By Richard Larsen
Published – Idaho State Journal, 09/30/12
Most presidential election polls indicate that Barack Obama
is leading Mitt Romney from two to eight percentage points. A notable exception
is the Rasumssen poll which has Romney up slightly. While the pollsters are
unlikely colluding, as the mainstream media do, to support their candidate of
choice, there are three significant quantitative reasons the polls paint a
skewed picture.
For a little perspective, with just a week to go before the
1980 presidential election, challenger Ronald Reagan trailed incumbent
President Jimmy Carter by three to six percentage points in the polls. Then
came the one and only presidential debate, and pre-election polls indicated the
race was “too close to call.” The final results were significantly different
than “too close to call,” as Reagan won by ten points, even with Independent
Candidate John Anderson picking up nearly 7%, and Reagan won an electoral
landslide, 489 to 49, with only 6 states voting for Carter.
The first issue that challenges the current polling
methodology is based in party affiliation. This is always tenuous and in a
state of flux, depending on sometimes exogenous factors that incline voters to
lean one way or another with regard to political party identification.
According to Rasmussen Reports, the latest data indicate a quantitative spike
for Republicans (37.6%) and a drop for Democrats (33.3%) representing a 4.3%
spread advantage for Republicans, with Independents coming in at 29.2%.
To provide context, at the time of the 2010 midterm
elections, party affiliation was Republican 36.0%, Democrat 34.7%, for a 1.3%
advantage for Republicans, and Independents at 29.3%. At the time of the 2008
presidential election, Democrats led significantly with 41.4%, versus
Republicans at 33.8%, for a 7.6% Democrat advantage, and Independents at 24.7%.
Election results for both 2008 and 2010, based on self-declared party
affiliation, portend significantly different results for 2012 than what polls
are currently indicating.
In spite of the current affiliation advantage for
Republicans, the major polls are nearly all oversampling Democrats, as they
explain in their methodology. Their rationale is based primarily on 2008 voter
demographics gleaned from exit polls. Pollster’s explanation for their
methodology is an exercise in statistical and verbal gymnastics as they justify
their sampling rates.
Mr. Morris, who engineered Bill Clinton’s successful
elections as governor and president, said recently, “All of the polling out
there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting
respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.”
Morris explains why the 2008 data is not an accurate model
for the 2012 election. “But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for example,
usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up 14% of the vote.
Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and college kids almost
doubled their vote share.”
“But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm among
Obama’s core demographic support due to high unemployment, disappointment with
his policies and performance, and the lack of novelty in voting for a black
candidate now that he has already served as president. If you adjust virtually
any of the published polls to reflect the 2004 vote, not the 2008 vote, they
show the race either tied or Romney ahead, a view much closer to reality.”
Which brings us to the second anomaly as it relates to the
current crop of polls. There’s a significant shift in the enthusiasm gap with
this election cycle. In 2008, voters that leaned Democrat were 61% more
enthusiastic than usual to vote, while the Republicans were at 35%. In 2010,
the enthusiasm gap had evened out at nearly 50% for each side. For this
election cycle, Gallup indicates those that lean Republican are 51% more
enthusiastic, versus 39% for the Democrat leaners.
Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal pointed to this
enthusiasm gap this week. “Among those who voice the highest interest in the
election — in other words, those who seem most intensely interested in voting —
Mr. Romney leads by three percentage points.”
The third quantitative anomaly is in how the demographic
disparities just don’t add up to confirm most poll results. The independent
vote, 29.2% who self-identify as such, favors Romney by 15 points (James
Carville’s Democracy Corps) and 14 points (CNN). Politico indicates Romney is
favored by middleclass voters by 14 points and male voters by 6. Rasmussen says
Romney leads the white vote by 20%. The 45 and older voters favor Romney by 7%,
white women favor Romney by 9% representing a 16% gain from what McCain got in
2008. Romney is making gains with Hispanics at 40%, and leads with Catholics at
51%. A Democrat has never won the presidency without a majority of the Catholic
vote. Obama is losing 25% of the Jewish vote he garnered last time, and the
youth vote, which voted 78% for Obama last time, gives him only a slight edge,
49% to 41%, this time around. Also, Morris claims that historically, as
much as 75% of the undecided vote breaks for the challenger, which is between
7-10%.
Questionable under or oversampling, a widening enthusiasm
gap, and demographic breakdowns that don’t add up, paint a different picture
than what most polls are indicating and cast a pall of doubt over their
validity. Ultimately it all boils down to who shows up to vote, and the best
thing for conservatives to do is ignore the pollsters and show up en masse on
November 6.
AP award winning
columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and
financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State
University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the
Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He
can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.