OR: Public Policy Polling: Despite Romney's inroads, OR leans Obama

[politicallefty]

I am surprised that Oregon is this close. I would have imagined around a 10% win or so for the President. From what I understand about the state, it shouldn't really have major swings. I remember reading that it has some of the most liberal Democrats and some of the most conservative Republicans.

For those that want to attack PPP, they were very accurate in Oregon in 2008. They called it 57-42 when it actually went 57-41.

[politicallefty]

I am surprised that Oregon is this close. I would have imagined around a 10% win or so for the President. From what I understand about the state, it shouldn't really have major swings. I remember reading that it has some of the most liberal Democrats and some of the most conservative Republicans.

For those that want to attack PPP, they were very accurate in Oregon in 2008. They called it 57-42 when it actually went 57-41.

It's very easy to be accurate when your candidate hits some of the assumptions you are making. Obama hit those turnout numbers in '08 both as a percentage of Party ID and geography.

With that said, I do think the regular PPP polls are a little more accurate than the sauced polls for that "progressive" Obama health care PAC. This was a regular PPP poll.

This particular poll accurately reflects the McCain vote in '08, but undersamples the Obama vote with 9% not remembering (perhaps Obama voters with buyers' remorse). It also is D+16, when the '08 exit polls were D+11.

While I don't think Romney is winning Oregon by any means, my guess is that you're looking at about a 4-to-6 point Obama win, more likely on the outer range of that number.

I don't believe PPP weights their polls by partisan ID. I thought the idea of weighting by party has been thoroughly discredited by now. Even if you were to account for that, this poll is D+4 (compared with 2008's exit poll of D+9). Party ID tends to be more fluid in polls, especially this year with less Republicans and more Republican-leaning Independents. This poll has less Democrats and more Republican-friendly Independents. That's hardly the result of being Democratic hacks. If anything, you should look at ideology (conservative/liberal/moderate) and racial demographics when weighting the electorate. Those don't tend to move around much (although those weren't reported in this poll).

I think Obama will do better than this come Election Day, but it'll still be considerably closer than 2008. I have a hard time believing that Oregon will be that much more Republican-leaning than Washington.

[politicallefty]

I think there's a divergence between the PPP polls for the political PAC and their regular polling. You would think they'd want to control the Party ID for the PAC polls if the PAC poll's purpose is to advocate that their guy has the lead.

With that said, it's hard to tell PPP's methodology. There is no methodology statement anywhere on any of their polls and the cross-tabs show percentages as opposed to raw data.

I see no reason why they would compromise their integrity by weighting their result to please their sponsor. Thought I can't say for sure, but I'm fairly sure most independent polling outfits don't skew their results for their sponsors. I also cannot say that I know their methodology either, but they were extraordinarily accurate in 2008. It doesn't really matter if they show percentages or raw data if they are not weighting. You can easily figure it out.

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Well, I'll respectfully disagree with you on the end result. I think this poll represents Obama's floor, with him somewhat outperforming, although perhaps not to double-digits. It'll still be within the margin of error.