The More You Know, the More You GOPHuffington Post/David Paleologos
October 14, 2010 12:11 PM
Pollsters fill an interesting niche in today's political system. Beyond measuring public opinion and predicting campaign outcomes the work of a pollster is all about setting expectations. In the political arena, beating pollster's numbers is the stuff from which momentum is created and mandates for governing are made.
Wielded correctly, the "moral victory" of beating the odds can be more powerful than actually winning. See "The Comeback Kid," 1992.
After watching the polls this summer, the countdown to Election Day began to feel more like a countdown to a slap in the face for the Democratic Party. However, recent numbers buck this trend. In several states, races for U.S. Senate and Governor have closed within the margin of error -- leading many to wonder, could the Democrats actually steam the Republican landslide?
With the prospect of Republicans winning back Congress and winning two-thirds of the gubernatorial races this November, any wins for the Democrats would weaken the GOP's political mandate should they win Congress. In fact, defending just the Senate along with a few statehouses would be a moral slam dunk for embattled Democrats this season.
Unfortunately, on closer inspection the deck appears to be stacked against Democrats far higher than it may appear.
For example, in recent Illinois poll, Republican Mark Kirk (42%) edged Democrat Alexi Giannoulias (41%) by just 1 point, and within the statistical margin of error. However, of voters who said they knew both candidates the race broke for Kirk by a full 8 points.
We've found this pattern repeated in all of our surveys this fall. Among the likely voters who are familiar with both candidates in the race, the Republican had a statistical advantage every time. This says a lot about what could happen on election day, as it may foreshadow how undecideds will break over the next few weeks as they finally "meet" the candidates.
In Pennsylvania, we found Pat Toomey (45%) led Joe Sestak (40%) by just 5 points in the race for U.S. Senate. However, of likely voters who said they knew both candidates, the margin for Toomey widened to 8 points. Similarly in the race for Governor Tom Corbett (47%) led Dan Onorato (40%) by 7 points on a simple ballot test, but among those familiar with both candidates the gap nearly doubled to 13 points.
It's the same story for Ohio. Though Rob Portman has established a strong 10 point lead over Democrat Lee Fisher, among likely voters who know both candidates, the gap opened to a whopping 17 points. The race for Governor in Ohio has been closely watched as incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland (42%) has inched his way up the polls to close the gap his with Republican rival John Kasich (46%) to just 4 points. But again, among likely voters in the know the gap doubled to 8 points.
--Snip--
David Paleologos is Suffolk University's Pollster. I try to use an article's original title when possible - this is his title.
This is one trend I hadn't picked up on. The question I have is whether it is predictive of anything, that is, whether people who don't know both candidates won't bother to learn about one or both of them and still turn up at the polls anyway. People rationally act on incomplete information all the time.
Does anyone know if this is predictive of how undecideds broke in previous off-year election cycles?
FYI - I also posted this in the Polling section, since it relates to polling generally:
Pew: Cell Phones and Election Polls: An UpdateSynopsis: Pew finds that its landline-only samples have been about 4 points more Republican than samples that include cell phones.
