You already know that if you're a regular reader, but the mythical "Bush enormous advantage" is officially dead in the media as an unquestioned fact.
WASHINGTON -- Widely divergent poll results in recent days underscore a paradox of the 2004 presidential race: Despite all the surveys, it may be the toughest election in memory for anyone to track.
Opinion polls themselves had been getting harder to conduct long before the matchup between President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. The reasons range from growing reluctance to participate in surveys to increasing reliance on cellphones rather than the land lines pollsters have long used to ensure demographic and geographic balance in surveys.
But this year's bitter presidential contest has heaped on new challenges. They include an exceptionally close race and a polarized electorate that magnifies the consequence of different polling methods. In addition, unprecedented voter-mobilization drives by both parties make it especially tough for pollsters to say which voters probably will show up on Election Day.
"It makes it harder" to forecast the likely electorate, says Fred Steeper, a longtime pollster for Mr. Bush. In the six weeks to Election Day on Nov. 2, he adds, disparate polls may reflect sampling error and methodological differences more often than shifting opinion. "My advice to the consumer is ... the day-to-day reports of polling will exaggerate the changes in this race."
Written by John Harwood (along with Ron Brownstein, the most level-headed of the pundits), it confirms the uncertainty we all feel.
More from the article (remember there's a difference between the editorial pages of the WSJ and the news section, especially when stories have a by-line):
Underlying those conflicting arguments aren't just different political calculations but also differences in polling philosophy and techniques. Consider last week's Pew Research Center survey, which showed strikingly different research during two consecutive polling periods.
In the portion of the survey conducted Sept. 8-10, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry 52%-40% among registered voters. In a separate portion conducted Sept. 11-14, Messrs. Kerry and Bush were tied at 46%. But there was one other key difference, too: Among voters sampled in the first portion, self-described Republicans outnumbered Democrats by two percentage points; in the second, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by four percentage points.
Pew pollster Andrew Kohut described that difference as normal week-to-week drift -- because party allegiance is a fluctuating attitude -- that doesn't call his results into question. In fact, he says his surveys show the race is more volatile than other analysts have suggested. But the Bush campaign insists the partisan variation exaggerated the appearance of a trend toward Mr. Kerry.
Party allegiance "does not change in seven days" by that much, says Mr. Steeper, the Bush pollster. He says Mr. Kohut should have "weighted" his poll with a common assessment of partisanship for both samples; averaging the two would have shown the president with a steady lead of about six percentage points.
This weighting argument has been going on now for a while... when you see Gallup's results, you can understand why it's an issue, but there's another side to the story that many professional pollsters follow. More here from a good diary on weighting. MyDD has been all over this, along with Steve Soto from the Left Coaster.
Gallup responds:
As a result, Kerry pollster Mark Mellman has loudly accused the high-profile Gallup survey of using a likely-voter identification method that is "not very accurate," in part because the screening questions are outdated and because they can't properly measure voting intention so long before Election Day. The substantial variation between the likely-voter results and Gallup's registered-voter findings -- which showed an eight-percentage-point Bush lead -- is larger than what other likely-voter assessments usually record, Mr. Mellman says.
"We're open to any scientific evidence that would point to our modifying our likely-voter model," responds Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. Mr. Newport says so far he hasn't seen any.
In 2000, Gallup's election-eve sample of likely voters showed Mr. Bush leading by two percentage points over Al Gore. Its registered-voter sample, showing Messrs. Bush and Gore neck and neck, was closer to the actual Election Day results. But Mr. Newport notes that in 1996 the likely-voter model more accurately forecast the size of Bill Clinton's victory over former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole.
Polls are only a tool, but when they all give the same result, or they are hugely skewed (think Obama-Keyes), they do point to an underlying truth. As November gets closer, the polls will converge. Keep all of this in mind... it's the only way to stay sane.
Update [2004-9-20 9:43:5 by DemFromCT]:
The Washington Times says the same thing.