Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Have Polls Always Underestimated The GOP Vote?


Knowing that exit polling has historically overestimated the Democratic vote and knowing how much the final regular polling in the 1980 race understated Ronald Reagan’s support compared to Jimmy Carter, it is worth looking at what the final poll results said in other presidential election years.
The facts show a similar trend in a pro-Democratic direction almost uniformly. Historically speaking, pollsters have underestimated how many people would vote for the Republican presidential candidate:
Writing at National Review, reporter Jim Geraghty quotes an anonymous pollster who provides a helpful review of past polling data:
In 1992, Gallup’s final poll had Clinton winning by 12 percentage points, he won by 5.6 percentage points. In late October 1992, Pew had Clinton up 10.
In 1996, some reputable pollsters had Clinton winning by 18 percentage points late, and Pew had Clinton up by 19 in November; on Election Day, he won by 8.5 percentage points… In 2004, pollsters were spread out, but most underestimated Bush’s margin. (2000 may have been a unique set of circumstances with the last-minute DUI revelation dropping Bush’s performance lower than his standing in the final polls; alternatively, some may argue that the Osama bin Laden tape the Friday before the election in 2004 altered the dynamic in those final days.) In 2008, Marist had Obama up 9, as did  CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News, while Reuters and Gallup both had Obama up 11.
Now, if this was just random chance of mistakes, you would see pollsters being wrong in both directions and by about the same margin in each direction at the same rate – sometimes overestimating how well the Democrats do some years, sometimes overestimating how well the Republicans do. But the problem seems pretty systemic – sometimes underestimating the GOP by a little, sometimes by a lot.
In 2004, the final telephone surveys mostly favored George W. Bush against John Kerry but the exit polls clearly did not. As usual, they overstated the Democrat vote (see our earlier report on reasons for this) which led many Democrats to expect that Kerry would win the popular vote and the presidency. When that did not happen, it triggered a widespread belief among hardcore Democrats that Republicans had somehow managed to “steal” the election in several different states, particularly in Ohio.
Via: Newsbusters

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U.S. intelligence now says Benghazi attack "deliberate and organized"


(Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two U.S. government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.
Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper's office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.
Turner said that as U.S. intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, "we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."
He said it remained "unclear" if any individual or specific group commanded the attack. U.S. agencies nonetheless believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida."
In an apparent reference to a series of contradictory statements by some top Obama administration officials, Turner said intelligence agencies' "initial assessment" had been passed on "to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available."

Friday, August 31, 2012

Poll: Romney gets convention bounce, takes national lead

Romney leads with 44 percent support, compared with 42 percent for Obama


Mitt Romney has taken the lead over President Obama with a bounce in the polls from the Republican National Convention.
Romney leads with 44 percent support, compared with 42 percent for Obama, according to a Reuters-Ipsos national tracking poll released Thursday.
The Republican candidate started the week trailing Obama 46 to 42 percent. The swing of 6 percentage points is likely due to voter focus on the Republican National Convention, which concludes Thursday night in Tampa, Fla.
The Real Clear Politics average of polls now shows Obama with only a 1 percentage point advantage over Romney, 47 to 46 percent, though that average doesn’t take into account the latest Reuters-Ipsos data.

While that’s good news for the Romney campaign, the bounce is likely to be short-lived as Democrats convene for their convention next Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C. 

Romney also saw a small uptick in his personal appeal, according to the poll, with 30 percent now saying the GOP nominee is “ likable,” up from 26 at the start of the week. 
A historically low favorability rating has dogged Romney throughout his run for the White House, but he’ll look to build on the strong convention speeches given by his wife, Ann, and running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), when he addresses the nation for the first time Thursday night as the Republican nominee. 
The Reuters-Ipsos poll of 1,481 Americans was conducted online and has a 3 percent margin of error.

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