Poll crazy

If your mood swings are tied to the daily fluctuations of Electoral-Vote.com -- and you know who you are -- then you need Salon's guide to opinion polling sanity.

By Tim Grieve

Oct. 20, 2004 | They are the numbers flying by on the TV screen, and if you're living and dying by the presidential race, no amount of Zoloft can even out the highs and the lows they bring. George W. Bush and John Kerry are tied in the brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Kerry is up by 3 in a Democracy Corps poll released Tuesday. He is down by 5 in the Washington Post poll from Tuesday night, tied in the New York Times poll from Tuesday morning, tied in last night's Zogby tracking poll, and down by an alarming 8 in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released over the weekend.

Like a dieter checking the scale each morning, those of us who spend our days hitting the refresh button at PollingReport.com are going crazy over the minute-by-minute back-and-forth of it all. If you know what time the Washington Post puts up its tracking poll each day, you need to admit that you have a problem.

OK, so it's 5 p.m. EDT.

What you need -- what we need -- is a system. We're here to help. Here are four methodical ways to look at the polling -- four ways to clear your head, to keep track of where things are going, and to avoid shouting out wrong-track, right-track numbers when your kids leave their soccer shoes in the middle of the kitchen. The good news if you're a Kerry supporter or just a glutton for unbearable tension: Any way you look at it -- except maybe the way in which Gallup calculates its oddball likely-voter numbers -- the presidential race is extremely close.

Here are some ways to look at it.

Pick your pollsters based on past performance.

George W. Bush won the Electoral College in 2000, but Al Gore won the popular vote, 48.4 to 47.9. No pre-election poll reported those numbers exactly, but some came a lot closer than others to predicting Gore's half-point margin of victory. The best of the bunch: Zogby, CBS, Democracy Corps and Fox/Opinion Dynamics. The final polls from Zogby and CBS had Gore up by 1; Democracy Corp and Fox had the race tied. In other words, each of the four was off by about half a point.

Other polls fared less well in 2000 -- almost always by suggesting a better result for Bush than the one he got. Gallup had Bush over Gore by 2 in its final 2000 poll, meaning it was off by about 2.5 points. The final ABC/Washington Post tracking poll had Bush over Gore by 2, off by about 3.5 points.

What it gets you: Past performance may not guarantee future results, but let's just assume for a moment that the polls that came closest to getting it right in 2000 are the closest to getting it right today. Last night's Zogby poll had the 2004 race tied at 45-45. Tuesday morning, Democracy Corps had Kerry up by 3 points, 50-47, and the CBS/New York Times poll had the race tied, 46-46. Tuesday afternoon's Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll had Bush up 49-42 among likely voters. Average these top-performing polls from 2000, and you get Bush ahead by a point now.

Watch registered -- not likely -- voters.

Most polls report two sets of numbers: one for registered voters, the other for a smaller subset of respondents the pollsters deem to be "likely" voters. The registered-voter numbers are relatively consistent from poll to poll; the likely-voter numbers vary dramatically. Among registered voters, the CBS/New York Times poll has the race tied; ABC/Washington Post and Time have Bush up by 1; and Gallup and Newsweek have Bush up by 2. Differences among those five polls are well within their margins of error. But among likely voters, those same five polls have Bush leads ranging from 1 point (CBS/New York Times) to 8 points (Gallup). Add in Democracy Corps' 3-point lead for Kerry, and you get an 11-point spread in likely-voter numbers.

Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, advises those who follow his blog : "Focus on the RV data, ignore the LV data." Each poll has its own methodology for identifying likely voters, and the calculations are seldom transparent. The screens and weighting that polls use can end up oversampling either Democrats or Republicans.

Next page: The most important number to watch is the one belonging to Bush