The Washington Post and ABC News has a new national poll out today. It purports to show that Barack Obama has a 50% approval rating and that he would beat Mitt Romney in a head-to-head matchup. And heck, that might even be true, except for a couple of problems. First, this is a poll of general population adults rather than registered or likely voters, so it’s not even a proper polling type for the predictive outcome they claim.
More importantly, though, the poll series has dropped its reporting of partisan identification within their samples. It’s the second time that the poll has not included the D/R/I split in its sample report, and now it looks as though this will be policy from this point forward. Since this is a poll series that has handed double-digit partisan advantages to Democrats in the past (for instance, this poll from April 2011 where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC.
One cannot determine whether Obama’s improvement in this series is a result of the State of the Union speech, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen suggest, or whether it’s due to shifting the sample to favor Democrats more so than in previous samples. The same is true for the Post’s report that Obama “for the first time has a clear edge” over Romney head-to-head. One would need a poll of registered or likely voters toactually make that claim (one has to register to cast a vote, after all), and one would need to see the difference in partisan splits between this and other surveys in the series to determine whether the movement actually exists or got manufactured by the pollster.
Essentially, the overall poll is worthless, and given the track record of this poll series, it’s easy to assume that the reason that the Post has ended its sample transparency is because they have something to hide.
Economic trends are favoring Obama right now, so, naturally, his supportive media is trying to create a ”jump-on-the-bandwagon,” meme.
But these “pollsters” are bucking some harsh realities.
Recent Rasmussen polls reveal:
As always, Rasmussen makes all their work public.
The propaganda ploy of WaPo/ABC’s untrustworthy ”polls” cannot overturn the gut feelings of the majorities mentioned in these Rasmussen polls.
Many of these polls are meaningless as they do not match how our Presidents are elected. The polls need to be done on a state by state basis to be able to predict the winners of the electoral vote BY STATE. Oduhma is going to carry NY, CA, and IL with there huge populations and popular vote. It is the states of OH, PA, FL, VA, MI, etc… that will decide the election. Any other polls are trash.
@Nan G: It so good to exercise my economic vote. No ABC of any kind other than to select the advertisers to boycott. The WaPo, if I had the energy to request a subscription, it would be only to cancel it with prejudice.
Nan and Marine 72 You like Rasmussen better it’s Obama 49up-41down 49-42 OVER Romney and Gingrich. Mitt vs Newt bloodletting is helping BHO.
he has a billion all to himself to spend, and he want this real bad, more than AMERICA ITSELF, NO MATTER IF HE SPEND IT ALL IN ADVERTISING, he will go for break,
is ROMNEY or other CANDIDATES GETTING IN HIGH MODE YET,,every thing must become an impact to damage the opponent. not other on the same side,
the other side is preparing to throw the hate spit direct from hell. we better all be ready to hit their lies,
with the truth which will renderd them all stunt brain disabled,
WaPo/ABC are part of the MSM, an entity of flying lips headed for Obama’s posterior.
I sincerely doubt that anyone who lives more than 200 miles from a coast has ever been included in their national polls. There must be something toxic in the sea air.