ron Paul will soar no higher; he has reached his peak in Iowa, though his current poll position (22.7% in the RCP average) is probably pretty close to what he'll actually pull next week in the caucuses. Santorum will outperform Bachmann among evangelicals and finish well ahead of her in the final tallies. Romney looks good to win; he'll definitely be first or second. Perry and Gingrich will underwhelm but stay in the race, and Baylor will crush UW in the Alamo Bowl.