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| Latest Gallup Pool: Even Split |
| 2004-10-04 |
| President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, are about even among likely and registered voters in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, released Sunday. The poll showed Kerry and Bush tied at 49 percent each among likely voters interviewed. Among registered voters Bush had 49 percent and Kerry 47 percent. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was favored by 1 percent in each group. The margin of error in each case was plus or minus 4 percentage points. By contrast, Bush was ahead of Kerry among likely voters 52 percent to 44 percent in the Gallup poll conducted September 24-26. Among registered voters in that poll, the spread was 53 percent for Bush and 42 percent for Kerry. Nader had 3 percent among each group. The latest poll talked with 1,012 adult Americans by telephone Friday through Sunday, after the presidential debate Thursday. Among those interviewed, 934 said they were registered voters and 772 indicated they were likely to vote. |
| Posted by:BigEd |
| #3 OS: Secondly, Gallup "normalizes" its results to reflect the percentages of Democrats, Republicans and Independants that were present in the exit polls in 2000, which means it over-represents Democrats, since there has been a move post-9/11 toward the Republican party. Actually, I believe Gallup is one of the few polling firms that doesn't normalize its numbers to account for this. The Newsweek poll (also over the weekend) that showed the Kerry lead did not normalize its numbers either. Both polls showed a big swing from pre-debate numbers, which were conducted on week days, vs the post-debate numbers, conducted on the weekend after the debate. There was actually a 10% swing in party identification between weekday and weekend polls. In a nutshell, I think the weekend numbers are skewed towards Democrats, whereas the weekday polls cover most everyone. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-10-04 10:41:34 AM |
| #2 Further, the only votes that directly count toward electing the president are those cast by the Electoral College. This site is a Kerry leaning site that was updated this morning and still shows Bush with 295 ECV (271 required to win). This site is less biased but was only updated yesterday. It shows Bush with 291. So while the poll numbers nationwide may move, if it is in safe states but not battleground states, it doesn't change the result. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-10-04 10:17:39 AM |
| #1 A note about polls: Weekend polls tend to skew Democrat - they Poll on SUnday Mornings - which means they will miss the Church-goaers, who, as a group, are very solidly pro-Bush. Secondly, Gallup "normalizes" its results to reflect the percentages of Democrats, Republicans and Independants that were present in the exit polls in 2000, which means it over-represents Democrats, since there has been a move post-9/11 toward the Republican party. Wait for a midweek poll by a professional firm that doesn fiddle the numbers. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-10-04 10:08:41 AM |