Dissenting View

Legacy blog posts Likely Voters Weighting by Party

Not surprisingly, Alan Abramowitz took exception to my comments earlier today. In the interest of fairness, I am posting a portion of his email reply. He reacted to my assertion that ABC now weights its likely voter numbers by party, but not its registered voter samples:

Do they? Who knows and who knows by how much? They don’t report either their party id distribution or vote by party id for either RVs or LVs. Until and unless they do that, I don’t think you or I or the man in the moon can tell what they’re really doing…What I do know is, they are projecting an 8.5 point turnout advantage for registered Bush supporters vs. registered Kerry supporters right now, and that’s just not plausible. That’s based on the Post’s RV and LV numbers…Unfortunately, with the Post poll, the LV vs. RV issue and the party id weighting issue are getting confounded but they are really separate issues. We need to see what the separate effect of each is on their results but we can’t
based on the way they’re presenting those results.

An update: Tonight’s press release from ABC (not yet posted online) reports a 48% to 48% “dead heat” among likely voters and also says the following: “The partisan makeup in this poll is about even between Democrats and Republicans, 37-36 percent, with 24 percent independents.”

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.