Last-Minute Polls All Over the Place, But Obama Leads in Virtually All of Them

The final round of presidential election polls offer nothing certain about Tuesday's results -- except that Obama leads in all of them. Despite Obama's consistent lead, the polls show a lot of variance, and the "fine print" often raises more questions.

Variation

Although the presidential election is really a series of state-to-state contests, the national popular vote polls can provide some indication of the overall sentiment of voters. The nationwide polls, however, lack uniformity: they either show that the race is very close or tied or that Obama will win in a landslide.

The most recent CBS poll, for example, has Obama up by 13 points (54-41), but Obama leads by only 2 points (47-45) in the final IBD/TIPP poll. Last week, Pew reported that Obama had a 12-point lead; today, the pollster gave Obama a comfortable, but much smaller, lead of 6 points. Overall, the Pollster.Com average of all the major polls has Obama up by 6 points nationally.

Fine Print

Reading the details in some of the polls only makes things even more confusing -- or interesting, depending upon your perspective. In the Pew poll, for example, people who have "already voted" favor Obama 52-39. The remaining 9% are in a category "undecided/other." I assume that people who have already voted are not undecided about how they voted. On the other hand, I cannot imagine what "other" candidate could garner 9% of the national vote among early voters. Furthermore, despite Obama's lead among those who have already voted, the Pew poll actually shows McCain winning among election-day voters 46-45. A significant amount of likely voters remain undecided, which I find baffling.

In an earlier post, I analyzed the CBS poll that gives Obama a 13-point lead. In that poll, Obama leads among early voters, but 50 percent of early voters in that survey are Democrats, 60% are women, and 16% are black -- which explains Obama's substantial lead.

The TIPP poll, co-sponsored by IBD (or Investor's Business Daily) does not provide the racial demographics of the individuals it polled (which is a startling omission). In that poll, a large degree of voters also remain undecided. For example, 11% of "northeastern" and 12% of "midwestern" voters have not picked a candidate yet, according to the poll. Interestingly, the pollster has a "hot topic" poll which seeks to determine whether Americans are "ready for socialism." The results will shock you (not really).

Pretty soon, the only relevant polls -- the election-day results -- will give us an actual winner, and pundits will drown us with repetitive and unlearned commentary about the returns. Until then, the poll-obsessed readers can only speculate about the accuracy of the pre-election data. For a great resource in this process, visit the presidential polling site on Pollster.Com.

CNN and CBS Release Highly Misleading Polls Regarding VP Debate

According to most media accounts, last night's vice presidential debate was a thriller. Sarah Palin received much of the focus due to her lackluster performances in recent television interviews. But I stated in a blog post prior to the debate that pundits should not dismiss Palin, because many of her failings of late could result from her lacking the experience engaging the national media. Also, many Republicans said that Palin had been overly handled but that they were now "freeing Sarah." Well, she certainly seemed more comfortable, poised, and well versed last night, just like she did in some of her earlier outings. Biden pulled in a great performance as well -- given his tremendous experience.

Several polls have emerged since the debate which try to tell viewers "who won." All of these polls are hopelessly flawed.

CNN/Opinion Research

CNN declares on its website that "Debate Poll Says Biden Won, Palin Beat Expectations." The specifics of the poll show that 51% of those polled thought that Biden did better, while 36% gave the nod to Palin. But the poll does not disclose the party affiliation or candidate preferences of the individuals surveyed. Evaluating performance in a debate that lacked any real "knockout" punch will inevitably turn on partisan preferences. So, this poll is absolutely useless without information concerning the ideology and politics of the individuals evaluating the candidates.

This same problem plagued CNN's polling of the presidential debate. Then, the headlines declared Obama the winner, and the national media reprinted the results widely. But if you actually read the full article, rather than the headlines as many people do, the pollster actually conceded that the survey polled far more Democrats than Republicans and that if one adjusted for party affiliation, the result was a "tie." Remarkably, the latest CNN poll does not give us any information regarding the party affiliation or candidate preferences of those surveyed. It simply declares Biden the winner.

CBS News

CBS News also released a poll concluding that Biden won the debate. On the surface, this poll seems to avoid CNN's mistake of not telling the reader the candidate preferences of the individuals polled. Why? The poll purports to provide the opinions of "uncommitted" voters.

Well, like a good lawyer, I read the fine print, and I found that uncommitted includes voters who are truly undecided and voters who have already chosen a candidate, but who "could still change their minds." So, some of the individuals polled are already leaning towards a candidate. The poll fails to provide a breakdown of their choices.

Studies show that people tend not to change their minds this late in an election cycle. So many of these so-called uncommitted individuals are probably sold on a candidate and probably thought that candidate won the debate. Because CBS News does not reveal what portion of the uncommitted voters actually preferred a candidate or the party affiliation of those polled, it is difficult to isolate bias in this survey. Accordingly, the poll is worthless.

Drudge Report and FoxNews

I have seen several websites citing to polls on the Drudge Report and FoxNews.Com. Unlike CNN and CBS, however, these media outlets have not officially released the results of the polls. The Drudge Report poll shows that Palin won by a landslide, while the FoxNews.Com polls shows that Biden won.

This category is very easy to dissect, mainly because both polls are online surveys. First, the polls are just as bad as the CNN and CBS polls because they fail to provide information about the candidate preferences of those who participated. Also, web polls in general are highly biased and inaccurate. You have to own a computer to participate (which could exclude older or poor people). But more relevant in this instance, you have to read the particular web page that conducted the poll in order to vote. Also, it is commonly known that people often "flood" webpages that they usually do not visit in order to influence the results of online polls. Thus, these polls fail to provide random samples and are thefore easily dismissed.

So Who Really Won?

The debate was very interesting, and I think objective commentators, to the extent that such exist, would find that Palin exceeded expectations and connected better to voters in terms of her style, but that Biden was more seasoned and specific. Beyond that, the person you wanted to win probably won. So who needs the polls anyway?

Message from the Professor: If you enjoy the commentary on this site, please subscribe to Dissenting Justice. You have the option of receiving daily email digests of blog essays or to access blog material in your favorite feed reader (or both!).