EXCELLENT analysis/debunking of the infamous Romney bump.... by the top YouGov pollster!

[reformist2]

Obama stays ahead - just

by Peter Kellner Oct 23, 2012

There are two versions of what has happened in the past three weeks in the battle to be US President. One is the version told by most nationwide polls and accepted by the media; the second, told by a minority of nationwide polls, including YouGov, and most polls in the key battleground states, is significantly different.

Version one says that the first television debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was a game-changer. If we average the polls conducted by Gallup, Pew, Ipsos, ARG and the Daily Kos, we find that before the debate, Obama was ahead by four points; afterwards Romney led by four – a shift in the lead of eight points. Before the debate, Obama was heading for a clear victory; afterwards, Romney looked the more likely winner. Since then, the contest has narrowed a little, but Romney has held most of his initial gains.

Version two says that the first debate made only a small difference. If we average the polls conducted by YouGov, Rasmussen and ABC/Washington Post, then the debate shifted the nationwide vote shares by just a single point: from an Obama lead beforehand of 2% to an Obama lead of 1% afterwards. The figures have stuck close to that ever since. (YouGov’s latest survey, completed this Monday, shows Obama 2% ahead.)

Movements in polls in the key states sit nearer version two than version one. If we average their findings then Florida tipped from Obama to Romney after the first debate, but Obama remained ahead in other key states – notably Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico. Obama narrowly led in Virginia and Colorado before the first debate; afterwards, they were too close to call. On these figures, Obama would still win the electoral college, even if Romney won Virginia and Colorado.

Why these two kinds of difference – between different national polls, and between most national and most state-level polls? The answer, I’m afraid, requires some technical delving into the data. For those who DON’T want to come on this journey, my advice is to believe the majority of state polls and the minority of national polls (including YouGov). I believe that the bulk of the media (especially, but not only, Fox News), with their natural tendency to fasten onto the more dramatic polling shifts, have simply got the story of the past three weeks wrong. Obama has remained ahead since last month’s Democratic convention. His (modest) lead as probably narrowed fractionally since the beginning of October, but any movements in the national figures, and in most state-level races, have been within the margin of error.

Now for the explanation. In all polls these days, the raw data must be handled with care. It’s normal for the sample to contain too many people in some groups, and too few in others. So all reputable pollsters adjust their raw data to remove these errors. It is standard practice to ensure that the published figures, after correcting these errors, contain the right number of people by age, gender, region and either social class (Britain) or highest educational qualification (US). Most US polls also weight by race.

Beyond that, there are two schools of thought. Should polls correct ONLY for these demographic factors, or should they also seek to ensure that their published figures are politically balanced? In Britain these days, most companies employ political weighting. YouGov anchors its polls in what our panel members told us at the last general election; other companies ask people in each poll how they voted in 2010, and use this information to adjust their raw data. Ipsos-MORI are unusual in NOT applying any political weighting.

A similar variation applies to the US. The difference is that there, most pollsters apply only demographic weights. YouGov and Rasmussen are unusual in taking account of political partisanship – whether people think of themselves generally as Democratic, Republican or Independent. (This is generally known as party identification, or party ID.)

In the case of YouGov’s weekly nationwide polls for The Economist, we apply the same overall principle as in Britain. That is, we draw on baseline information in order to ensure consistency in the political profiles of our samples. Specifically we know the party ID of most panel members last December, and also how they voted in 2008 and/or 2010, from what they told us at the time. (What’s important is not that the month we collected a mass of ID data happened to be last December; rather, the point is that we have a common baseline for anchoring this year’s polls.) This doesn’t remove all risk of sampling variation – sadly, we have been unable to repeal the laws of probability – but it does reduce the risk of a rogue poll in which our sample is demographically fine but politically skewed.

That is not all. YouGov has also conducted two large-scale surveys in 25 states for CBS News, one before the first TV debate and one afterwards. These covered all the battleground states, plus the largest states such as California, Texas and New York. The key point is that this was a true panel study. We questioned the same people twice. This allowed us to investigate what change, if any, took place at the level of individual voters, NOT by comparing results from different samples. Any change in the numbers in such panel studies reflects real changes by real voters. And our overall sample was much larger than normal. We polled almost 33,000 electors in September, and reinterviewed more than 25,000 of them after the first debate.

The message from this study was clear. The Romney bounce was tiny. Overall, YouGov found just a one-point narrowing of Obama’s lead.



More - a lot more - at:

http://today.yougov.com/news/2012/10/23/obama-stays-ahead-just/

[kuus27]

1. I WILL BE SICK IF THE DEMS BLOW THE LEAD

I hate how dems do not keep important vote changing issues out front and
make sure the public does not forget them. The conservatives are masters of
this, example being how every conservative talking head is pounding the way
Obama handled our embassy tragedy, they are not going to let the voters forget.
How the dems could let two huge game changing controversies of Romney's
slip into the background and not pound them and pound them into the voters
psyche is amazingly stupid because the are moral issues that have never been
violated by an American president.

1. Harry Reid has been the only one to refuse to accept Romney's refusal to
be open about his back taxes. Every democratic politician and every
liberal talking head should publicly keep demanding Romney let the
voters see the taxes. What would the conservatives do if Obama
was hiding tax returns, we all know the answer, they would not let us
forget it and make this a morality issue that speaks to the Obama's
character. This issue needs to be ramped up again in the closing days.

2. We all grew up with the idea that people who had Swiss bank accounts
were trying to skirt our tax system and this was immoral and sometimes
illegal behavior. It needs to be shouted to the rooftops that to have an
American president be one of these people sinks our country to a new
moral low point. Dems need to say to voters " ask yourself what would be
said if Obama was found to have Swiss bank accounts"? Fox talking
heads and conservative politicians would speed past morality and make
people start questioning his patriotism. They would not let this go, the voters
would hear about it right up to election day.


HOW CAN DEMS LET THESE TWO GAME CHANGING ISSUES GO

[regnaD kciN]

2. What does this have to do with the topic?