Yesterday we revealed that the ABC / Wapo poll is a complete farce after even their own pollsters admitted that the recent 10-point convergence between Clinton and Trump, in a matter of just a couple of days, was “not mainly about people shifting in their candidate preference, but about changes in who’s intending to vote“…so it wasn’t about voter preference but about how ABC / Wapo chose their “oversamples.”
In any event, the latest results, out today, show Hillary’s lead shrinking further to just 1-point. The poll was conducted October 25-28, so, in theory, it includes 1 day of the FBI announcement. That said, the FBI announcement didn’t really hit the media until late in the day on Friday so it’s unclear if it has impacted this particular poll as of yet. To be sure, ABC / Wapo clearly made an effort to maintain a slight Hillary lead in this latest poll by expanding their democrat “oversample” margin from 8-points yesterday to 9-points in today’s poll.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 25-28, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,160 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 37-28-30 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
Interestingly, ABC / Wapo found that “a third of likely voters say they’re less likely to support Clinton given FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure Friday that the bureau is investigating more emails.”
About a third of likely voters say they’re less likely to support Clinton given FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure Friday that the bureau is investigating more emails related to its probe of Clinton’s use of a private email serverwhile secretary of state. Given other considerations, 63 percent say it makes no difference.
The potential for a pullback in motivation of Clinton supporters, or further resurgence among Trump’s, may cause concern in the Clinton camp–especially because this dynamic already was underway. Intention to vote has grown in Trump support groups in the past week as the intensity of criticisms about him has ebbed, including allegations of sexual misconduct, disapproval of his position on the election’s legitimacy and his poorly rated final debate performance.
Not that we have any confidence in these numbers, but here is how ABC / Wapo see the current state of play in the 2016 presidential election:
Meanwhile, they see voter intensity continuing to decline:
Perhaps more frightening for the Clinton camp, the latest NBC/WSJ/Marist poll shows Trump opening up a 9-point lead in Florida and a 2-point lead in North Carolina.
NBC/WSJ/Marist Poll
Among those who haven’t voted yet:Florida:
Trump 51 (+9)
Clinton 42North Carolina:
Trump 44 (+2)
Clinton 42— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) October 30, 2016
Meanwhile, even the New York Times sees Trump opening up a 4-point lead in Florida despite the poll being conducted prior to the revelation of the latest FBI bombshell.
The New York Times also pointed out, as we have in the past, that Clinton has a real challenge with Black voters versus Obama’s performance in 2008 and 2012. While the NYT focused on Clinton’s support among black voters dropping from 90% to just 81%, we would suggest that the bigger issue for Clinton is whether black voters care enough about her candidacy to show up on election day in the same numbers as they did for Obama…we have our doubts.
Finally, even the New York Times seemingly admits that polling data around the country is likely skewed. As they point out, Democrats are much more likely to participate in polls which often results in large “oversamples” in polling data even though those registration gaps aren’t reflective of who shows up to vote on election day.
One of the biggest questions in political survey research is partisan nonresponse — the possibility that Democrats or Republicans are more or less likely to respond to polls.
Most public polls don’t have many ways to deal with it. They weight their surveys to match the demographic composition of adults — say, the right number of white and black voters — but they don’t adjust the number of Democrats or Republicans.
Our surveys are different: As mentioned earlier, they’re adjusted to have the right number of Democrats or Republicans.
In our survey, registered Democrats were much likelier to respond than Republicans. Registered Democrats had an eight-point registration advantage in our unweighted sample, even though it was representative by other measures.
Mrs. Clinton would have actually led in The Upshot’s survey if it, like most others, didn’t weight by party registration.
One possibility is that the public polls are understating Mr. Trump’s support because registered Republicans aren’t answering the telephone.
Should be interesting 9 days to come. One thing is for certain, if Hillary has any additional bombshell “secret” recordings of Trump then we suspect we’ll get to listen to those very soon.
via http://ift.tt/2eXaaRv Tyler Durden