Proof that Washington Post/ABC News Poll Heavily Oversampled Democrats
A poll by ABC News and the Washington Post found a nine-point lead for Obama, a seven-point bump from their previous poll. Neither news organization, however, saw fit to disclose the percentages of Democrats and Republicans included in their sample. Fortunately the Post and ABC News released some numbers that allow one to conclude with certainty that they heavily oversampled Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents in this poll.
The news organizations explained the huge Obama bump in their headlines, citing economic worries as the reason for the sharp rise in the Democrat's numbers. Unfortunately for Obama, their numbers show a huge shift toward Obama on every issue but the economy, including ones that McCain is leading on in every other poll.
Contrary to the conclusion reached by the news organizations that Obama has found new support because of economic worries, the numbers actually suggest that there has been no real change in support on this issue or a McCain bump. (See ABC News/Washington Post Poll Internals here). In the previous ten surveys, 37.6% of the respondents on average said they trusted McCain more on the economy with 50.4% saying the same for Obama. In the most recent poll, 39% said they trusted McCain more on the economy while 53% trusted Obama. In the previous ten surveys Obama had a 12.8% advantage over McCain on the economy on average. In today's poll Obama had a 14% advantage, a 1.2% bump. That's a bump on that issue for both candidates, not a drop. Certainly the change in the head-to-head numbers cannot be explained by the economy.
We find the real reason for the huge Obama bump in some of the other internal numbers. In the previous ten surveys on the issue of Iraq, 47.5% favored McCain on the issue while 44.6% favored Obama. In this most recent poll, 45% favored McCain and 49% favored Obama. McCain had a 2.9% lead in the previous ten polls, and Obama had a 4% lead in today's poll. That's a 6.9% bounce. What has happened in the news to give Obama a bump on Iraq? Nothing. This disparity can only be explained by an oversample of Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents.
We see the same discordance with reality on the who do you trust on terrorism question. In the previous ten polls 54.6% favored McCain on terrorism and 36.4% favored Obama. In today's poll, 48% favored McCain and 44% favored Obama on terrorism. What has happened in the news to allow Obama to close an 18.2% gap on terrorism to 4%, a 14.2% swing? Nothing. Again, the only possible explanation for the change is a heavy oversampling of Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents.
Obama gained 1.2 points on the economy, 6.9 points on Iraq and a staggering 14.2 points on terrorism. Clearly the internals show that the economy is not the reason Obama received this huge bump in the head-to-head numbers. In fact, the internals prove the very opposite, that McCain is showing better on the economy than he is on the other big issues. We know this because on issues that McCain still holds a clear advantage on, Iraq and terrorism, his leads shrunk dramatically or evaporated. On the economy, McCain lost only 1.2 points. This clearly indicates that McCain is doing better on the economy than he was before. This is true because although he lost 1.2 points, he should have lost much more because of the heavy oversampling of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents.
The evidence clearly shows that the reason for the new nine-point lead is a heavy oversampling of Democrats. The internals also show that despite the heavy oversampling of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents, McCain is performing at least as well as he was before on the economy. This indicates a McCain bounce on the economy. This sort of distortion of the facts is not indicative of journalistic organizations, but of political partisans, and dishonest and not so clever ones at that. They should have hidden all their internal numbers if the wanted to dupe us, but perhaps they just could not bring themselves to that level of dishonesty.
The Ref | 9/24/08 | Permalink