An odd day of polling, but one attention-grabbing result dominates the rest. That is from Ohio, where Public Policy Polling has Barack Obama ahead by 11 points. While Public Policy Polling developed a reputation as being somewhat Obama-friendly in the primaries, its track record is fairly strong, and its prior Ohio poll -- taken way back in March -- had shown McCain ahead by 8 points. As Ohio is probably the single most important state in this election (it's by no means the only important state, but it's pretty darned important), this result is enough to drive Obama past the 67 percent threshold in our overall electoral projection; we presently have him as about a 2:1 favorite to win the election.
In Minnesota, however, SurveyUSA has Obama with just a 1-point lead over McCain. SurveyUSA's methodology takes a more fluid view of party identification, and so it tends to produce results that can be more encouraging for the non-dominant party in a particular state. Its most recent previous Minnesota poll, taken back in May, had shown Obama ahead by 6 points.
In North Carolina, Civitas has John McCain ahead by 4 points -- down a tick from the 5-point lead he held a month ago. Obama has yet to show a lead in North Carolina, but has trailed by somewhere between 2 and 4 points in the three most recent polls of the state.
There is also a SurveyUSA poll out in Kentucky that shows Obama trailing by 12 points. This poll made it across our wires too late to be included in our metrics, but it speaks to the extent that Obama is starting to improve his numbers among lapsed, Clinton-leaning Democrats, particularly in Appalachia. Obama had trailed by 24 points in Survey USA's May poll of Kentucky, and by as many as 36 points previously.
There are also a series of national polls out, all of which have consolidated in the area of Obama +4, exactly the popular vote margin that we attribute to him based on the state-by-state polling results.
So what to make of the meme that Obama's numbers haven't been bouncing? The only way that you can come to that conclusion is if you cherrypick results. There have been a few dozen polls released since Clinton conceded the primaries, and our methodology extracts an average bounce of about 4 points between them. Four points is not so large that some individual polls won't show a bounce, particularly if the bounce is concentrated in particular states and regions. But bounce Obama has, and the longer Republicans remain in denial about it, the less time they'll have to catch up.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Today's Polls, 6/17
-- Nate Silver at 3:11 PM
Labels: bounces, kentucky, minnesota, north carolina, ohio, today's polls
46 comments
Is it just me, or did the beginning points on the trend line of the "Super Tracker" shift big time today? Earlier it seemed that McCain was +6 in Jan, and now Obama is at about that level as of the end of Jan. Did the end points just change, or did something else happen? Not sure this means anything (and the current chart seems much more intuitively correct anyway).
But bounce Obama has, and the longer Republicans remain in denial about it, the less time they'll have to catch up.
Geez, man. Don't tell them!
Dems - everything's horrible! Work Harder!
Reps - everything's fine! Take a nap!
Nate, I'd love to hear your comments on the crosstabs for Minnesota's poll. Obama winning older voters and McCain winning younger voters. Safe to say, that poll is a mess.
Doof,
I'm now calculating the trendline based on solely on polls from February 1 onward, as there were too few polls before then to produce reliable results.
I understand there is a bounce, there almost always is at the end of June.
It is way early to tell if its permanent or not. In about 6 weeks if the numbers are the same or better you have something to blog about.
Gore and Kerry both had that bounce and both lost the election. Wait and see if these numbers settle back down. I kind of doubt that an evenly split country took that type of bounce and will remain so, but it could happen I guess.
I understand you are all Obama supporters, but you should at least show some pretense of neutrality in the way numbers are spun.
One more day like this and the Obama landslide odds will pass up the odds of McCain winning.
Glad you gave positive mention to PPP. It was possible to interpolate from their SC poll most subsequent primary results. I would not say they were biased toward Obama. Just more accurate.
Nate,
The cross-tabs on the PPP poll were bizarre. Obama was only +1 with the 18-29 segment, which strikes me as very strange. Not sure what to make of it, but the poll seems too good to be true. Also, by definition the ABC story *is* cherry picking results--specifically, the result of ABC's one poll.
Higgly,
The site doesn't posit that the bounce is permanent. If Obama's polls fall in the next few weeks, states that have been adjusted up in projection will be adjusted back down. Just because we like Obama doesn't mean the numbers are being spun to his benefit (if they are, please provide a factual or methodological objection that we can look at).
That SUSA MN poll is crazy. BHO is losing the Twin Cities area but winning the rest of the state. He is tied with McCain among young voters (18-35) but winning seniors by 11 pts. I guess you print the results you get, but one would think this would be so contra other results that the pollsters would figure something was wrong.
I am fascinated (or still fascinated, since I've noticed this before) by the fact that in 10000 trials you get *zero* repeats of the 2004 or 2000 electoral maps. It isn't obvious to me at all why some reasonable fraction of the narrow McCain wins don't replicate the past.
I know people talk about this year changing the map, but especially for a McCain win, I wouldn't expect the map to be that terribly different from recent history. It's not like DC and Oklahoma switched voting patterns or anything. Is there any way of characterizing why this is so rare? Is Iowa just so blue now that Obama only loses it if he also loses several other Kerry states, or something like that?
So glad you weighed in on that Jake Tapper idiocy. I was actually going to post a comment asking you to debunk that nonsense. So, well done. Thanks.
I can't wait to see tomorrow's update once the Kentucky number is mixed in. The overall affect on the similar-to states of Obama closing Kentucky like that, just the way he did in Arkansas and W. Virginia, is putting states like PA, OH, NC, and VA much more in grasp... If he's closing on those hostile areas, then the hostile pockets of the swing states will definitely close
I love how Nate conveniently leaves out the fact that this PPP Ohio poll sampled Democrats at a nearly 2:1 clip versus Republicans.
Why do you love it? He takes all polls "as it," so there's no selection bias, and if PPP is wrong there will no doubt be another poll in a few days that will provide a corrective.
Oliver, I'd venture a guess that the reason "identical to 2000 or 2004" are so rare is that Obama is so highly favored in Iowa compared to, say, Michigan. To match 2000 or 2004 he'd have to win MI but lose IA, as well as all the other states lining up perfectly.
That Minnesota poll is completely out of whack. Either they got something wrong, or that is the strangest aberration I've ever seen. Youth going to McCain, seniors to Obama... urban to McCain, rural to Obama. Not a chance in hell. Rural Minnesota is strong GOP country and urban is at least 65-35 DFL.
Greg, the PPP poll sampled a random group of Ohio residents. If these residents identify with the Dems on a 2:1 ratio to the Republicans, the poll then would predict that overall turnout on election day will favor Dems by a large margin. You can't assume it would be a 50/50 split on election day and say anything other than that in the poll indicates inaccurate results.
I agree with you Stuart, but part of me still wants to say that the combination of ~40% chance Obama wins Kerry states and ~9% chance McCain wins Bush states equals ~3% chance for an identical map.
It would be very cool if we could see what some of the most often hit electoral maps from the 10k simulation look like.
I would suggest one alternative explanation for the strange MN crosstabs: perhaps young Obama voters are more likely to use their cell phones exclusively than are young McCain voters?
I looked at that PPP poll and noticed right away it was a telephone poll -- notoriously unreliable. OH is not that much of a runaway for Obama, not by a long shot.
The MN poll today had bizzare cross tabs suggesting Obama actually picking up strenth as the demographics skewed older.
This is a strange year and I suspect there will be many more surprises to come. Obama will need a 5% lead with minimal undecideds and low margin of error to feel comfortable about taking a state.