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August 14, 2008
By:
David Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Reveals the Truth Behind the Polls, is a former Vice President of the Gallup Organization and Managing Editor of the Gallup Poll. He'll be guest blogging here all week. THE UNCERTAIN ELECTORATE....In the latest Gallup tracking poll, Obama leads McCain by 6 percentage points, 48 percent to 42 percent, with 5 percent choosing another candidate, and just 5 percent undecided. If we could believe this poll, it's an incredible phenomenon — with 12 weeks still to go before the election, no vice presidential candidates yet selected, and the major parties' conventions still to come, 95 percent of the voters have already made up their minds whom to support! Gallup is not alone in portraying mostly a decided electorate. Most other polls show only about 8 percent to 10 percent of the electorate unsure of their vote choice, though real world experience hardly corroborates that picture. The reason for the apparent commitment of most voters is that the pollsters typically ask who respondents would vote for "if the election were held today." They know that if they asked who voters might choose in November, many would acknowledge that they haven't yet thought seriously about the contest, and don't know which candidate to support. And that, apparently, wouldn't be too interesting in a news story. The polling industry's obsession with asking who voters would support "today" gives a misleading picture of the true state of the electorate. That fact is made clear by the the latest CBS News poll, which suggests that the size of the "uncommitted voter" group is much larger that what the Gallup tracking poll indicates. To be fair to Gallup and a few other polls, CBS is not alone in trying to measure the uncommitted vote by the use of a follow-up question to determine voting intensity. A Gallup poll at the end of June, for example, found 23 percent of the electorate uncommitted, almost half the size of what CBS currently measures. An ABC News poll found a somewhat larger uncommitted group, about 28 percent, but only after first reporting that 98 percent of the electorate had decided on a candidate. Generally, it's difficult to find data about the uncommitted voters, because the media typically emphasize the initial horserace figures — based on the election being held "today." But if we want to know what voters are really thinking, we have to search deep into the news stories, or even examine the raw poll results, to see whether the poll has even tried to measure the undecided vote. When the election is just days away, and the final pre-election polls ask who voters would support "if the election were held today," the results are usually fairly accurate. After all, the election is almost "today," and the vast majority of voters have made up their minds. But in the weeks and months leading up to the election, the standard forced-choice question does not give us an accurate picture of the electorate. That the news media and their polls continue to play down, or ignore altogether, the true state of the electorate during the campaign is one of the enduring blights on the credibility of pre-election polls. —David Moore 2:09 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)Comments
Just goes to show you how ignorant the American public is. BOTH mccain and obama represent the same interests. NEITHER obama or mccain have upheld their sworn oath the the US constitution. Barky sold his supporters out and voted FOR FISA, even though he proclaims to be a constitutional "expert" and "professor." Ol' mccain did not even bother to vote. Of course, he hasn't shown up to work or vote on most important issues in the past few years either. NEITHER candidate deserves the support of liberals/progressives. I expect the repugs to promote reactionary policies and agendas. I don't expect or accept that the current Democratic candidate flip-flops on these issues after he secures the nomination. Posted by: on August 14, 2008 at 2:19 PM | PERMALINKAre there numbers on the relative likelihood of the uncommitted 39% voting, compared to the other groups? Posted by: Rip Tatermen on August 14, 2008 at 2:30 PM | PERMALINKBut WAM - when people are asked about preferences, even if they're a bit undecided for real, don't enough of them feel stimulated to pick someone anyway to down-skew the percentage of "undecideds"? BTW, "" up there, are you the same "" we keep ragging on in the thread below, "THE POLITICS OF HATE"? (- the anti-Obama Corsi book.) It's so hard to keep track of these blankers, at least with some made up name (isn't that more fun anyway?) we could keep track for consistency. Posted by: Neil B. - I am not Swan on August 14, 2008 at 2:39 PM | PERMALINKWhat I'd really like to see more of is, "on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to stick with that choice?" Then we could have a lot of fun with weighting and such. Posted by: joel w on August 14, 2008 at 2:46 PM | PERMALINKWhat I'd really like to see more of is, "on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to stick with that choice?" Then we could have a lot of fun with weighting and such. Posted by: joel w on August 14, 2008 at 2:46 PM | PERMALINKThe criticism of the lack of analysis given to widely-reported poll numbers is right on the money. A frequently unquestioned poll assertion is the concept of "likely voters". With campaign burnout setting into the populace, the earlier voting fervor has clearly faded, and the big surprise of this election may be how close to prior (pathetically low) voting rates this election turns out to be. Posted by: Richard on August 14, 2008 at 3:57 PM | PERMALINKWell that's a lot of huffin' and puffin' but do you think maybe there's a reason all the pollsters ask who you'd vote for if the election were held today? Most of them, including all of the candidate pollsters, are not trying to predict the election but to get a snapshot of where opinion is, er, today, hence, how would you vote...today. If you're going to run ads today, you want to know who to target today, not who to target 3 months from now. Posted by: Junius Brutus on August 14, 2008 at 4:31 PM | PERMALINKI think the biggest misconception is the notion that when pollsters ask who would you vote for if the election were held today, the results give an accurate picture of current public opinion. But that's not the case. The question posits a hypothetical situation, that the voter has to decide "today." But the respondent knows that's not the case, and will give top-of-mind answers, if only to satisfy the interviewer. Such answers don't reflect what voters expect to do, but rather what they feel will satisfy the interviewer. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the sample of respondents no longer represents the general electorate, because voters at large have not been forced into making a superficial decision to satisfy any interviewer. Thus, the undecided voters at large "remain" undecided, until...they make a decision! And that won't necessarily be the same as what voters in a poll were pressured into saying. Perhaps the most logical question to ask is this: If pollsters want to find out what voters are thinking "today" about their vote in November, why not just ask it that way? According to Alec Gallup, when George Gallup began asking the "today" version of the question, it was in 1935, long before the election, and he knew that most voters would not know -- and that wouldn't be interesting to the press. The purpose of the "today" version of the question is to suppress the percentage of voters who would say "I don't know." By the way, if one wants to run ads, then it might be helpful to know how many people are actually undecided, rather than have the illusion that virtually all voters have already made up their minds. Posted by: David Moore on August 14, 2008 at 5:26 PM | PERMALINKAnyway you look at these polls, it looks bad for Obama. Virtually tied with McCain despite the Republicans miserable & pathetic record. What percentage of white voters tell pollsters that they will vote for Obama, but vote McCain behind the curtains, in private? What percentage of Hillary Clinton's voters will vote McCain or just not vote? Posted by: ZombieNation on August 15, 2008 at 3:22 AM | PERMALINKGood morning, Mr. Moore. That more are undecided than shows on recent polls makes sense, as while so many voters would gouge their own eyes out rather than vote for McCain, Obama has shown some very real DLC-like tendencies, which are NOT as mainstream as he and other "centrists" would like to think they are. Posted by: trog69 on August 15, 2008 at 6:13 AM | PERMALINKAs reported by Kevin Nealon on an old (1992?) Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment: Polls show that 96% of Americans say that "if the election were held today,"... they'd be really, really surprised! Post a comment
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