It's just one poll, and it's not in a state of any enormous amount of electoral significance, but the new Rasmussen poll that shows Barack Obama trailing by 23 points in Kansas -- he had been down by just 10 last month -- is a little ominous. Obama's numbers are bad across the board: he's getting a relatively low percentage of Democrats, trailing by 17 points among independent voters, and his approval ratings are negative. Obama had recently been polling well in other states like Iowa and the Dakotas, and so this may turn out to be some kind of outlier. But the real question is what's going to happen the next time states like Ohio and Indiana are polled, which they haven't been in several weeks and where there's a little bit more at stake. In the meantime, our model is starting to hedge its bets a little more in the Midwest.
Obama has no such problems on the West Coast. Rasmussen has him ahead by 9 in Oregon; the Field Poll gives him a 24-point edge in California, and SurveyUSA has him up by 16 in Washington. Any advantage John McCain might have gained by being a Westerner is being outweighed by his positioning on foreign policy, as the Pacific Coast tends to be the most dovish region of the country.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Yesterday's Polls, 7/16
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Today's Polls, 6/25
If yesterday was among Barack Obama's best polling days of the year, today's numbers have moved in the direction of John McCain. In addition to his drawing into a tie in the Gallup Tracking poll, the big number today is out of Missouri, where SurveyUSA shows McCain rebounding to a 7-point lead. SurveyUSA had conducted two Missouri surveys essentially simultaneously last month; they had shown Obama leading by 1 point and trailing by 2, respectively.
I don't have any cute explanation on hand for you. Obama hadn't seemed to have gotten much of a bounce in what we call the North Central part of the country -- essentially, the Midwest west of Lake Michigan -- but he had gotten quite a bit of one in Near South states like Kentucky and Arkansas, and Missouri is literally and figuratively half-way between those two regions. Almost all of the give in his numbers appears to have occurred in St. Louis, where Obama had been leading 59-31 before but in the new survey led just 52-45. Did Obama insult Albert Pujols or something? Critique the city's strange fixation with crab rangoon?
Obama also lost some ground in Nebraska, where Rasmussen has him trailing John McCain by 16 points; Obama had been within 11 a month ago. Rasmussen has not broken out Nebraska's results by congressional district, but the state probably has to be within about 10 points overall for either NE-1 or NE-2 to come into play and put two electoral votes on the table.
In California, however, Rasmussen has Obama opening up a gargantuan 28-point lead, which is double his margin from a month ago. Rasmussen attributes this result to McCain's right turn on offshore drilling, which is a reasonable enough explanation -- but again, the cognitive dissonance starts to kick in. If Obama gained so much ground in California, why did he seem to lose ground in Oregon, which is probably even greener?
Lastly, in Arizona, we have another weird poll to round out our afternoon. John McCain leads by 10 points in a new Cronkite/Eight poll. But the percentage numbers are very weird: McCain 38, Obama 28, and Undecided 34. That's a huge number of undecideds, which is not something that the Cronkite poll had really shown before. But with a sample size of just 175 persons, I'm not sure if it's worth reading that much into.
Sometimes, it's nice to just press a button, hope that your simulations are doing something sensible, and wait for more data. I continue to see this race as pretty flat right now -- Obama having achieved a bump of about four points which is neither growing nor abating, dramatic individual results to the contrary.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Today's Polls, 6/20
A new Rasmussen poll in the state of Nevada has John McCain leading Barack Obama by 3 points. This is a slight improvement for Obama from Rasmussen's previous poll, which had shown McCain ahead by 6. Nevertheless, Nevada remains one of those states where our regression model thinks that Obama's numbers have significant room to improve. Obama has outfundraised McCain by better than 4:1 in the Silver State, and Nevada has a highly secular population, a group that has performed well for Obama in other states.
So what gives? Nevada has historically been an apathetic state politically. It's turnout rate in the 2004 election was among the lowest in the country by any and all measures. And not that the following metric is the end-all, be-all, but when I rank the states from 1 to 50 in terms of the amount of per-capita traffic they contribute to FiveThirtyEight.com, Nevada ranks just 36th (the top three states, FWIW, are Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon; the bottom three are Mississippi, West Virginia, and Oklahoma). If Obama wants to win Nevada, he is probably going to have to rattle the cage a little harder than he might in another state.
In New Hampshire, which is anything but apathetic politically, Rasmussen has Barack Obama increasing his lead to 11 points; last month he led John McCain there by 5. Remember my rule of thumb about New Hampshire: its numbers tends to move about twice as much as the national average. So if Obama is leading by 11 points in New Hampshire, that would imply a 5.5 point lead nationally, which is just about where we have him.
Also two new polls out from SurveyUSA. In California, Barack Obama leads John McCain by 12 points, up from 7 points in their tracking last month. In Iowa, however, he leads by 4 -- down from 9 last month. I would be a little bit cautious about reading too much into either of the Iowa polls released within the past week as Iowans presently have bigger things to worry about.
Finally, while we don't usually focus on national polls, that's where a lot of the action has been today, with no fewer than seven of them released within the past 24 hours.
Newsweek's poll is the attention-getter, showing Barack Obama leading John McCain by 15 points. Is Barack Obama actually ahead by 15 points? Of course not. Newsweek's data tends to be fairly volatile, and we have a whole bunch of polling on both the state and national level that implies that Obama's real margin is closer to 5 points. Nevertheless, he has broken through a barrier of sorts. The last instance I can identify when a Democrat held a 15-point lead over a Republican nominee in any individual November trial heat poll is from November, 1996, when CBS News gave Bill Clinton an 18-point lead over Bob Dole on the eve of the election.
Other national polling, CNBC-style: Gallup Tracker: Obama +2; Rasmussen: Obama +4; USA Today/Gallup: Obama +6; FOX: Obama +4; Ipsos: Obama +7; and Harris Interactive, Obama +11.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/30
We're a little late with today's polling thread. These have been the most hectic 24 hours I've had since book season. If you've sent me an e-mail, I probably haven't had the chance to respond to it, but I sincerely appreciate all the support and I'll be catching up over the weekend.
Four polls today, and they all look like pretty good news for Barack Obama. In California, the highly respected Field Poll has both Obama and Clinton leading John McCain by 17 points. The poll also shows that Obama is now preferred over Clinton among California democrats by a margin of 51-38, a reversal from the state's primary result (a similar finding had previously been reported by SurveyUSA). As much as I tend to convey the impression that demographics have been destiny in the primaries, this is some of the strongest evidence that the race has in fact been dynamic.
Another deep blue state also looks safe for the Democrats: Clinton leads by 30 points and Obama by 19 in Rasmussen's poll of New York. The poll also suggests that about half of New Yorkers want Hillary Clinton to drop her Presidential bid. While home-state advantage is an electoral blessing, it should also be remembered that a candidate's home constituency has conflicting incentives. New Yorkers would love to see Hillary as President, but they'd also like to see her get back to representing them in the Senate.
SurveyUSA shows Obama 6 points ahead in Wisconsin; no poll for Clinton. SurveyUSA's results have consistently shown Obama ahead in Wisconsin, while other polls like Rasmussen see the state as more of a toss-up.
Finally, in Wyoming, Research 2000/Daily Kos has Obama trailing McCain by a relatively modest 13 points. While Obama is not going to win Wyoming, this improves our regression model's impression of his prospects in somewhat more moderate states like North Dakota.
I've also noticed that the regression model seems to be giving progressively less and less weight to the fundraising numbers, which is causing some weird things like Obama not having quite the home-state advantage in Illinois and Hawaii that he probably should. It may be the case that the fundraising numbers are somewhat out of date, and that we should be focusing more specifically on how a candidate has fundraised over his past couple of months. Something else to explore when we can find a little bit of time.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/24
In California, an LA Times poll shows the race a little tighter than expected: Barack Obama leads John McCain by 7 points, and Hillary Clinton leads him by 3. Although ordinarily Clinton's relatively small margin would be newsworthy, there have been three other California polls released within the past week and none of them show the race this close. We still have each Democrat at about 95 percent to win the Golden State.
Also, in North Carolina, Civitas has John McCain 5 points ahead of Barack Obama; McCain had been 9 points ahead in Civitas' April release. Civitas has ceased surveying the Clinton-McCain matchup.
We're on vacation the next couple of days so updates are likely to be limited to a polling thread or two. Fortunately it looks to be a slow weekend in the political world as well.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Today's Polls II, 5/22
I don't want to make a habit of this, but with four new polls out, there's enough for a midday update. And there's something for everyone to be happy (and unhappy) about.
In Virginia, SurveyUSA shows Barack Obama 7 points ahead of John McCain, a major reversal from last month when Obama was 8 points behind. The truth, assuredly, lies somewhere in between, and our weighted averages give McCain a 2-point lead in Virginia. Hillary Clinton's matchup was not polled by SurveyUSA.
But in Nevada, Rasmussen has Hillary Clinton ahead of John McCain by 5 points, whereas Obama trails him by 6. Rasmussen's last poll in Nevada was also somewhat tough on Obama (he was down by 3) but this is a major reversal for Clinton, who had been 10 points behind.
Rasmussen also polled California, showing 14- and 21- point leads for Obama and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Finally, a new Rocky Mountain poll in Arizona has John McCain 11 points ahead of Obama and 15 points ahead of Clinton.
Today's Polls, 5/22
It's Quinnipiac Day here at FiveThirtyEight.com and once again, Quinnipiac's swing state polls contain good news for Hillary Clinton. She holds leads of 7 points over John McCain in both Ohio and Florida, and 13 points in Pennsylvania. In the cases of Pennsylvania and Florida, this represents an incremental improvement for Clinton from Quinnipiac's previous set of polls and in Ohio an incremental downgrade (but still a good result compared with other polls of the state). Clinton holds a lead over McCain in our inferred popular vote metric for the first time since we began tracking these numbers, and is inching toward a 60 percent win percentage overall.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, leads McCain by 6 in Pennsylvania but trails him by 4 in each of Florida and Ohio. Across the board, these are slightly worse results than Quinnipiac's most recent numbers for Obama. However, his win percentage is only really harmed in Ohio, because that's the case in which the number came in below his polling averages as well as being worse than in Quinnipiac's previous survey. (Since we do not completely throw out "old" polls from the same agency but do decrease their weighting when fresher data becomes available, the extent to which a candidate's averages move on new polling data is determined by some combination of those two things: how the result compares to the pollster's previous polls and how they compare to the results of other pollsters).
The other polling out this morning is in California, where PPIC shows a 17-point lead for Barack Obama and a 12-point lead for Hillary Clinton. For Obama, this is his strongest showing in California since February, whereas for Clinton it amends PPIC's previous poll that showed her California margin at a surprisingly close 3 points.
We're up with the polling thread a little earlier than usual and may run a second update if there is sufficient polling volume later in the day.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/21 [UPDATED]
One of our largest collections of polling data in some time:
Big picture here?
For Obama, his electoral map is sharpening. He's presently winning all Kerry states except for New Hampshire, although he makes up for that with a safe-looking lead in Iowa. In order to win the election, he'll either need to:
1) Win Ohio (while holding Michigan and Wisconsin), or
2) Win two or three of the Western "four corner" states (NV, CO, NM) and either Ohio or Michigan.
By contrast, the "Southern Strategy" of putting states like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida into play does not appear to be polling especially strongly for him at the moment. If he needs a third alternative, he might stand a better chance by aiming to flip the Midwest-Southern hybrid states of Missouri (where he's still trailing, but these numbers are an improvement) and Indiana.
As for Clinton, she's had a couple of weeks where she's been polling pretty strongly everywhere. I would not pay especially much attention to the SurveyUSA poll showing her ahead by 6 in North Carolina. I am not saying it is an 'outlier'; I agree with Charles Franklin's philosophy that there is no such thing as an outlier. But this is the whole point of taking a weighted average of polls, and other polling in North Carolina has not shown her especially competitive.
Nevertheless, Clinton certainly seems to have improved her hand in the South -- I haven't looked to see whether she's getting more of the white Southern vote, or whether some black Southerners are starting to come back to her. The Florida and Missouri numbers definitely look good for her.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Clinton may actually have the broader electoral map than Obama, putting at least as many red states into play but also having more blue states that she'd need to defend. And for the time being, it is probably also the stronger electoral map, although the Obama folks can argue -- not unreasonably -- that things will change once the Democrats unify behind Obama, and also that Clinton's map would look different had she been taking the frontrunner's heat that Obama has been.
UPDATE: Inserted SurveyUSA's California poll, and corrected the sample size on Missouri. It was actually quite a large poll (1,523 respondents), helping both Democrats.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Gay rights issues present opportunities for both candidates
The Wall Street Journal suggests that yesterday's California Supreme Court ruling to require recognition of same-sex marriages is a gift to McCain and the Republicans. However, the reality of the issue is more complicated.
Firstly, the conventional wisdom that gay marriage was a critical issue in allowing George W. Bush to win the 2004 election is dubious at best. Academic analyses suggest that, while turnout was higher in states with gay marriage ballot initiatives in 2004, George Bush performed no better in those states than he had in 2000.
Moreover, gay marriage questions may be particularly irrelevant given the nature of Barack Obama's and John McCain's constituencies. Support for gay marriage and other gay rights initiatives is strongly aged-based, with younger Americans being far more tolerant. But younger Americans are more inclined to support Obama to begin with, and older Americans less so; the demographics are running along parallel rather than perpendicular tracks. Meanwhile, while civil unions are strongly opposed by evangelical Protestants, they are supported by majorities of Catholics and strong majorities of mainline Protestants. Once again, this tends to match the existing fractures in each candidate's base of support, as Obama does especially poorly with evangelicals but quite strongly with mainline Protestants, with Catholics somewhere in between. In a Clinton-McCain match-up, g
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