Statistically, the liberal bias was evident in the recent NBC/WSJ/Marist poll, where the pollsters thought a 38% Democrat, 28% GOP, 32% Independent turnout was a representative sample. I'll just go out on a limb here and predict that if Republicans--in a presidential election year--turnout only a quarter of the electorate, then yes, Obama wins.
That won't happen--Republicans are too energized to only make up a quarter of all voters. So chalk it up to the liberal bias of the national media. In fact, releasing such polling played right into Obama's convention strategy.
But I didn't think the Ohio media would buy into that messaging. Yet, that's exactly what happened with this weekend's Ohio Newspaper Poll:
President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by 5 percentage points — 51 percent to 46 percent — among likely voters in the first Dispatch/Ohio Newspaper Organization poll of the 2012 election season.A 5-point lead? Only a month out from the election? Wow, guess it's time to pack it in, huh?
Of course, that's before you look at the (limited) data behind the poll. The voter turnout sample? 48% Democrat.
That bears repeating: the Ohio Newspaper Poll wants you to believe that nearly half of those casting their ballots this November will be Democrats.
How anyone thinks that is a real possibility is absolutely ludicrous. No party has had over a 40% turnout in decades. 48% Democrat turnout is about as likely Barack Obama actually owning his abysmal record.
But for Obama to be winning in the Ohio Poll, he needed that 48%, because he's losing Independent voters 2 to 1:
As would be expected, each candidate has overwhelming support from people in his party, with Obama claiming 94 percent of people polled who identified themselves as Democrats, and Romney, 91 percent of Republicans. Among independents, Romney had 54 percent, more than twice the percentage for Obama. [Emphasis ours].Obama is losing the Independent vote and the media knows it. Thus the excessive Democrat oversampling. And thus the liberal media spin.
Statistics don't lie. And when polls are measured on realistic expectations this election, Obama finds himself under water in the Buckeye State.
Go figure. Apparently killing jobs isn't too popular among voters.
Whenever the Right is losing they trot out this same, tired old song. Then they make up the "real facts", ala' Fox News. Face it kids, the majority isn't buying your particular brand this time around. Thankfully.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you what: if Democrats turn out 48% of the vote in November, I'll submit a full apology and resign from blogging.
DeleteBut I'm guessing history is on my side.
More or less the same results with the latest Columbus Dispatch poll -- it shows a substantial 9% lead for that individual.
DeleteI did not miss the fact that it also contained s sizable oversampling of Dem voters (43%) -- but according to the pollster's write up that excess percentage resulted from the fact that more Dems returned the CDP questionnaire that did Repubs.
Assuming the CDP was truthful -- i.e., that the recipients of the questionnaires are RANDOMLY selected from a likely (or is it registered) voter data base -- what accounts for the 7% Dem over sample?
I'm not sure about the actual Ohio registered voter data base but let's say there are more Dems than Repubs -- but certainly the Dems do not have a 7% advantage on the rolls?
The Dispatch seems to suggest that it is a measure of voter enthusiasm and more Dems were motivated enough to mail it back in? But they do not exactly state what the percentage of D. vs. R was in the outgoing questionnaires.
But if is simply a case of the Dems being more motivated to send back the response than Repubs then that's a shocker as heretofore this year all signs reported that we had the edge in that department?