Roper Center Newsletter
Parsing The Polls |
||
|
|
|
| Year After Election: Obama vs. the Economy (ABC News: The Polling Unit) Since the election, public opinion has not moved on the big issue, the economy. Swine Flu Interest Outpaces Coverage (Pew People & the Press) Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:58:15 EST Election 2009 Exit Polls: From Obama to the Economy (ABC News: The Polling Unit) Virginia, New Jersey Exit Polls to Reveal Mood on Obama, Economy, Health Care Concerns Election-Day Confidence No Better than Last Year (ABC News: The Polling Unit) Just 10 percent of Americans rate the economy positively. Tomorrow's Elections: An Obama Referendum? (ABC News: The Polling Unit) While spinmeisters from both sides will do their best after tomorrows results are in, it's a dicey business to draw broad conclusions from state and local off-year elections. The turnout's different and the issues and candidates are idiosyncratic, meaning conclusions... Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:24:22 -0500 
Tomorrow's Elections: An Obama Referendum? (ABC News: The Numbers) While spinmeisters from both sides will do their best after tomorrows results are in, it's a dicey business to draw broad conclusions from state and local off-year elections. The turnout's different and the issues and candidates are idiosyncratic, meaning conclusions... 
Tomorrow's Elections: An Obama Referendum? (ABC News: The Numbers) While spinmeisters from both sides will do their best after tomorrows results are in, it's a dicey business to draw broad conclusions from state and local off-year elections. The turnout's different and the issues and candidates are idiosyncratic, meaning conclusions... Scrambling regional patterns in Virginia (Washington Post: Behind the Numbers) Both candidates in this year's Virginia gubernatorial campaign made claims of transformational regional appeal that would defy the state's typical partisan leanings - Republican Robert F. McDonnell touting his Northern Virginia roots and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds dubbing the rural west "Deeds Country." A look at the regional breaks in the latest Washington Post poll side-by-side with historical voting patterns shows McDonnell has done a better job translating his hometown ties into voter appeal. Within Northern Virginia, McDonnell's showing at the moment nears that of George W. Bush in 2004 and 2000, and is about on par with Mark Earley's 2001 gubernatorial tally. But McDonnell has really gained ground in the outer suburbs. There, he has the support of 59 percent of likely voters in the Post poll, better than any top-of-the-ticket Republican this decade. By contrast, comparing Deeds' regional standings to those of past Democrats, his showing could rate Schwarzenegger's Nastygram: One in 10 Billion? (ABC News: The Numbers) What are the odds California Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers acrostic nastygram could have happened by random chance? My opening bid is about one in 10 billion. Thats not the right answer, but it does provide a rough sense of what the... Schwarzenegger's Nastygram: One in 10 Billion? (ABC News: The Numbers) What are the odds California Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers acrostic nastygram could have happened by random chance? My opening bid is about one in 10 billion. Thats not the right answer, but it does provide a rough sense of what the...
|
US: National Survey (Economist 11/1-3) (Pollster.com) Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:41:53 -0500 US: National Survey (Kos 11/2-5) (Pollster.com) Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:16:25 -0500 US: Health Care (CNN 10/30-11/1) (Pollster.com) Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:46:28 -0500 How Did the Polls Do in 2009? (Pollster.com) Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:53 -0500 US: News Interest (Pew 10/30-11/2) (Pollster.com) Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:44:43 -0500 
Most California voters don't plan to get swine flu vaccine, Times/USC poll finds (Los Angeles Times) Though 70% overall think the vaccine is safe, blacks and Latinos are more wary of it. As concern spreads about H1N1 flu, a new survey of California voters found that while most consider the vaccine safe, a majority had no plans to get vaccinated. The poll also found that blacks and Latinos are far more likely than other groups to say they believe the vaccine could be unsafe. Posted: Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:40:50 GMT SWISS LESS WARY OF FOREIGNERS THAN A DECADE AGO: SURVEY (The Tocqueville Connection) GENEVA, Nov 7, 2009 (AFP) - Switzerland appears to be less skeptical offoreigners than a decade ago, with most Swiss now finding that the proportion of foreigners residing here is not too high, a survey showed Saturday. Posted: Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:15:50 GMT Afghan opinion poll: what the papers say (Channel 4) The exclusive YouGov poll for Channel 4 News features in many of today's papers, focusing on the survey's findings that support is waning for the mission in Afghanistan. Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:42:01 GMT Poll: One-third can find, get swine flu vaccine (AP via Yahoo! News) Only about a third of adults who have tried to get a swine flu vaccine have been able to get it, according to a new national poll. Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:51:50 GMT Poll shows surge in support for Abhisit (The Nation - Thailand's English news) The popularity rating of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva tripled after his decisive action of downgrading diplomatic ties with Cambodia, according to an Abac Poll survey released yesterday. Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:13:22 GMT |
|
Unemployment Hits 10.2 Percent Oops. Back in August, I said that I thought there was only about a 1 in 3 chance that unemployment would break the 10 percent barrier. I think it was a well-reasoned analysis, but sure did turn out wrong. The data from the establishment survey -- which is completely separate from the household survey by which the unemployment rate is calculated -- wasn't quite as bad. This is the figure that the markets tend to trust more, which is one reason the Dow is slightly up today (although I do think it's somewhat overvalued and has been for a month or so). Still, even the "good" report had the economy shedding another 190,000 jobs.  Not that it necessarily means anything, but there's an odd symmetry to that graph: a period from January through August last year where the payroll deltas were bad, but fairly steady from month to month, and then an inverted peak where things were really awful, and now what looks to be another sort of plateau. January 2008 was the month when the payrolls figure turned negative, and they were at their worst in January 2009 -- if things indeed turn out to be symmetric, that would mean that January 2010 is the last month when the economy is still shedding jobs, and February when it starts creating them. This stuff ought to be much more of a reason for Democrats to worry than whatever happened on Tuesday. Even if the jobs come back a little faster than expected once the employment picture in fact turns the corner, which I think is possible, voters are liable to be looking at an unemployment rate on the order of 9.5 percent as they go to the polls for the midterms.  Skipping Elections, Strategic Vision Has Not Polled Since Controversy Arose Several weeks ago, I ignited a controversy by pointing toward statistical evidence that Strategic Vision, LLC, a Blairsville, Georgia based public relations firm that until recently had issued political polls, may have been faking its results. Strategic Vision vehemently denied my interpretation of the evidence and made public threats to sue me. But no lawyer has contacted me, and in fact, Strategic Vision has not conducted any further public polling since that time. The firm's last poll was issued on September 24th -- one day before the controversy arose. It was a poll of the governor's race and other contests in New Jersey, a state which Strategic Vision has polled frequently for many years, including on 4/22, 6/24, 7/22 and 9/24 of this year. And yet, even as the race drew closer and began to receive widespread national attention, Strategic Vision did not issue any fresh polling. This contrasts with previous patterns in which they had accelerated their polling schedule prior to elections, including the previous gubernatorial election in New Jersey in 2005 when Strategic Vision issued its final poll of the contest on November 2nd of that year. Strategic Vision's CEO, David E. Johnson, was interviewed by the Washington Times about the Virginia gubernatorial race in late October. And Strategic Vision has issued a couple of press releases on matters unrelated to politics; on October 16th, for instance, they issued a press release to announce that they would be "offering people within the toy industry free thirty-minute consultations to jumpstart their marketing and publicity efforts for the holidays and Toy Fair 2010." But in general, they've had very little public presence over the past several weeks. One of the facts that may be significant here is that it appears that polling has never been Strategic Vision's main source of income. A search of Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline database sent to me by DavidNYC of Swing State Project turned up just $5,795 in disbursements to Strategic Vision from committees and candidates for federal office since 2004. All came in 2004 from Mike Crotts, a former candidate in Georgia's 8th Congressional District, and none were for polling -- instead, the expenditures were marked as being for website design and advertising. By contrast, the prolific and well-regarded Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies had more than $20 million in disbursements over the same period, covering more than 220 clients. Now, Strategic Vision has clearly gotten some business from polling clients -- the aforementioned series of surveys they did for the Friedman Foundation, for instance. And the CQ Moneyline database will not cover gubernatorial candidates or candidates for other state and local offices. Strategic Vision claims on its website to have conducted polling on behalf of candidates for the U.S. Senate in Kansas and Florida, and candidates for the U.S. House in FL-13 and GA-8, but the identities of the candidates are not specified. An e-mail sent to David E. Johnson inquiring whether the CQ Moneyline database accurately reflected the limited scope of their polling for federal candidates was not returned. In any event, their client list appears to be rather limited, especially when compared with the volume of public polling that Strategic Vision has released, which by its own estimation would have cost it a couple million dollars had it actually been conducted. The reason this might be relevant is that it may give Strategic Vision more incentive to essentially adopt a "duck-and-cover" strategy and make a quiet exit from the polling business. If Strategic Vision were more dependent on polling clients for its revenues, then it would probably have wanted to make a more vigorous effort to defend its reputation. But in light of their unwillingness or inability to do so, it appears they may have concluded that releasing additional public polling would only invite renewed scrutiny and further damage their reputation. In other words, they may have decided to cut their losses and focus on their original line of business in public relations, presumably hoping that prospective clients in the toy manufacturing or literary services businesses are far enough removed from the political world that they won't care about the possibility that Strategic Vision has faked some or all of their polls.  |
||
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:13:42 -0500
© Roper Center, University of Connecticut. All Rights Reserved.