polls – Media Nation

Shocking news from Iowa, more sobering numbers from the Times, and a map that favors Harris

The map if the Times’ poll is right*

A huge and encouraging outlier for Kamala Harris on Saturday night. Some more sobering numbers today.

First, the encouraging news. As you may already know, the new Iowa Poll from Ann Selzer, which gets high marks from FiveThirtyEight, shows Harris with a three-point lead over Donald Trump. It’s hard to know what to make of this. But Iowa has gone deep red in recent elections, and virtually every other survey has put Trump well in the lead — including earlier samples taken by the same poll.

The margin, 47% for Harris and 44% for Trump, is being driven by voters over 65, especially women, who say they are supporting Harris by 63% to 28%. But Harris also has a slight edge among older men, 47% to 45%.

What does this mean? I’m not a polling expert. I can tell you that the latest Emerson Poll, which also gets very high marks, continues to show Trump with a nine-point lead in Iowa. On the other hand, a new Miami University poll shows Trump with just a three-point lead in deep-red Ohio, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown with a two-point lead over his Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno. I should add that FiveThirtyEight does not rate this poll.

If the Iowa and Ohio results are picking up something real, then Harris may be headed not just for a victory, but for one larger than anyone expects. My own totally unscientific, vibe-based sense of the race is that there are three possible outcomes: (1) a narrow Trump win; (2) a narrow Harris win; (3) a surprisingly substantial Harris win. I’m going for somewhere between (2) and (3). Needless to say, Harris will win the popular vote with ease.

Finally, The New York Times this morning came out with its last poll before Election Day, and it is simultaneously worrying for Harris yet showing some unexpected opportunities. The Times-Siena poll sits atop the FiveThirtyEight rankings, so we can’t ignore it — although, as Josh Marshall has observed, it also relies on a different understanding of the electorate from what most other pollsters are using, and that understanding may be right or wrong.

*Based on the barest of margins in the Times poll (something you really can’t do given that all these numbers are well within the margin of error), Harris would lose the Blue Wall state of Michigan and win Pennsylvania. Wisconsin seems a little safer. But she also has small leads in North Carolina and Georgia.

One other possible good sign for Harris: the Times-Siena poll goes all the way back to Oct. 24 (through Nov. 2), and Harris seems to have built momentum in recent days. In any case, I played around with the map, above, and awarded Harris every state in which the Times poll has her ahead, even by less than 1% (again: don’t try this at home) It shows Harris with 293 electoral votes, 21 more than the 270 needed. I also flipped Pennsylvania to Trump, and Harris would still win, with 274 electoral votes.

Corrections: My map is an accurate reflection of the Times-Siena poll, but an earlier version of this post said that Harris was ahead in Arizona. She’s not. I’ve also corrected the number of Electoral College votes needed to win.

With Election Day upon us, some new numbers suggest that Harris has a slight advantage

Cherry-picking the data while trying to maintain my sanity: With Election Day looming, I want to share four sets of numbers suggesting that Kamala Harris really will dispatch the Orange Menace once and for all.

First, The Economist’s election model, which has showed Donald Trump with slight edge in recent days, has flipped again, giving Harris a 52% chance of winning and Trump 48%.

The model is similar to what FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver do: it’s based on some high-level math that takes into account polls, poll quality and other measures and then runs multiple computerized simulations. You may recall that similar models gave Hillary Clinton a 70% to 95% chance of winning in 2016, so obviously this needs to be taken with several truckloads of salt. Still, it’s better to be at 52% than 48%.

Second, the latest Marist Poll, which FiveThirtyEight judges to be of high quality, gives Harris a lead of between 2% and 3% in the all-important Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Again, that’s not much, and it’s well within the margin of error. But it’s better to be ahead than behind.

Third, The Washington Post’s polling average —that is, an actual average of polls rather than a FiveThirtyEight-style simulation — also has Harris slightly ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan (by 2%) and in Pennsylvania (by less than 1%). The Post’s averages have consistently tilted more toward Harris than The New York Times’, but there’s no reason to think that the Times is doing a better job with these than the Post.

Finally, the Gallup Poll shows a 10-point enthusiasm gap favoring Harris, with 77% of Democrats and voters who lean Democrat saying they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting and 67% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying the same. As with all these numbers, it’s impossible to say exactly how that’s going to play out, but it’s better to be at the higher rather than the lower number.

Why asking voters who they think will win might be the smarter question

Nate Silver’s current project, the Silver Bulletin, is online at natesilver.net

I freely confess to paying more attention to polls than I should. Multiple times a day I check in with FiveThirtyEight, still going strong under the auspices of ABC News despite founder Nate Silver’s departure, to see what the odds are that Kamala Harris will prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House. (I’m writing this Thursday evening, and the site gives Harris a 61% chance of winning and Trump 39%. Oh, no! Harris was at 64% earlier in the day!)

Silver himself is still at it, and though I don’t pay the subscription fee I’d need to see what his odds are, his analysis of the polls shows that Harris has a 2.7% lead nationally and — more important — small leads in the crucial swing states of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well as a basket of bluer swing states.

What I want to call your attention to here, though, is a fascinating analysis in The Washington Post showing that Harris does much better when voters are asked not who they’re voting for but who they think is going to win. Aaron Blake writes (free link) that academic studies show such a finding can be a good predictor of who is going to win — maybe even better than the direct-question approach:

[S]ome research suggests that this is actually a good measure of where things might end up — possibly even a better measure than merely asking people whom they intend to vote for.

The reason is that it involves people accounting for the preferences of the people around them — turning them into “mini-anthropologists,” in the words of longtime Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport — and possibly even hinting at their own hidden or subconscious preferences.

How pronounced is the effect? The who-do-you-think-will-win question has Harris prevailing by double digits in some recent polls, and similar questions in previous races helped predict President Barack Obama’s re-election victory over Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden’s narrower-than-expected defeat of Trump in 2020.

None of this matters, of course. But for those of us looking for a sign — any sign — that Trump’s existential threat to the country will finally be brought to an end, it’s worth pondering, and savoring.

A new poll shows Clinton slumping. But why?

Hillary Clinton in 2013. Photo (cc) by Steve Rhodes. Some rights reserved.

The email controversy has taken such a toll on Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy that it’s dragged her below 50 percent among Democrats, The Washington Post reports. But the new Post-ABC News poll from which that conclusion is drawn shows that other, more mundane factors may have more to do with her sagging numbers.

The poll shows that the percentage of Democratic-leaning voters who say they back Clinton has fallen from 63 percent in mid-July to just 42 percent last week — a 21-point drop. Sounds like trouble, especially when you look at numbers showing that a rising percentage of respondents believe Clinton is untrustworthy.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost significant ground over the past two months, as she has struggled to manage the controversy over her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state,” write the Post’s Dan Balz and Scott Clement.

But is that the most important explanation for her declining numbers? My guess is no.

First, Bernie Sanders’ support has risen from 14 percent to 24 percent, a phenomenon that strikes me as entirely independent of any concerns about Clinton’s emails. Sanders is experiencing the sort of surge that is not uncommon for the most clearly progressive candidate in the months leading up to the primaries — that is, the candidate who best represents “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” as Howard Dean once put it. Sanders is actually leading Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to some polls. We’ll see whether it lasts.

Second, a Joe Biden candidacy wasn’t on anyone’s radar in July, yet the vice president attracted 12 percent of respondents anyway. Last week, with Biden looking like he might jump in, he rose to 21 percent, just behind Sanders. Again, I don’t think it makes sense to assume the emails are mainly responsible for Biden’s rise, although I’m sure he looks better to some voters as a result of Clinton’s struggles. Mainly, though, Biden enjoys an enormous reservoir of goodwill. All it took was an indication that he might actually run for his numbers to go up.

And if you remove Biden from the equation, Clinton leads Sanders by a margin of 56 percent to 28 percent. With Biden seemingly signaling to Stephen Colbert that he won’t take the plunge, that seems like a truer picture of the state of the Democratic race.

Clinton may or may not be in trouble with the electorate as a whole, but there’s little indication that Democrats are inclined to reject her.

Debunking the “partisan shifts” on surveillance

The most important (and chilling) finding from the latest Pew Research Center/Washington Post survey is that 56 percent of Americans say they support the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records, email and other cloud surveillance systems for electronic traffic.

A few, though, have pointed to a chart showing supposed hypocrisy on the part of Democrats. In January 2006, self-identified Democrats opposed the NSA’s surveillance programs by a margin of two to one. Today they support those programs by an almost identical margin.

The chart is helpfully labeled “Partisan Shifts in Views of NSA Surveillance Programs.” But what really matters is a parenthetical: “See previous table for differences in question wording.”

So I did, and you can, too. The 2006 survey, by ABC News and The Washington Post, was based on the following proposition: “NSA has been investigating people suspected of terrorist involvement by secretly listening in on phone calls & reading emails without court approval…”

This time around, Pew and the Post put it this way: “NSA has been getting secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism…”

I added the emphasis in both instances to highlight the differences. Under George W. Bush, without court approval; under Barack Obama, with court approval. And: “listening in on phone calls” in 2006 versus “track[ing] calls” in 2013. A considerable difference, regardless of what you think of the NSA’s activities (and, for the record, I’m glad they’ve been exposed).

Mitt Romney, the inevitable and unelectable man

It’s only another poll, but today’s news from Public Policy Polling that Rick Santorum has jumped out to a 38 percent to 23 percent lead over Mitt Romney prompts me ponder the fate of our former governor.

From the start, Romney’s candidacy has been defined by two dynamics.

On the one hand, there’s little doubt that he is absolutely unacceptable to right-wing Republicans, which is to say the people who actually comprise a majority of activists in the nominating process.

On the other hand, I can’t remember the last time a serious candidate for national office such as Romney was lucky enough to run against such a weak field of competitors. Santorum and Newt Gingrich are scarcely more credible than Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. Ron Paul is running for his own purposes, which do not include becoming president. (Frankly, I’m not even sure that was Santorum’s or Gingrich’s goal when they first started running. Gingrich, in particular, mainly seemed interested in selling books and boosting his speaking fees.)

It’s because of my “one hand” that I believed until late last fall that Romney would never win the nomination. It’s because of my “other hand” that I gradually came to believe Romney had to win — and that, in fact, the health of our democracy depended on his keeping genuine loathsome characters such as Gingrich and Santorum as far away from the White House as possible.

After Florida, it looked like it was finally over, and that sullen Republicans would do what they were told. After Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, what will happen next is anyone’s guess. Romney’s craven speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference won’t help him, and his never-ending repositioning on issues has left him with an unappetizing choice between trying to look like he believes in something — anything — or giving in to his urge to tell whatever audience he’s speaking to exactly what he imagines it wants to hear.

If there’s still an authentic Romney underneath all the phony exteriors he’s tried on and discarded, then it is probably someone without a real political orientation — a pragmatic problem-solver, too liberal for Republicans (outside of Massachusetts), too conservative for Democrats, too bloodless and unappealing to be able to turn those qualities into a virtue, the way Ross Perot briefly did ~~a dozen years~~ two decades ago. [Seems like it was just last week!]

I imagine Romney will turn the battleship around and aim the cannons of his Super PAC at Santorum. I’d guess that we’ll be hearing about disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s (as yet unproven) connection to the Republican Frontrunner of the Moment. It may work. And yes, if Romney does somehow manage to stagger to the nomination, he’ll still be a more formidable candidate against President Obama than any other Republican.

But what we’re watching now is a strange and disturbing dynamic, as Romney — someone whose qualifications and experience are impressive, whatever his shortcomings as a candidate — tries to pick his way through the ruins of a once-great political party that has collapsed into a vestigial appendage of the Fox News Channel.

Photo (cc) by Gage Skidmore and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Rewarding those they despise the most

If the polls and the pundits are to be believed, voters nationwide are about to deliver a stinging rebuke to our most popular elected official by casting their ballots in favor of our most despised political class. No, I’m not making this up. And it really calls into question what people are thinking, given that they appear poised to vote Republican on Tuesday.

Now, who is the most popular elected official? That would be the much-maligned President Obama, whose job-approval ratings are in rough shape, but who, as we shall see, stands head and shoulders above Congress. Take a look at this, and you’ll see that, in recent polls, Obama’s job approval rating is almost evenly divided between positive and negative.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that 45 percent of respondents approve of the president’s performance and 52 percent disapprove. That seems to be in line with other polls I’ve seen. Yet some polls actually reverse those numbers in Obama’s favor. For instance, this Newsweek poll finds that 54 percent approve of Obama’s job performance and 40 percent disapprove. That does not sound like a president who’s down for the count.

Obama’s numbers are not only much better than those of Congress, but the congressional numbers break down in a way that is favorable to him. The public, according to surveys, despises Congress — but it loathes the Democrats slightly less than the Republicans.

Just one out of many examples: A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that the public gives Democratic members of Congress a 36 percent positive/61 percent negative job-approval rating. The same poll shows that respondents gave Republican members of Congress a 30 percent favorable rating and a 67 percent unfavorable assessment.

You might find a few exceptions, but the emphasis would be on “few.” I’ve been following these numbers off and on since Obama’s inauguration, and congressional Republicans have consistently come in last in the three-way race for job approval.

How to explain the likelihood that the Republicans will make huge gains on Capitol Hill next week? I’m not sure it can be explained. For instance, today’s New York Times reports the results of a poll it conducted with CBS News that shows next Tuesday will be a huge day for the GOP. Yet, bizarrely, the poll also finds:

[N]early 60 percent of Americans were optimistic about Mr. Obama’s next two years in office and nearly 70 percent said the economic slump is temporary. Half said the economy was where they expected it would be at this point, and less than 10 percent blamed the current administration for the state of the economy, leaving the onus on former President George W. Bush and Wall Street.

Those findings are everything Obama and congressional Democrats could hope for. The most you can say, though, is that voters will give the president an opportunity to dig out from the rubble they are about to dump on him next Tuesday. Strange days indeed.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

A tale of two — uh, one poll

From the Boston Herald:

Gov. Deval Patrick’s standing with voters is so weak that this year’s race for governor is shaping up as a contest between his two rivals, a new Suffolk University-7News poll shows.

From the Associated Press:

Gov. Deval Patrick is leading Republican Charles Baker and independent Timothy Cahill in the latest public Massachusetts gubernatorial poll.

So who’s right? One answer is that the poll shows Patrick leading with 33 percent. Baker gets 25 percent and Cahill 23 percent. Score one for the AP.

Yet the Herald’s lede does accurately reflect the analysis of pollster David Paleologos, who says, “This race is really between Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill. Whoever emerges between the Baker-Cahill race is likely to be the winner.”

My gut tells me that Paleologos is being way too aggressive in reading the numbers, even if they are his numbers. It’s early. My suspicion is that Cahill will fade away, leaving Baker as Patrick’s principal challenger. Patrick’s political standing is pretty weak at the moment, but he’s a formidable campaigner.

Let’s see where this race stands on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day.

Not fat, not a lady, but Nate Silver is singing

This may be the last polling analysis of the Massachusetts Senate race worth paying attention to before the voting starts tomorrow. According to Nate Silver, Republican candidate Scott Brown now has a 74 percent chance of winning. As recently as last night, Silver very tentatively gave Democrat Martha Coakley a 58 percent chance.

What happened? A series of polls throughout today that just got worse and worse for Coakley. Silver explains:

Coakley’s odds are substantially worse than they appeared to be 24 hours ago, when there were fewer credible polls to evaluate and there appeared to be some chance that her numbers were bottoming out and perhaps reversing. However, the ARG and Research 2000 polls both show clear and recent trends against her. Indeed the model, which was optimized for regular rather than special elections, may be too slow to incorporate new information and may understate the magnitude of the trend toward Brown.

What I like about Silver is that he’s not a pollster — rather, he’s someone who looks at a wide range of polls and makes sense of them. His record in the presidential campaign was outstanding.

This is very bad news for the Coakley campaign.

Is there any evidence of anti-Brown push-polling?

I find myself wondering whether I should have passed on claims that someone is involved in push-polling targeted at Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown. In the case of those anti-Martha Coakley calls, I have specific examples from people I know. The anti-Brown calls amount to no more than a rumor.

If you have received a push-poll call aimed at damaging Brown, please post some details. If you want to be taken seriously, use your real name.