Daily Kos: Why Gallup's LV screen is the way it is

[Pirate Smile]

Why Gallup's LV screen is the way it is

by DemFromCT
Sat Oct 09, 2010 at 06:00:03 AM PDT
Give credit to Gallup for showing us this, in light of their hugely favorable-to-GOP LV generic ballot for Congress:



After all if there are that many conservatives, no wonder the Democrats are losing.

But are there? Note Kristen Soltis writing at pollster.com last week:

Most major polls over the last few months have painted a picture of an American voting public that is predominantly conservative. Before we dig into the polls that have come out recently, let's look at historical data to get some context for what one might expect the ideological makeup of the American electorate to look like.

In fact she makes this point (she's a Republican):

But what it does say to me, as a Republican, is that we ought to stop dancing in the end zone before we've scored a touchdown. It tells me that two-and-a-half decades of data show things aren't as wobbly as they seem, that the electorate doesn't change its ideological makeup radically, and that polls with more conservatives than moderates just might be painting a rosier picture than we all might find ourselves looking at on election day.

Just as pollsters ought to get in the habit of releasing the partisan makeup of their samples, including their subsamples of registered and likely voters, they also ought to release the ideological breakdown. As a consumers of political data, we have a right to make informed decisions about whether or not a poll is sampling conservatives more heavily than we think it should.

When election day rolls around, and I update that ideology chart above, I may well find that red line for "conservatives" intersects and crosses over the green line for "moderates." But I'm not confident that's going to happen. I think everyone ought to seriously consider the ideological makeup of survey samples when weighing how much stock to put in the results they produce.

Here's the ideology she's talking about, based on exit polls:



So, thank you Gallup for that post. But don't forget, this year, you might have gotten it wrong.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/9/908765/-Why-Gallups-LV-screen-is-the-way-it-is

Check out this video from Steve Benen also - it matches Gallup's Likely Voter screen:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x513180

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DRkUU-qhjk&feature=player_embedded

[ShadowLiberal]

1. The other problem with Gallup is they only poll landlines

Cellphone only households tend to disproportionately be minorities, and young, both groups that favor democrats.

I'm not 100% certain, but I've read that Gallup's daily tracking poll just reports the results as they get them, they don't weigh groups more or less to make it more representative to a likely electorate on election day.

[flpoljunkie]

3. Gallup likely voter surveys include a minimum of 150 cell phone vs. 850 landline respondents.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents per 1,000 respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/143363/GOP-Positioned-Among-Likely-Midterm-Voters.aspx

[jenmito]

9. I was going to post the same thing. n/t

[still_one]

2. Then if ALL progressives vote we should win /nt

[Pirate Smile]

4. kick

[FBaggins]

5. The author has confused a sample breakdown with the results of a screen.

Polls often release how many people they spoke to who self-identified as democrats/republicans/etc. In many cases they then adjust their results based on how that sample compared to a given norm (previous elections, etc).

But that isn't what these numbers are. These are the percentages of the poll that passed a given level of likely voter screening. It's basically the same thing that all the other polls have been showing: In a given sample of republicans and democrats, the republicans are indicating that they're more likely to vote.

The interesting data point (and I've seen this a few times this cycle) is that the spin that Republicans are energized and Democrats are dispirited is false. Moderates appear to be less likely to vote than in previous years, but liberals are actually as energized as in a normal election - and quite a bit more energized than in 1994.

My concern is that it could mean that those of us (myself included) who have argued that turning out the base is the key to the election... could be wrong. The key may be in changing moderate minds (they currently lean republican in most polling) and getting them to show up.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. I Though Most Of The Polling Suggests Independents Are Leaning Heavily Republican

And that's why Democrats are in trouble.

[FBaggins]

7. Most of it does...

...which is why I said that we need to change their minds as well as convince them to vote.

My point is that the narative for many has been that democrats are "discouraged" and less likely to vote than in a normal mid-term election. That was the case in 1994, but doesn't appear to explain this year's reported "enthusiasm gap". This time (again... according to polling), it's that republicans are WAY more enthusiastic than in a normal midterm.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. This Is Why Any Democrat Should Be Concerned And Not Surprised On November 3rd.

Mid term electorates look very different from presidential electorates. They are older, more white, and more affluent. I don't have the number so I am doing this from memory. I think about forty percent of registered voters vote in mid terms while sixty percent of voters vote in presidential elections.

If Gallup is even remotely correct we might have a redux of 94, 1894! but I doubt it. There has been too much gerrymadering.