Rasmussen, Systemic Polling Failure, and "Truth"

There's quite a brouhaha spinning around the interwebs with conservatives complaining that Nate Silver is cooking the books in his polling model because he's a liberal shill. Here's the argument in its original full form. It is pure drivel. Silver himself had this brilliant retort today ...

But, anyway, the whole thing got me to thinking about the state of the polls and the state of the race. Conservatives are reading Rasmussen and Gravis and Gallup and celebrating what is sure to be a big victory for Romney next Tuesday. Liberals are reading ... well, everything else and are sweating the national vote polls that have it close (actually, if you take Gallup and Rasmussen out of the naional poll averages, Obama is very slightly ahead) but feeling pretty comfortable about the state-level polls that show Obama leading in more than enough states to win a majority in the Electoral College.

What is the state of the race and whose polls are right? The truth is we don't really know for sure which set of polls is right. But, if I had to bet, I'd say Rasmussen and Gallup are wrong (for different reasons). Let me lay out the case for each side and explain why I think Rasmussen has it wrong but it is important to acknowledge that ...

Rasmussen could be right. Rasmussen has been identified as a pollster that has a "Republican lean" but this is really a mislabeling of what they are doing. It suggests that the pollster is just putting his thumb on the scale and cooking the books. That's not what Rasmussen is doing. At least I'm pretty sure they're not. What Rasmussen does is to use "dynamic party weighting." They weight their sample of voters so that they get to a designated number of Republicans and Democrats in their sample. The party weighting is "dynamic" because Rasmussen comes up with the relative weights of Republicans and Democrats based on some recent previous period of polling. Effectively, Rasmussen is making an educated guess about what the partisan makeup of the electorate will be (nationally or in a state) and then they make sure their sample looks like that.

So is it possible Rasmussen is right? Absolutely, it is possible. If their dynamic weights are accurate, then their polls will be accurate. And the flipside is also true. If their weights are wrong, they'll be wrong.

So what's the case against Rasmussen? A couple of days ago, Nate Cohn wrote that, if the polls stay where they are up to Election Day, Mitt Romney's only hope will be "systemic polling failure." This means that the vast majority of polls must have done something (question wording, poor sampling, etc.) that led them all to the wrong answer. Nate Cohn is right about this.

Systemic polling failure does happen. To understand why it is unlikely, we have to understand what other pollsters are doing differently than Rasmussen to get such systematically different results. First, other pollsters are not weighting by party ID at all. To most pollsters, party ID is something to be discovered in a poll, not something to use to weight the sample. This is because party ID is a fluid construct. People tend to change their response to a party ID question based on how they feel about the competing presidential candidates or based on how enthused they are to vote for their preferred candidate. Other pollsters simply ask respondents who they are planning to vote for and then use likely voter screens (of different varieties) to determine who is likely to vote and who is a non-voter.

It is entirely possible that this methodology will lead to a sample that is not reflective of the population as a whole. One reason is simply statistical variation. Maybe you just happened to get a disproportionate number of Romney supporters in your sample. This happens but we know the precise likelihood it will happen and this problem is corrected for by the various polling averages out there. Only a very small number of polls will be outliers for this reason and, when they are averaged into the rest, they will not have a substantial effect on the overall average number. A second problem is some kind of problem with the way we are sampling. One problem along these lines is the undersampling of certain kinds of populations like cell phone users or Hispanic voters who do not speak English, either of which may not be called by pollsters for different reasons. Some pollsters do call cell phones and some call Spanish-only voters. Here's Stan Greenberg talking about why undersampling of cell phone voters is causing Obama voters to be under-represented in the public polls we see:



Other pollsters who are good at what they do, use some kind of weighting mechanism to try to get a representative sample without calling them. This is increasingly problematic but is done well by some pollsters (like PPP in my view).

The point is that these pollsters are either getting a truly representative sample or they are using demographic weighting (not partisan ID weighting) to make sure they don't have a problem with their sample. The fact that so many pollsters are coming to basically the same conclusions (for instance, that Barack Obama has a small lead in Ohio) is evidence that they are likely right.

Could Ohio (and other states) still shift? Yes, but it is getting very late.

Could Rasmussen be right and the other polls wrong? Yes. I don't think so but it could happen and, if it did, it would be exactly the kind of "systemic polling failure" Nate Cohn was talking about.

We'll know next Wednesday morning.

Sundays Are Not Always Lazy

Sunday has been a very active day for polls coming out and it has been a very good polling day for the President. There was an Ohio poll that came out late Saturday night that had Obama and Romney tied at 49 and that can be considered bad. But everything else has been either good or trending in the right direction for Obama today.

A PPP poll just came out giving Obama a 4-point lead (51-47) in Ohio. That's not only a good number for the President, it is from a pollster that had him up by just 1 last week. PPP found that 36% of Ohio respondents have already voted and Obama leads 63-36 among them. Democrats are heavily unified in Ohio and there is no enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans. These are all tough, tough numbers for Romney if they are accurate (that's the big "if"). Similarly, PPP had Obama down by 1 in New Hampshire last week and today, they have him up by 2 (49-47). Rasmussen and Gallup each moved a point in the President's direction in their national trackers. Finally, Gravis Marketing has a poll out tonight showing Obama up by 1 in Ohio. This might seem like bad news ... except that Gravis has about as strong a Republican lean as anybody (see Simon Jackman's recent discussion of house effects). Add that house effect in to Gravis and their poll looks a heck of a lot like PPP's.

We'll see how the rest of the day plays out (more polls to come tonight) ... but it is a good day so far for the President.

That's ... Good?

Today was one of those mixed, weird days in the polling. Obama had a very good day yesterday (Wednesday) and I said then that it would interesting to see if he could build on that with another good day on Thursday indicating a nice, little bounce out of the 3rd debate.

It didn't happen ... kinda.

What happened Thursday was sort of confusing. A few of the national tracking polls seemed to move slightly in Romney's direction. ABC/WP was the worst of it (since I think they generally know what they are doing) and that tracker now has Romney ahead 50-47. Rasmussen also has Romney up 50-47. Reuters/Ipsos now has Romney up by 1, 47-46. PPP has moved back to a tie after having Obama up by 1. I could go on. But you get the picture. It seems like Romney had a good polling day in these national tracking polls.

So, Obama getting a nice little bounce out of the 3rd debate is bunk, right? Well maybe. If you look at the state polling numbers today, they are largely good for Obama. PPP released a bunch of polls today and all were good for Obama. They've got Obama up by 4 in Colorado, up by 6 in Wisconsin, up by 2 in Iowa, up by 5 in Virginia, and they've got Obama tied in North Carolina. Those are all good numbers for the President. But that's just one pollster. What else?

NBC/WSJ has a tie in Colorado (which is not a bad result) and Obama up by 3 in Nevada. Fox has Obama down by 2 in Virginia but JZ Analytics has Obama up by 2 there. Grove Insight has Obama up by 2 in Florida and up by 3 in Colorado.

So, these state polls are pretty good overall for Obama ... and the national polls are pretty good overall for Romney. What do we make of it.

I don't know either.

Grab Your Magnifying Glass and Take a Look

It was a very solid polling day for Obama and I think I see little green shoots of a tiny Obama bounce coming off of the 3rd debate. The evidence is limited but it is in enough places that it seems real.

PPP's tracker put Obama ahead 49-48 and PPP's Tom Jensen pointed out:

Four polls came out looking at likely voters in Ohio today. Rasmussen had it tied at 48. The other three had Obama up by 2, 3, and 5 points respectively. The poll that had Obama up by 5 (Time) was conducted on the 22nd and 23rd, the night of the debate and the night after.

Two polls were released today looking at Virginia and both had Obama leading (though both are questionable for different reasons). Two polls were released today looking at Nevada and Obama was leading in both. One was Rasmussen and one was PPP. Obama is leading in Nevada folks.

Finally, the Gallup tracker lurched back towards Obama today. I discussed (and largely dismissed) this earlier. But, in the context of these other polls, it may be a sign of a little bit of movement.

Were there any counter indicators today? To put that another way, what were the worst numbers for Obama in any polls released today? There was a Rasmussen poll that had Obama down 2 in New Hampshire (though there was another poll that had Obama up by 3 there). ABC/WP didn't budge today and Romney leads by 1 nationally in their poll ... and that's about it. Those are the good numbers for Romney today.

Put all that together and mix until you see a "sticky" consistency and what do you get?

It is one day. And it isn't a big move towards Obama. It is very small actually. Most importantly, everything I describe above could VERY easily be statistical noise. We'll know more tomorrow. But it was about as good a day of polling as Obama has had since before the first debate.

Post-Debate Interviews Trickling In ... Nothing

We do not yet see any effect in post-debate interviews that are trickling into polls.

PPP's latest tracker includes one day (out of three) that are post-debate interviews. Obama and Romney were tied on that one day but the tracker ticked in Obama's favor as a recent strong day (Saturday) for Romney dropped out of the tracker.

Rasmussen's tracker also showed no change from yesterday as a full day of post-debate interviews rolled into their poll. Obama is still down by 4 there.

Rasmussen also released a new Ohio poll which is either good or bad news depending on what you believe about Rasmussen. They have Ohio tied at 48. If you take that poll at face value, it is not good news for Obama. If you believe Rasmussen has a Republican lean (Simon Jackman has some data on this out today), then Obama is right where we figured he is ... ahead by 2 or 3 points in Ohio.

Put all that together and you've got ... nothing. For those joining us late ...

Gallup Getting Freaky

I've mentioned in the past that Gallup is not the gold standard in polling it once was. One reason is that Gallup's tracking poll has played a bigger role in defining their brand than before and there are problems with any tracking poll.

One problem is that Gallup's tracking poll includes 7 days of data while some of their other numbers (like their approval rating data) includes just 3 days of data. So, there is very often an asymmetry.

But there's other problems. As of this moment, Gallup has Mitt Romney ahead among registered voters by 1 point and they have Romney ahead among likely voters by 7 points. Both of these sets of numbers are outliers among other polls but so is the gap between the two. Romney will surely do better among likely voters than among all registered voters but a net 6-point difference between likely voter numbers and registered voter numbers is a bit on the high side.

PPP just released their tracking poll and they have the race 48-48 among likely voters (didn't see registered voters numbers but surely they have Obama slightly ahead among registered voters) and Tom Jensen indicated that Obama did a tiny bit better on the last night of the tracker (the one night that was fully after the second debate).

All of that "feels" about right to me and is more in line with where most other polls are at this point. I wouldn't get too freaked out by Gallup's tracker.

This Is Bad News

It is one poll so I'm not freaking out about it but PPP has a poll out this morning that has Obama down by 4 nationally.

Below the topline, PPP says they found the following sub-samples on the 3 days of the poll:

Friday (38%) Obama 47, Romney 49
Saturday (39%) Obama 49, Romney 47
Sunday (24%) Obama 43, Romney 55

So, obviously, Romney's lead comes entirely from the last day of polling and that could well be just random noise. Also, 44% of respondents in the poll identified as conservative and 16 percent identified as liberal. That can be either evidence of a bad sample or just the way real Romney voters and real Obama voters are identifying themselves. There's no way of knowing for sure.

I'm not going to get all upset about one poll but I do think PPP is generally a good pollster.

Watching Likely Voters

I've argued that the first debate did not so much convince any voters to vote differently as it charged up Republican voters and depressed Democratic voters. This shift has been reflected in the polling as the composition of likely voters has changed just slightly. Of course, slight changes in the composition of likely voters are huge. So, I don't mean to downplay the shift. But I do want to point out that there are two things that potentially work in the President's favor if Romney is banking on a favorable likely voter pool to put him over the top:

1) The difference between likely voters and registered voters is unusually large right now and I think it is likely to shrink. It won't be zero. Romney will get a boost mainly because of demographics. Older people support Romney and younger people support Obama. Older people are more likely to vote. This is the biggest reason for Romney's advantage among likely voters but there are others. But likely voter numbers are a prediction that can change, especially if the President is able to un-do some of the damage done by the first debate. I think Democrats are a bit more enthused after the VP debate. If the President has a better night on Tuesday night, there is every chance the media narrative will be about how Obama "came back," etc. That will fire up the Democratic base and those likely voter numbers might get better.

2) The Obama campaign has been banking on their GOTV operation and they argue it will translate into a real advantage in a close race on Election Night. Nobody knows for sure whether this is real. But we're starting to see some very limited evidence consistent with the Obama narrative. Michael McDonald, who is the authoritative word on early voting, breaks down some of the early voting numbers here. The short version is that it does appear the Obama campaign is outperforming the Romney campaign on early voting, at least in some battleground states. This evidence is supplemented, of course, by the early voting numbers in a couple of polls in Ohio. NBC/WSJ and PPP have both polled Ohio in recent days and both break out early voting numbers. As of yesterday, PPP found that 19% of respondents said they had already voted and these respondents reported going for Obama by a staggering 76/24 margin. Just a few days earlier, NBC/WSJ found that 18% of respondents in Ohio said they had already voted and this group broke for the President 63/37.

Nate Silver finds this mix of early voting data and likely voter findings in polls to be difficult to reconcile and I agree. Silver tweeted this out yesterday:

There's too little data at this point to tell whether the early voting data or the likely voter polling data paints more of an accurate picture of the two campaigns' GOTV efforts. But, as Silver points out, if the gap between likely voters and registered voters closes some, Obama will win.

Speaking of Pollsters ...

... this looks fishy. The Behavior Research Center has Obama ahead of Romney in Arizona 44-42. There are lots of fishy things in this poll and so perhaps it serves as a good jumping off point to discuss what kinds of things jump out at me as not quite right when I'm looking at a poll:

1) Is the poll an outlier (especially compared with pollsters I think are good)? Yeah, to say the least. PPP did a poll in Arizona BEFORE the first debate and had Romney up by 9.

2) Have I ever heard of the pollster? No, I haven't. Every pollster gets some media attention the first time sometime but when there's no track record to say this poll should be believed, it should be read with a skeptical eye.

3) Are there numbers below that topline that seem counterintuitive? Yes. The gender gap is very narrow here for one and the poll has Obama and Romney tied among men. The poll also has Obama ahead 77-10 among Latinos. There's other things that don't feel right but those are the biggest ones.

4) Are the campaigns behaving in a way that is consistent with the polls? You can figure out that Ohio is close in both campaigns' internal polls by the way the two campaigns are behaving (running a million commercials and campaigning there). We don't see the two campaigns behaving as if Arizona is in play.

5) Is it a live-interviewer poll with cell phones or is it a robo-poll or is it an online poll? The order in which I listed them is in descending order of quality and this is an online poll.

So, this poll has all the hallmarks of a poll that I would not tend to believe. It doesn't mean it can't be right. It just means ... it probably isn't right.

Now, compare all that with this PPP poll in Ohio that was just released that has Obama up by 5:

1) Is the poll an outlier? Not too much of an outlier. CNN had Obama ahead by 4 a few days ago and NBC/WSJ had Obama up by 6. Others have it closer and PPP does have a slight Democratic lean in their polls. But this is not a shocking number.

2) Have I heard of PPP? Yeah, and they have a generally good track record.

3) Are there numbers below the topline that seem counterintuitive? Mostly no. For instance, Romney has a 46/51 fav/unfav. That sounds about right, especially in Ohio. Gender gap? Yeah. Obama leads 54-42 among women and trails 50-48 among men. I'd guess the Obama might be a tad more behind in Ohio but this is not a crazy number.

4) Are the campaigns behaving in a way that is consistent with the poll? Oh yeah, to say the least.

5) Live-interviewer or robo-poll or online poll? Robo-poll. Not ideal but at least it isn't online.

This poll mostly passes the smell test. There are a few things I scratch my head on. PPP says 19% of voters have already voted and those voters went 76-24 for Obama. That's hard to believe. If it is true, Romney is in a DEEP hole in Ohio and NBC/WST had a similar finding in their poll though not quite as big a margin. But look, I think it is clear that Obama leads by a little in Ohio (even Rasmussen has Obama ahead by 1 there) and this poll is not far off if it is off.

Where are the Good Pollsters?

The national polling numbers are not matching some of my predictions about Romney's bounce from the first debate and I've been trying to think about why that is. I had predicted that Romney's bounce would ultimately boil down to 1-2 points after fading but it should have faded by now. The various polling averages do not bear that out. Some possible explanations are:

1) My predictions were wrong / based on faulty assumptions, etc. or
2) The national polling numbers are not right

I'm generally skeptical when I hear other people making argument #2. It is not so much that pollsters are never wrong. Of course, there are bad polls and there are bad pollsters. But when all the pollsters are moving in one direction, there's only one way to argue they're all wrong and that is if they are all doing something systematically incorrect. That's possible but not very likely.

That said, there is one thing that jumps out at me when I look at the national polling numbers and the arguments I've made: I don't think many pollsters are good. This occurred to me as I was looking at the recent national polls. I've listed below all of the national polls recorded by Pollster.com in which either most or all of the sample has been since the first debate:

The pattern here is pretty clear and Obama's not doing well in these polls. If you average them, Romney is ahead by 0.8 points overall. I've said elsewhere though that pollsters who interviewed on 10/4 (the day after the first debate) showed huge bounces for Romney. If we include only polls that were in the field from 10/5 and after, Romney still leads though it is a slightly smaller average lead of 0.4 points overall.

So, what's going on? Am I wrong? Is Romney's bounce really this big and this lasting? Maybe. The one thing that jumps out at me when I look at that list of pollsters above is that there are only two pollsters there that I think do a good job. One of the pollsters I think is good is PPP though PPP generally has a bit of a Democratic lean. Their poll giving Romney a 2-point lean seems like really bad news then, right? True, except it does include some respondents from 10/4 and the poll is getting a little long in the tooth now. The other pollster I think is good is Pew. They have Obama down by 4 points ... but the same problems are there as with the PPP poll.

What's most striking about this list when we look at it this way is that I don't think any good pollsters have been releasing national polls this week. Who are the good pollsters in my view? Aside from PPP and Pew, I think NBC/WSJ, ABC/WP, CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac, and CNN are pretty good pollsters. None of them has any national poll that has been in the field since at least last Sunday. That's very strange to me.

Maybe my predictions are wrong. But I really want to see a national poll from one of those outlets before I apologize.

Ohio

I've said it over and over and over, Mitt Romney just can't win without Ohio. And Ohio is getting worse and worse for him. Here's what Ohio looks like:



And this doesn't include today's Columbus Dispatch poll that has Obama ahead by 9. The last 3 polls have Obama ahead by 9, 10, and 8 respectively. Not to put too fine a point on it but Obama only needs to win Ohio by 1 ... vote.

Romney's situation is more dire than many believe. Yes, this week's debate can start turning things around for him. But that needs to be the start. He needs something bigger at this point in my view.

UPDATE: A PPP poll has Obama up by 4. Want to know how bad Romney's situation is? It is so bad that a credible poll showing Romney down by just 4 is "good news." I should say though there are some very funky things inside this poll. They have Obama doing better among men (leading 50-43) than among women (48-46). I can assure that's not right. Specifically, Obama is almost definitely doing better among women. It is also likely he's not doing that well among men. To put that another way, if Obama is really leading 50-43 among men in Ohio, Mitt Romney is done, done, done.

Obama Leads in Florida

Maybe. PPP says he's got a small lead at least. One poll that is this close and is within the margin of error doesn't frankly tell us too much. But it is enough to generate a few thoughts on the subject of Florida ...

1) I'm going to say something sort of provocative and tell you that Florida sort of doesn't matter. Of course, if Obama wins Florida, Romney can't win. That's true. But it is also true that if Obama wins Florida, he's probably already won Ohio. And if Obama wins Ohio ... Romney can't win. So, while a win in Florida would guarantee an Obama victory, it would sort of be like hitting a grand slam in the top of the 9th when you're already ahead by 5. It's nice but you were very likely to win already anyway.

2) PPP also asked respondents how they would vote if either of Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio was added to the Romney ticket. Obama's lead was still 3 with Rubio on the ticket and it was 5 with Bush on the ticket. Now, I'm skeptical that a question like this really does a good job of simulating the impact of adding Bush or Rubio to the ticket. That said, I do think adding Bush would be utterly insane. That name is radioactive and Romney just couldn't do more to make Obama's case that electing Romney is like going back to the Bush policies that produced the current mess. Has anyone noticed the Obama campaign has changed their one-word slogan from "Change" in 2008 to "Forward" in 2012? If Obama's watchword is Forward and you add Bush to the Republican ticket, I think the Obama campaign would just gleefully issue a press release saying, "We have nothing to add your honor. The prosecution rests." As for Rubio, I do not think he would change the dynamic of the race much at all. I don't say that because of anything about him. I just don't think any running mate helps dramatically. They can only hurt (see Palin, Sarah and the preceding discussion of Bush, Jeb).

3) I tend to think quite highly of PPP as a polling organization. They rated quite well in Nate Silver's pollster ratings for one. We'll get an interesting test this evening. PPP had a poll out yesterday showing Walker up 50-47 in Wisconsin's recall. We Ask America had a poll out yesterday as well that had Walker up 52-44. Let's see what happens.

Romney's Ohio Trouble Begins in Michigan

A new poll out from PPP today shows Obama ahead of Romney in Michigan by a whopping 14 points. One of the main reasons Obama is so far ahead is voter perceptions about the auto bailout and the auto industry. PPP's write-up says:

Obama's crushing Romney on what will doubtless be one of the biggest issues in the campaign in Michigan- 55% think that he's been better for the automotive industry in the state to only 31% who say Romney wins out on that front.

The President also leads in Ohio but by a far smaller margin. The latest poll in Ohio, from NBC/Marist, has Obama ahead there by 6. Perhaps more importantly, every public poll since late February has had Obama ahead by numbers ranging from 1 to 12.

Ohio has something important in common with Michigan. In both states, the automotive industry plays a major role. The Council of American States in Europe (a trade group lobbying on behalf of states) points out that:

Ohio is at the center of the motor vehicle industry. Nearly 80 percent of North American light vehicle production is in Ohio or within 500 miles (800 kilometers) of the state's borders. Ohio is the top automotive supplier in the U.S. and second in the nation for motor vehicle production, employing more than 120,000 people in the state.

The poll from Michigan is not terribly surprising and it certainly isn't a state that Romney has to win. But it is a very ominous sign for Romney in a state he DOES have to win - Ohio.

Non-Breaking News

A couple of news items that shouldn't surprise you if you read this blog:

Obama leads in Pennsylvania.

Obama's gay marriage stance made no difference.

Everyone repeat after me ... Pennsylvania is not a swing state ... and neither is Tennessee (see below).

Forays in Bad Polling

A Marquette Law School Poll out today reports that Obama and Romney are tied at 46 among "likely voters."

Now, let me preface this by saying I could be wrong in how I'm interpreting this because the way the methodology of the poll is described is not entirely clear. And perhaps that is the first negative thing we can say about this poll. They are not clear about what they are doing. I'll include more specific caveats along these lines in a bit but, IF I'm reading this poll's methodology properly, it is really, really bad polling technique.

A recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters had Obama up by 4 in Wisconsin and Rasmussen is known to have at least a slight Republican lean. A more recent PPP poll, had Obama up by just 1 among registered voters. So it is possible the race is tied as this Marquette Law School poll indicates. But the methodological problem here has to do with the likely voter screen. As you know, there is a high-profile recall election coming up in just a few weeks and the poll also looked at that race. Just as an aside, the poll found that Scott Walker is up by 6 among likely voters so Obama is running ahead of at least Tom Barrett in the state and Barrett is a good proxy (sort of) for a generic Democrat.

So what's the problem here? The problem is that it seems that the likely voter screen is the same for the recall election as for the presidential race. In discussing the methodology at the bottom of the news release, they say:

The poll interviewed 704 registered Wisconsin voters by both landline and cell phone May 9-12, 2012. The margin of error is +/- 3.8 percentage points for the full sample. There are 600 “likely voters,” those who said they were certain to vote, with a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points. Results for vote in the Governor, Lt. Governor and presidential races are reported for likely voters. All other results are for the full sample of 704 registered voters.

While we don't know for sure what the likely voter pool will be in November, I'm quite sure it will not be the same in terms of numbers or makeup as the recall election in a few weeks. Indeed, even if the recall election was going to be held in November on the presidential election day, we would have slightly different voter pools with more voters casting a voter for president. For a mid-year election day with few races on the ballot like the recall, the likely voter pool will be smaller and, more importantly, more Republican than Election Day in November. So I fear what we have here is a "likely voter" screen for the recall election that assumes the mix of voters in November will be the same as the mix of voters in the recall election. I think it is safe to assume that because we've got the same 600 voters in each pool. In addition, the statement indicates these voters said they are "certain" to vote. I have no doubt they will. But there will probably be some other voters voting who are currently "uncertain" they will vote and those voters are not randomly distributed. Good pollsters adjust for this with various methods including weighting sub-samples and other techniques. Here, we seem to have a very tight likely voter screen and that usually (not always) favors the Republican candidate.

In short, I think this may be a decent poll with respect to the Walker recall race but it is very problematic with respect to the presidential race in Wisconsin.

Those Swing State Polls

I said the other day that swing state polls seem to be better for Obama than his national average. Yesterday, a couple more polls came out building on this trend.

PPP has Obama up 51-43 in Virginia on the same day they released a national poll showing Obama up 49-44.
SurveyUSA has Obama up 47-43 in North Carolina.
Rasmussen (which has a Republican lean) sees a tossup in Floria (Romney leads 46-45). In the same timeframe, Rasmussen released a national poll showing Romney up 48-46 though a more recent national poll from Rasmussen has Obama up 47-44.

The reason the national media does not comment much on these state level polls is twofold:

1) It is early. Much will change.
2) Most of these early polls are of registered voters, not likely voters. The reason for this is that it is impossible to get a very good read on the likely voter pool this far out from the election. Indeed, Rasmussen is the one pollster that regularly goes with a likely voter screen this early and that is one big reason why their polls have more of a Republican lean.

Those are fair caveats. But the bottom line is that this is 51 separate races, most of which (like California, New York, Kansas, and Utah) are already decided, not a national race. In the states that are not decided, Romney is in worse position than he appears to be in the national polls.

UPDATE: A Rasmussen poll in Nevada has Obama ahead 52-44.

Deep Trouble in the Deep South

Santorum's wins in Alabama and Mississippi are really quite bad news for Romney. They are not a problem in the sense that something major has changed. The problem is that nothing has changed. The tweet of the night goes to Chuck Todd:

In Sept '11, we said we didn't know how Romney gets the nomination and we don't know how he's denied it. Nothing has changed.

Precisely. Well, if nothing has changed, why is the result tonight such bad news for Romney?

It is bad news because Gingrich is now going to fade away. Gingrich may or may not get out of the race. He said tonight he won't. Sometimes, candidates reevaluate the day after. And sometimes (I'm looking at you Rick Perry), candidates even re-reevaluate. But it sorta doesn't matter as much in Gingrich's case. Santorum has clearly become the anti-Romney and Gingrich's cash is drying up. John Harwood reported on MSNBC tonight that Sheldon Adelson is not writing any more checks for Gingrich. Voters who do not like Romney have seen all they need to see. Romney outspent Santorum 5 to 1 in Alabama and even Gingrich outspent Santorum in Alabama ... and Santorum still won ... in a state that borders Newt's stronghold of Georgia. If Gingrich cannot win Alabama, he cannot win anywhere.

So, even if Gingrich stays in, voters will abandon him. Where do these voters go? PPP tweeted this tonight:

Our NC GOP poll coming out tomorrow shows an 8 point shift toward Santorum if Newt was out. Nothing but a spoiler at this point

And I think we'll see he's not a very good spoiler at that.

Next week, Illinois votes and the latest poll has Romney nominally ahead. So far, Romney has spent approximately $3.2M in Illinois and Santorum has spent exactly ZERO. How many times in this race have we said, "If Romney loses [insert state name here], then it will cause panic!!!" Well, let's all say it together then ...

If Romney loses Illinois, then it will cause panic!!!

Democrats for Santorum

Will Democrats give Michigan to Santorum? The final night of the PPP poll in MI has Santorum nominally in the lead 38-37 and Santorum did better than that on the final night of polling (39-34) so perhaps Santorum is finishing strong.

But buried in the numbers was this nugget: Democrats, who make up a very small portion (8%) of likely voters in the Republican primary, favor Santorum 47-10. This 37-point lead among 8% of voters amounts to a 3-point edge in the topline numbers. If PPP's poll is an accurate snapshot of what will happen tomorrow, Democrats will have given Michigan to Santorum. My official prediction for Michigan tomorrow?

Santorum - 40
Romney - 38
Paul - 14

If that is roughly the outcome, we're in for a very long primary fight. Santorum has a bunch of states he can win on Super Tuesday.

Michigan, the Nomination Fight, and NASCAR

This is not quite what is meant by "being the NASCAR candidate." Asked today whether he follows NASCAR, Romney said:

Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans, but I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners.

NASCAR Fail

The latest PPP poll has Romney up 2 in MI. I suspect Romney will win a close race in MI on Tuesday night and he'll blow Santorum out in Arizona. What should Santorum do? Santorum should spend some time on Tuesday night asking Republican voters a simple question. "Do you want a candidate who can only win the nomination by tearing others down?" That's what Romney appears to have done again, this time in Michigan. According to PPP, in the last week in MI, Santorum's net favorability has dropped from +44 (67/23) to +15 (54/39).

I'm not being all pollyannish about this. I know negative campaigning is not exclusive to the Romney camp. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a candidate get as far as Romney has on negative campaigning alone. He has no positive message branding. Quick ... what is Romney's economic plan? What's his plan for Afghanistan? I don't know his position on anything. I don't think Republican voters do either. Santorum should ask those questions. What is Mitt Romney for? When will he win a significant state without tearing down everybody else?

The advice is free Rick.

Nate Silver is Wrong

Bet you didn't think you'd hear me say that.

Last night, Nate said that Romney's victory in Maine does help him. He said this on the basis that it will affect the media narrative (which is all about how Romney is in trouble) and engender momentum. He explains:

Yes, Mr. Romney’s margin of victory — 196 votes — was not overwhelming. But the fact is that Mr. Romney can very much use some favorable news of any kind, given how poorly he did last Tuesday.

Consider the alternative: if Mr. Romney had lost the state by 196 votes, the narrative might have been that Mr. Romney’s campaign was falling apart. That might or might not have been fair to Mr. Romney, but I think it’s possible that’s how it would have been perceived. People like to see patterns in the data, and the pattern would have looked like a bad one for his campaign.

Let's put aside the fact that not all of Maine has yet participated (Nate followed up with a post looking at whether Paul could conceivably win) (and let's put aside that Romney won by 194 votes, not 196). Does Romney's 194-vote victory generate favorable news and create momentum?

Sorry, no. First, the results were announced on a Saturday night which helps bury the story of this runaway victory. Second, the story was easily overshadowed by Whitney Houston's death and the Grammy Awards this weekend. Third, if you think the lead political story in the morning will be Romney's 3-point victory in Maine, try this tweet from PPP on for size:

Barring some big shift in tonight's calls Santorum will be up by 10-15 on the Michigan poll

PPP will be releasing their full MI poll in the morning. Or try this tweet from PPP:

Gingrich dropping out would be worth 7 pts on the margin to Santorum, Mitt better hope he stays in:

That's nationally folks. I'll take either of those as newsworthy over Willard's romp through Maine.

Yes Nate, losing Maine would have been worse for Romney but when we get to the point that the lack of a disaster is "helping" Romney, he's got problems that the state of Maine just can't fix. Romney needs the narrative to change and Maine won't do it. If he has a great debate or if he wins in Arizona and Michigan in the lead-up to Super Tuesday, that could work. Michigan is starting to look dicey for him. I wonder if anyone will remember how Romney opposed the auto bailout???



UPDATE: PPP has Santorum up by 15 in Michigan, very similar to results nationally. ARG (though I don't trust their polls much) has a poll out this morning that has Santorum ahead by 6. In this case, I'd tend to believe the real numbers are closer to ARG's but it is clear that, at least temporarily, Romney is behind in one of his 43 "home states."