“Final” Results

Legacy blog posts The 2004 Race

Some news from GMU Prof. Michael McDonald by way of Ruy Teixeira – the final tabulation of the national popular vote based on the “official” count:

This tabulation includes roughly 5 million votes that were not included in the final news media reports released on November 11 (the difference is presumably some combination of provisional ballots and late arriving absentees). As Ruy pointed out, the additional votes narrowed President Bush’s victory margin slightly, from 2.95% (using the numbers posted by USA Today) to 2.45%.

I point this out because of a post I did in November that compared the final national polls to the actual outcome and concluded that “most of the surveys done in the final week (11 of 15) had a ‘bias’ toward Kerry – they showed Kerry ahead or had the margin closer than three points.”

I updated the table from my earlier post (see below) using the new official tally. The problem with applying the real 2.4% margin is that the national polls are typically rounded to the nearest whole digit. If we round down and assume a 2-point margin, the distribution of surveys looks more “normal”: 7 had Kerry too high, 4 had Bush too high and three reported 2-point margins. I don’t want to make too much of this – the main point is that the average margin reported by the polls in the final week (1.5%) looks closer to the final official result (2.5%) than it did in November (when it was reported as 2.95%).

Sadly (for me), the data above show, once again, that the incumbent rule did not hold in the presidential race in 2004. Those who were still undecided on the final survey either did not vote or split evenly between Bush and Kerry. I am hoping to do more comparisons using the final official numbers at the state level soon, but I expect the result in the Presidential race should be consistent.

Stay tuned…

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.