Help me write a pep talk.
I'm going to be speaking to the local Kerry volunteer group tomorrow evening, and I was wondering if anyone out there can help me with the following figures.
My idea is to have cards with each of the numbers mentioned below, and tell a narrative explaining why the Gallup figures are skewed and why we should take all polls with a grain of salt.
For example, "Gallup says that if the election were held today, John Kerry would receive this percentage of the vote (hold up card). George Bush would receive this percentage (hold up card).
"Now, this doesn't look like good news. Of course, Gallup doesn't tell you that they're just as confident that, if the election were held today, John Kerry would get this result (hold up card showing top number in Kerry's 95% confidence range), and Bush would get this result (card showing bottom number in Bush's confidence range).
...
"Of course, Gallup needs the margin of error. Why? Well, here's what they said Bush's margin of victory would be in late October 2000 (hold up 13% figure, or whatever it was). And, of course, this was Bush's actual margin of victory (hold up -.5% figure, or whatever it was). It's tough to win with a negative margin of victory, but somehow Bush pulled it off."
etc.
So here are the figures I'm after. I can get a lot of them on my own, but if anyone wants to help me out, I'd appreciate it.
- Kerry result in latest Gallup poll.
- Bush result in latest Gallup poll.
- Top of Kerry's range
- Bottom of Bush's range
- Predicted Bush margin in 2000 (the late October poll showing a 13% lead would be preferable, if it exists).
- Actual Bush margin in 2000 (which should be a negative number).
- Percentage of Republicans in latest poll.
- Percentage of voters in 2000 that were Republican ("In other words, if the election were held today , and 10% more Republicans turned out than did in 2000, Bush would win!")
- Figures from the recent Time poll that had a skewed sample.
- Figures from the Newsweek poll.
- Number of years the original George Gallup has been dead
- Number of times they've been within the margin of error on a Presidential race since 1992.
- Percentage of registered voters not included in Gallup's "likely voter" definition (I think they only use the top 55% "most likely," but I'd like confirmation of that.
- Year in which Gallup predicted Dewey would defeat Truman. (I already know it was 1948, but this will give you an idea where I'm going here.)
- Amount of money Gallup's present CEO donated to the Cain campaign.
- Latest (narrowest) North Carolina poll. The latest Rasmussen poll looked bad, but there have been two polls showing a tighter race mentioned here recently. If anyone can help me find them, I'd be grateful.
Of course if all of this is available in one (or even 2 or 3) places, just point me there.
Thanks!