Scott Keeter, Associate Director of the Pew Research Center, also responded to my question about why his organization does not typically include results for party identification for each survey. Like Gallup, the Pew Center has disclosed party results upon request. Pew also frequently prepares summary reports on trends in party ID, including their must-read report last September on the pitfalls of weighting by party, which included data from other organizations.
MP asked — as explained in full in the previous post — why not include results for party ID in each survey release? Here is Keeter’s answer:
You correctly note that the Pew Research Center freely reports party identification marginals for any survey upon request. And of course we have written several reports in which we present the trends in party identification and offer an analysis of the changes.
- http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=236
- http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?AnalysisID=95
- http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=196
Given the evolution of the dialogue on the subject – for which MysteryPollster deserves a lot of credit — and the greater understanding among political observers regarding the perils of weighting party ID to an arbitrary parameter (clearly illustrated by the party ID distribution on Election Day 2004), we will begin posting party ID and its trend in our toplines in future survey releases [emphasis added].
Thank you Dr. Keeter! We now have two prominent survey organizations committing to release information on the party leanings of each survey. That’s one small step for consumers of political data everywhere. Hopefully other organizations will follow the lead of Gallup and Pew.
Tomorrow: The response from SRBI’s Mark Schulman (and it should be noted again that the Time/SRBI poll included results for party identification in each pre-election survey released last fall).
This releasing of party ID is a good first step and I hope these organizations eventually release how they weight and the effect of their weighting on Party ID (ie, whether they are consistently using models that consistently push their samples more Democratic or more Republican).
Bravo Mark. Truly great work!
I vigorously dispute that the 2004 election revealed any “perils” in weighting samples by Party ID.
Given the choice between a 2% error from weighting 2004 polls based on 2000 turnout (Democrats are estimated to have comprised 37% of the 2004 electorate, as opposed to 39% in 2000, and Republicans 37% in ’04 compared to 35% in ’00) and the much bigger errors in many polls that did not weight on Party ID (such as a late-September Gallup poll that included 12% — yes, 12% — more R’s than D’s), I’ll take the smaller error.
Please see my post-2004 Election synopsis on my sample-weighting website:
http://www.hs.ttu.edu/hdfs3390/weighting.htm
Alan, I don’t think Mark is implying anything about the 2004 election. (Are you Mark?) I applaud his ability to use this medium to win concessions for more transparency in reporting of methods.
It wasn’t Mark, but rather Scott Keeter of the Pew Center (whose message Mark relayed) who appeared to indict weighting by Party ID based on the 2004 election:
“…the greater understanding among political observers regarding the perils of weighting party ID to an arbitrary parameter (clearly illustrated by the party ID distribution on Election Day 2004)…”
This passage appeared within Mark’s essay, as a quote from Keeter. I disagree with the passage, as I discuss in my previous comment.
Adjusting polls for party identification
There has been some discussion about adjusting public opinion polls for party identification (for example, see this page by Alan Reifman, which I found in a Google search). Apparently there has been some controversy over the idea as it was…