Faux Polls: The Latest Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS Poll

October 31, 2012 Hunter Wallace BRA Politics 57

BRA

Just in time for the polling bias debate …

The latest Quinnipiac/New York Times CBS poll has Obama by 2 in Virginia, Obama by 1 in Florida, and Obama by 5 in Ohio. The same poll shows a 16 point enthusiasm gap in Florida and a 21 point Romney lead with Independents in Virginia. Yet somehow Democrats are winning Florida and Virginia.

What gives?

Note: Take a closer look at the Party ID: the Florida sample (D+7), Ohio (D+8), Virginia (D+8). Sounds pretty favorable to the Democrats, right? It is based on assumptions even more favorable than Obama’s performance in the 2008 election.

In 2008, the actual breakdown of the electorate on election day (when Obama was at the height of his popularity) was 39% Democrat, 31% Republican, 30% Independent (Ohio), 39% Democrat, 33% Republican, 27% Independent (Virginia), and 37% Democrats, 34% Republicans, 29% Independents (Florida).

In this poll, the Democrats are still 37% of the Florida electorate, but Republicans have declined to 30% percent, while Independents have held steady at 29%. So Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS predicts that Republicans are going to underperform their 2008 turnout in Florida by 4 points!

In this poll, the Democrats are 37% of the Ohio electorate, but Republicans are 29% and Independents are 30%. In other words, Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS projects that the Republicans are going to underperform their 2008 turnout in Ohio by 2 points!

In this poll, the Democrats are 35% of the Virginia electorate, but Republicans are 27% and Independents are 35% of the electorate. In other words, Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS projects that the Republicans are going to underperform their 2008 turnout in Virginia by a full 7 points!

Isn’t it strange that this poll which predicts a massive enthusiasm gap for Republicans in all three states simultaneously manages to predict that Republican turnout in 2012 will be significantly worse than McCain in 2008?

Who knew that Obama’s 2012 performance among likely voters will be like Cam Newton’s 2010 Auburn season except on steroids? This time around Super Cam will have more passing yards, more rushing yards, more touchdowns, and fewer sacks because his opponents will be even more hapless than before.

Obama 2012 is so on fire in Virginia this year – just ask the Democrats who lost there in 2009, 2010, and 2011 – that Republicans are down a full 7 points over 2008 in the Old Dominion.

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

7 Comments

  1. Sorry, Beltway Media, the Tea Party Is Here–and Fighting to Win

    Echo chamber bullshit. The tea party is a spent force. The third of it which was a transient social phenomenon grew bored with Sarah Palin and Donald Trump a while back. The paleolibertarian third has been abused and humiliated, and is sitting the general election out. The other third of it has been swallowed by the GOP. The fiscal problem is off the radar for the moment and Romney’s nomination guarantees that whatever energy was in the anti-Obamacare mob is neutralized.

    Black voter “turnout” will indeed be significantly lower than it was in ’08, because so many of those unregistered/repeat/deceased/altogether non-existent “voters” have been purged from voter-rolls nationwide.

    Echo chamber bullshit. Fraudulent voting is a rounding error, and shady but legal shenanigans are going as planned…
    http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/26/is-voter-fraud-being-committed-in-ohio/

  3. The Tea Party knocked off Dick Lugar in Indiana

    Mourdock is a mild-mannered moderate whose relationship with the tea party was awkward from the beginning. The media framed the whole thing as “tea party radical” vs “esteemed global statesman” but the dynamic was more “random republican party weasel” vs. “arrogant and insulting jackass”. The majority of officeholders and party apparatchiks polled favored Mourdock, as well.

  5. Intrade: There’s not even 3 million shares outstanding and the average volumes, even at the activity pickup in the last few weeks, look like only a few hundred shares (hard to tell on that weird log of a log scale they have). So I question the predictive power of such a shallow market. The trades look like a penny stock……bids of 103, ask of 4 right now. LOL!

    I also find it interesting that you can sell a contract on margin; which brings up the question: who are you borrowing from? If its from intrade and not from another user or market-maker equivalent, that would imply someone is essentially borrowing the contracts into existence. The same kind of market bending action deep pocketed traders can take against smaller companies in stock markets to manipulate things in their favor.

    That said, it does seem like we’re beginning to grasp at straws here. There’s lots of questions that can be raised about any of these individual data sources, but at some point occams razor comes into play and the best explanation really is that Obama is likely to win.

  7. “Ultimately, I believe that the quantitative easing and calming oil markets will have an anaesthetic effect on GOP enthusiasm.”

    That happens every presidential election, that’s factored in with the incumbent advantage no? Same thing with the fiscal cliff that’s being quickly approached.

    With all the fiscal and monetary stimulus designed to come into affect over the last few months, the best the HNIC can hope for is to have a “normal” election decided by ideology and media sound bites like it was 2004.

    Make no mistake, economically this election should have all the anti-incumbent fervor of 2008 but they managed to kick the can just into 2013 to keep all the sheeple in their normal approx 50/50 split.

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