Public Policy Polling

More on Massachusetts Polls

As is pretty predictable I see a lot of folks writing off our poll because the Boston Globe poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, has to be more accurate than ours because it was paid for by a newspaper and conducted by a college. It's certainly possible that we're wrong but let's look at how the university/newspaper polls did compared to the IVR polls a week and a half out in New Jersey:

Pollster	Numbers 10 Days Out
Suffolk University	Corzine +9
Quinnipiac University	Corzine +5
Fairleigh Dickinson University	Corzine +1
Survey USA	Tie
Rasmussen	Christie +3
PPP	Christie +4
Final Result	Christie +4

Doesn't mean the IVR polls are right and the college polls are wrong again, but we have a recent example where that proved to be the case. I still expect Martha Coakley to win but I'm pretty certain it's a low single digit race right now and if she does end up victorious it will be because she closed strongly.

Looking at the House

Could Republicans win back the House of Representatives next year? Yes, but it would take Democratic House members doing as badly at the polls as their party's Gubernatorial candidates did in Virginia and New Jersey this year.

Tim Kaine was elected Governor of Virginia by 6 points in 2005. This year Bob McDonnell won by 17, for a 23 point decline in Democratic performance from one election to the next. In New Jersey Jon Corzine was victorious by 11 points in 2005, then lost by 4 in his reelection bid this year for a 15 point drop in Democratic standing.

Average those out and between an extremely unpopular incumbent in Corzine and a woeful campaign by Creigh Deeds in Virginia you have a 19 point decline on the margin for the Democrats.

There are 51 seats in the House currently held by Democrats who won by 19 points or fewer last year. Assuming that Democratic losses in places even where they didn't have remotely close contests last year (Bart Gordon and John Tanner for instance) are offset by Democratic gains in some of their apparent easy pickings seats (Joseph Cao, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, maybe Jim Gerlach) then Republicans would have to win 40 of those sub 19 point margin Democratic seats, or 78%.

Of course the vast majority of those Democratic incumbents will have something working for them that Creigh Deeds didn't (having been elected to their seats before) and that Jon Corzine didn't (it's unlikely many of them have 60% disapproval ratings.) So Republicans do have a chance at taking back the House but Democrats would have to be as incompetent in 2010 as they were in 2009 and that just doesn't seem real likely.

Digging Deeper on Independents

We all know that a big part of the Republican successes in New Jersey and Virginia last week had to do with Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell's ability to win over independent voters.

I want to go a little deeper than that though, and talk about the differences between McCain independents and Obama independents- and why the latter group will be the most influential voter bloc in next year's elections.

Independents who voted for John McCain are more or less Republican voters who don't call themselves that. In Virginia they voted for McDonnell by an 89-8 margin and in New Jersey they went for Chris Christie by an 88-6 margin. On the generic Congressional ballot for next year they go 70-2 for the GOP in Virginia and 78-3 in New Jersey. These are not your imaginary sort of independents who are centrists and swing from one party to the other on an election by election basis- they are conservative, Republican voters who just don't attach that label to themselves.

The Obama voting independents in New Jersey and Virginia are more of your true swing voters. They only went for Creigh Deeds by a 66-32 margin and their support for Jon Corzine was only 52-24. Looking toward next year they support Democrats 48-24 for Congress in Virginia and 50-11 in New Jersey.

These are the kinds of voters who may be looking for a division of power. Obama's approval with them in Virginia is 67% and in New Jersey it's 75% so Congressional Democrats are running well behind his level of support. The relatively high number of undecideds with them in both states would seem to indicate they aren't enthralled with the Democrats in DC but they aren't real sold on the Republicans either and they're going to vote for whichever side does the better job of winning them over.

The biggest factor in who wins next year will be turnout and which party can mobilize its voters to get out and vote, but if you want to talk about the most persuadable group of the electorate it's the independents who voted for Obama. Their decisions could decide a lot of close races.

Looking toward 2010

I had a couple of theories about why Democratic voter turnout was so bad last week besides the party nominating bad candidates.

One was the frustration theory: we got Congress back in 2006, we got Barack in in 2008, but things aren't changing enough. Getting out and voting for our candidates didn't really make anything better.

The other is the complacency theory: we got rid of Bush, we got rid of all those arch conservatives running Congress, now our guys are in charge and we can trust them to do the right thing. It doesn't really matter if I vote this year or not because we've got it covered.

Some post-election polling from Democracy Corps in New Jersey and Virginia would seem to suggest the frustration theory is wrong and the complacency theory is worryingly correct.

In both New Jersey and Virginia people who didn't vote were much more likely to think the country is heading in the right direction than those who did. Those who think things are fine were less likely to get out and vote.

Similar story when it comes to whether people think Obama has things going the right way- 49% of those who didn't vote in Virginia think he does while only 43% of those who did vote do. In New Jersey 63% of nonvoters thought Obama had the country going in the right direction while only 51% of voters shared that sentiment.

What's the lesson here?

-Democratic voters who think things are fine now that Obama is in office have developed some sense of complacency that reduced their urge to vote this fall.

-Democrats need to create a villain to keep that from happening again in 2010. They got two good election cycles out of George W. Bush but it's probably time for something new. Unfortunately the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells of the world are too obscure for that purpose so I don't know who the answer is- Rush Limbaugh? The best message for Democrats to get their people back out to the polls might be- 'look, these Republicans are still trying to obstruct progress and we need you to get out there and vote if Barack's going to be able to pursue his entire agenda.'

Basically Democratic voters need to be disabused of the notion that all is ok- because if turnout patterns this November match turnout patterns from last November all is most certainly not going to be ok.

GOP disunity overblown?

I think Republican unity problems of late have been extremely overblown.

There's no doubt NY-23 was a big old mess, and if that's replicated on a broader scale next year the GOP will have some problems. But I think that whole charade was a once in a lifetime thing.

New Jersey and Virginia provide us with some better clues as to the state of the party.

In New Jersey we found Chris Christie winning 82% of the Republican vote to Jon Corzine's 72% of the Democratic vote. And in Virginia we found Bob McDonnell getting 94% of the GOP vote to Creigh Deeds' 87% of the Democratic vote.

Contrast that to last year. Our final Virginia poll had Barack Obama getting 89% of the Democratic vote to John McCain's 87% of the Republican vote. And the New Jersey exit poll showed Obama getting 89% of the Democratic vote to McCain's 85% of the GOP vote.

In both cases the Democrats were more unified in 2008 but the Republicans were more together in 2009. And at this point I expect that to continue in 2010. GOP voters know they have to support their party's nominee- as chosen in the primary- if they're going to start on the path back to power in Washington DC.

The problem in NY-23 was that the party rank and file didn't get to make that choice and it caused a huge splinter and lots of resentment...but that won't be a concern in many races next year. There will likely be some spirited primaries but by and large the party's voters will get on board in the general election to fight off the greater evil.

I think ultimately Democrats are going to have a harder time keeping their voters on the same page in the general election next year than the Republicans.

Obama and 2009

There's been a seemingly endless debate this week about whether New Jersey and Virginia were Barack Obama's fault.

But I've found the data point that ends the argument for me.

On April 15th Obama's national approval rating in Gallup was 63%. A Rasmussen poll that day showed Bob McDonnell leading Creigh Deeds 45-30 and a Quinnipiac poll showed Chris Christie leading Jon Corzine 45-38.

Those guys were getting creamed at the height of Obama's popularity. Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds lost because of Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds, not Barack Obama. No President is so amazingly popular that he can magically make leads of that magnitude disappear.

Reviewing New Jersey

The story of what happened over the course of the New Jersey Governor's race is Chris Christie's share of the Republican vote and lead with independents plummeting...and then recovering in the end.

On our first New Jersey poll in late June 93% of Republican said they were going to vote for Christie. But it seemed that the more they got to know him the less they liked him. That dropped to 86% in a late July poll, 79% in a mid-September one, and all the way to 73% in early October. That was the poll where we showed Christie leading by only one point.

I think that may have been the point where Republicans realized that even if they didn't love Christie he was their best chance for getting rid of Jon Corzine. He was at 82% of his party's vote in our last two polls and that pushed his lead back up to four points and then six in the final one.

It was a similar trajectory with independents. Christie started with a 34 point lead, which went to 28, then 19, then 14 on that poll where he led by only a point. But in the final two weeks he built that lead back up to 19 points then 23.

With both Republicans and independents he never recovered the initial standing that afforded him a double digit lead earlier in the campaign, but he got enough of it back to win. And it's interesting to note that while our final four polls showed Christie's lead going from 9 points, then to 1, then back up to 4, then back up to 6 there was much less variability over the course of those in his favorability- it was 45%, then 42%, then 45%, then 43%. It wasn't perceptions of him changing, just the eagerness to get rid of Corzine.

Chris Daggett had no real impact on the final outcome. His main impact on the race was to create an inflated sense of Corzine's prospects as he dug into Christie's share of vote through September and early October. But when it became clear that he wasn't viable Christie started to recover some of his support from earlier in the campaign.

Bottom line on this one: when your favorability is in the mid-30s you just can't get reelected.

Some closing thoughts on Virginia turnout

Our early August poll in Virginia found that 60% of McCain voters and 42% of Obama voters were coming out for Governor this year. We surmised Creigh Deeds would have to get that up to 55% of Obama voters to have any chance.

If the exit polls were right he got it up to...43% of Obama voters over the last three months while 59% of McCain voters turned out. So although there was some shifting in September, the ultimate outcome was basically unchanged from August.

To put that into hard numbers 1.1 million Obama voters didn't come out this year while only 715,000 McCain voters stayed home.

That's scary as heck for next year. The big question is how much of that is natural and how much of that is just Deeds' fault. It will be a while before that answers becomes clear.

Weird Night for PPP

There's no beating around the bush about it- our poll in NY-23 was way off the mark. I made a poor judgment call by not just killing it when Scozzafava dropped out and then endorsed Owens. Like any pollster we will make mistakes, we will just try not to make the same ones twice. Obviously the bizarre machinations in the race last weekend made it extremely volatile and if we ever a poll a race this strange again we will make better decisions (or maybe make the most prudent decision to just sit such a contest out!) But I apologize for putting bad information out there, it is very embarrassing.

Beyond that though I'm pretty proud of how we did tonight. There was a lot of skepticism about our New Jersey and Maine numbers and we did really well in both places. I'm not going to lie, it feels very good to beat most of the New Jersey pollsters in New Jersey, especially since it was our first time polling the state. We did a good job of chronicling the end of Corzine's gain in momentum in mid-October and the shift back toward Christie over the last couple weeks.

In Maine I think our accuracy is an indicator that IVR is superior to live interviewers when polling on sensitive issues about sexuality and probably race. I've argued that since we put out our first poll there.

In Virginia we were pretty good, I'm very proud of the sum total of our polling there over the last two years. We were also very good in Chapel Hill, correctly predicting a one point race and that the Council race would be pretty bunched up but with the incumbents winning. In Charlotte we were within the margin of error on our final prediction but underestimated the strength of Anthony Foxx's turnout operation and ability to get Obama wave voters back out- hats off to them.

I will note that with the exception of Virginia all of our 'error' overestimated the prospects of Republican candidates, which should just go to show that much more that our polling is above board and non biased, not that I expect that to stop Republican whining when they don't like our numbers.

Thank you to everyone who's followed our 2009 election cycle polling.

Good election for IVR

As Taegan Goddard has already noted, last night was a good one for IVR polling.

In New Jersey the pollster.com trend showed Jon Corzine leading Chris Christie 42-39 on live interviewer polls. On automated polls Christie led Corzine 44-41. There was never an automated poll showing Corzine in the lead for the entirety of the New Jersey race. On the final round of polls we showed Christie at 47%, Rasmussen had him at 46%, and SurveyUSA had him at 45%. No live interview poll showed Christie higher than 43% and one even had him as low as 36%.

Similar story in Virginia, although not to the same degree. The pollster.com trend for IVR polls had Bob McDonnell up 55-42 to a 53-42 lead with live interviewers. I think it needs to be noted particularly though that SurveyUSA (18 point McDonnell win), PPP (14 point McDonnell win), and Rasmussen (13 point McDonnell win) all came closer to the final outcome than the Washington Post poll, which had McDonnell winning by just 11. And if they want to make the argument that's because their final poll was released a week before the election, PPP had McDonnell up 15 and SurveyUSA had him up by 17 in two polls conducted with roughly the same field period.

The Post wrote a remarkably haughty column in May about why they won't cover IVR polls. Now I know the real reason for their refusal- they just don't want their readers to know our polling is more accurate than theirs. It will be interesting to see if anyone chooses to reconsider their poll reporting policies in the days ahead.