It's a shocking result. According to the Gallup Poll, a generic Republican candidate currently leads a generic Democratic candidate by 17 points among likely voters in a hypothetical House matchup. A margin of that magnitude on Election Day would almost certainly result in a Republican gain of at least 80 seats in the House of Representatives and the largest GOP majority since the 1920's. But how plausible are Gallup's results?
An examination of some of the internals from the latest Gallup survey of likely voters leads to the conclusion that these results are wildly implausible. First, Gallup shows a much larger percentage of Republicans (55% Republican identifiers and leaners vs. 40% Democratic identifiers and leaners) and conservatives (51% conservative vs. 28% moderates and 18% liberals) than we've ever seen in a modern election. They also show a smaller percentage of voters under the age of 30 (7%) and a larger percentage of voters over the age of 65 (27%) than we've seen in any modern election. But that's not all. The candidate preference results for some subgroups of voters are just wildly implausible.
Gallup's latest likely voter survey shows a generic Republican leading a generic Democrat by a whopping 28 points among whites, 62% to 34%. To put those numbers in perspective, in 1994, according to national exit poll data, Republicans only won the white vote by 16 points, 58% to 42%, and that was their best showing since the advent of exit polling. Gallup is telling us that right now the Republican lead among whites who are likely to vote is 12 points larger than the GOP margin among whites in 1994.
But that's not the most implausible result in the latest Gallup likely voter survey. Among nonwhites other than blacks, a group that comprises about 13% of likely voters, a generic Republican is leading a generic Democrat by 10 points, 52% to 42%. That's a group that voted Democratic by a 2-1 margin in the 2006 midterm election. Moreover, it's a group that has never given a majority of its vote to Republican candidates for Congress in any election since the advent of exit polling. According to the 2006 exit poll results, about two-thirds of these "other nonwhite" voters are Latinos. How plausible is it that at a time when the Republican Party is closely associated with stridently anti-immigrant policies that Latino voters are moving in droves toward Republican candidates? Not plausible at all, especially when Gallup's results are directly contradicted by other recent polls of Latino voters.
The Gallup Poll should be commended for making their internals available to interested observers for secondary analysis -- few other polling organizations are so generous with their data. And to be fair to Gallup, they have cautioned that these results are not a prediction of what will happen on Election Day, only a snapshot of current voter attitudes. But what is the value of putting out results that defy logic but which can influence perceptions of the current electoral climate among political elites as well as the public?
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Since then, we have seen Christine O'Donnell not understand the intent of separation of church and state in the constitution. We have seen a GOP driven "DO NOT VOTE" campaign backfire among Hispanics. We have seen Joe Miller's security force arrest a reporter. We have seen Angle tell a group of high schoolers, that our northern border is the one she is concerned about and that they don't look Hispanic, but Asian. We have seen Buck say that homosexuality is like alcoholism and today we have Bush saying his biggest failure in office was not privatizing social security.
In the meantime, Palin is rallying crowds of up to a few thousand while Obama is speaking to sold out crowds 15-30,000+ every where he goes.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html#polls
It's a poll. People who are influenced by polls have no value. They should study the candidates. Not base their decision on polls and pundits. Looks like Gallup is assuming that people are not persuaded by polls. Let's hope they're right.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a great fan of the 'progressives' nor the 'social' conservatives. But love em or hate them, both have the courage of their convictions.
I believe if we enacted the whole 'progressive' agenda we would soon have a situation like the USSR in 1989. The economy was dystfunctional. The ruble was worthless. Food and all the essentials of life were dirt cheap in the state stores - except they didn't have any. The workers joked about it, 'We pretend to work and the government pretends to pay us.'
But that would only be about thirty of forty years of ugliness. It wouldn't destroy our grandchildrens' future. And then we'd start over.
Similarly, if the economic conservatives get their way, the scope of government will be cut back significantly. That would be devastating for those people whose entire culture has been so warped by disincentives to self-support that they are now at risk to Darwining themselves out of existence if their support system is cut back. Yet despite the ugliness this would cause, we would survive.
It's the 'moderate' politicians that do the deals that let us dig ourselves in deeper. We are as adversely levered as we can be. Yet they continue to dig us in deeper, trusting that the music will stop on someone else's watch.
Gallup is using the same likely voter methodology as it had when you relied upon its figures for your prior cycles.
Nor does it appear that we are dealing with a single outlier poll. Today, Gallup released its third week of LV results and they are statistically identical to the prior two.
Gallup is hardly alone by offering polling results favoring the GOP that are unprecedented in modern polling history. Several polling firms have been showing historic numbers since last summer.
The Dems lost the Indis last summer after they enacted Obamacare in the face of widespread voter opposition. When you combine this with the extraordinary enthusiasm of several million of us Tea Party voters, we are seeing a once in a century electoral wave. The interesting question is whether this is a conservative realignment wave where the left has lost the center for the foreseeable future.
a lot of what they are bitching about in the health car is REPUBLICAN suggestions,ie the requirement to make people buy health care insurance.just ot job your memory,bush ran on cap and trade in 2000 and mccain proposed taxing benefits in 2008.its a great idea if the irght proposes it,but if a dmeocrat proposes the same thing its bad.
Obamacare by contrast is mandating an even bigger market to the health insurance companies. That is why the insurance companies actually supported it at first. It also does not allow competitive bidding for drugs hence the Big Pharma support. In Bush's idiotic Medicare Part D vote buying scheme, the Democrats voted down competitive bidding for drugs - so much for their support of the middle-class.
Both parties are corrupt. We should pick Washington D,C. up and throw it in the ocean - start fresh, paying only the average private sector wages to each legislator, provide an efficiency apartment only in DC and only raise their salary when the average private sector salary increases. That would end a lot of the crony capitalism we have now in DC.
All loyal Democarts out there, do your part and VOTE on Nov 3!
sean whining cause the polls only had 30% republican data.
2008 they whined cause obama outspent them,and said he bought the election,boy they are sure quite about the money they are raising.want even say where it comes from.
Pollsters Are Paid To Predict the Recorded Vote - Not the True Vote
The media/pollster drumbeat of a “horse race” is largely based on the LV polls. The focus on LV polls conditions the public to expect a recorded vote which in fact will surely understate the True Democratic share. The pollsters discount the RV sample, fully expecting that their LV projections will be a close match to a fraudulent recorded vote - but they never mention the F-word. They know that votes are miscounted in every election. And so their final LV-based poll predictions are usually quite accurate. Pollsters are paid to predict the recorded vote - not the True Vote.
As Election Day approaches, the MSM gradually phases out RV polls for LV polls which lowball the projected Democratic vote share. And so the general public is prepared for the fraudulent recorded vote-counts that the MSM knows are coming.
Since 2000, LV poll projections have closely matched recorded vote shares while RV poll projections closely matched unadjusted and preliminary state and national exit polls. In each election, the final exit polls were forced to match the recorded vote. In 2004 and 2008, the Final National Exit Poll required impossible returning Bush voter turnout in order to match the recorded vote. Since pre-election LV poll predictions also matched the recorded vote, what can we conclude?
They said national home prices could not decline for more than a single year, and never more than 2-3%. They declined for 3 straight years and the average decline is roughly 10%.
That was implausible too. It happened.
I would be the first to suggest that the Gallup low turnout model is a worst case scenario for Democrats, and I am sure they would say the same.
However, this is the same methodology that was applied in every election going back 10-12 years. Gallup makes adjustments for cell phone use as well.
This was exactly the same methodology that predicted that Obama would roll to a relatively easy victory just 24 months ago.
The results speak for themselves. There is a tremendous lack of energy among Democrats while Conservatives, Libertarians and Independents are energized.
All of the demagoguery of the Tea Party only served to galvanize the movement as a counter-establishment force. Calling someone a culturally-backward racist, especially without evidence, will motivate them to strike back in some way.
The attack on the US Chamber as being controlled by foreigners will go down as one of the most incompetent political moves in history. Set aside the fact that the premise itself is delusional, it solidifies Obama's anti-business, anti-jobs perception.
So the argument is that "these results are different from prior results and so we simply choose not to believe them."
But this year more people ARE identifying with conservatism, more Republicans are fired up to vote than Democrats, etc.
So the polls may be accurate and your sticking to prior data may be the error.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101017/ap_on_el_ge/us_ap_poll_obama_voters
25% of the people who voted for Obama have become conservative Republicans--or perhaps returned to being conservative Republicans.
I too was sick of Bush and the neoCons.
But you can count me as one who voted for the empty promise of change and regrets having ever done so. I would vote for ANY Tea Party candidate today over ANY Democrat ... that's how alienated I feel after the past two years.
I am not alone. The Dems have done NOTHING to support an ailing middle class. The Dems have served only vested interests with have NOTHING to do with the actual well-being of the middle class in America.
No matter how hard your media works at obfuscating and hiding the truth, the truth will surface. And the truth is, both GOP and Dems are corrupt. GOP gets the nod this time because they are closer to the true-conservative soul of this nation. But if the GOP falters again, as they did under Bush, they too will be expelled.
lol won't happen