Sunday, October 16, 2016

New Polling Ahead of Wednesday's Presidential Debate (VIDEO)

I just don't buy the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finding Hillary Clinton with an 11-point lead. See, via Memeorandum, "Hillary Clinton Extends Lead Over Donald Trump to 11 Points."

And of course, here's the reason: WSJ/NBC reports an ideological breakdown of 43 pecent Democrat and Democrat-leaners, versus 36 percent Republican and Republican-leaners, and 12 percent independents.

See the Conservative Treehouse, "Media Polling Fully Exposed – About That NBC/WSJ Clinton +11 Point Poll..."

In contrast, the new Washington Post/ABC News polls shows a much closer race, with Hillary leading by just four points. See, ABC News, "Enthusiasm for Donald Trump Fades, Yet Partisanship Keeps It Close." And the partisan breakdown at the survey:
Partisan divisions are 33-25-33 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents, in the full sample, 32-29-33 among registered voters and 33-31-31 among likely voters.
Of course most consumers of mass media polls don't know enough to break down surveys by partisanship, much less by registered voters versus likely voters. The most important measure for the November election is the likely voters statistic, which at the WaPo/ABC poll derives from a breakdown of 33 to 31 percent Democrats versus Republicans, with a whopping 31 percent independents (32-29-33 among registered voters). That's light years away from the breakdown for WSJ/NBC, which is reporting registered voters. Frankly, the latter's a bogus poll. But here you have all this whoop-de-do about Hillary's "double-digit" lead following the Access Hollywood scandal, which is totally preposterous.

Well, no need to get too worried about the polling. It's all over the place, dependent on the reporting methods and partisan breakdown.

Meanwhile, here's Newt Gingrich, from ABC's This Week, "Newt Gingrich: If media wasn't lined up against Trump, he'd be beating Clinton by 15 points."

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