Pages

Friday, March 25, 2016

Why the Candidates Losing the Primary are all Polling Best in the General

The last few days it's been touted that Kasich will do best in the general based on general election polls in March. These polls are meaningless, but they insist on doing them and people insist on making something out of them.

And of course the Bernie team has been brandishing general election polls that show him beating Trump by more than Hillary as proof he's the more electable candidate in the general. If this is true it'd be quite something: the most electable candidates are losing badly in the primary. 

Bill Palmer at DailyNewsBin has some good advice regarding two kind of polls you want to avoid right now:

"We’ve reached what’s often referred to as the “silly season” of a presidential election cycle. The frontrunners are trying to pivot to the general election, the losing candidates are saying and doing anything they can try to hang on, voters are being polled after they’ve already voted, and many of the poll numbers involved turn to mush. Here are two kinds of polls you want to ignore at this point in the election cycle, and the only two kinds of polls that currently aren’t gibberish:

"Ignore: One party’s frontrunner against the other party’s losing candidate. Non-frontrunners do artificially well in polls against the other party’s frontrunner, for a number of reasons. So when the second or third place candidate says “I do better against the other party than my own party’s frontrunner does,” it’s hogwash. In fact, the worse a candidate is doing in his own party, the better he paradoxically does in cross-party matchups. For instance, Rubio and Carson both scored their best numbers against the democrats in their final week before dropping out. When you hear a losing candidate quoting these numbers, it’s a sign of desperation. So when Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders claim that they’d do a little better against the other party’s frontrunner, they may have some numbers to back it up, but it’s not valid data."

"Ignore: National polls comparing a democrat to a democrat, or a republican to a republican. The entire concept makes no sense right now. The majority of the states have already voted, yet people in those states are still being polled on who they’re planning to vote for. No one even knows how to answer the questions. It’s why the various national polls have about a fifteen point variance right now in both parties. Is Hillary Clinton really winning by five points or eighteen points? Is Donald Trump really winning by three points or twenty points? Pollsters are currently giving us all of those numbers, and most of them can’t be right, so they all have to be ignored until primary voting is over."

"Valid: State polls in the states that haven’t voted yet. These don’t always end up being correct, but they often do. Polling in closed primary states is the most accurate, while open primary states are less accurate, and caucus states are rarely accurate. But these state polls remain the best insight we have into who is likely to win each of the remaining primary states."

"Valid: Matchups between the two frontrunners. At this stage of the game the average voter is under the impression that the two frontrunners are going to be the nominees (whether it’s true or not), so this particular comparison polls provides a decent look at how the two will do if they go head to head."

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/non-frontrunners-are-artificially-favored-in-cross-party-polling-at-this-stage-of-an-election/24226/

UPDATE: I just conferred with Harry Enten himself on Twitter and he agrees that there is no logic in national polls that poll folks in states which have already voted.

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/713378437658861568

13 comments:

  1. Mike, you might like this: Jennifer Rubin today has an intriguing sounding post:

    Why many Republicans will choose Clinton over Trump

    Republicans have reasons to prefer Clinton over Trump


    I say "sounding" because I'm out of free views this month, and for some reason I'm not able to pull my usual trick of stopping the page load mid-way through, thus fooling it into giving up and just leaving the text there for me to read (yes, I'm a cheap bastard). I could resort to my other trick of doing screen captures in increments (scrolling down a little each time)... but I'm not feeling energetic enough. Anyway, if you still have free views (or a subscription) you might like it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ... it sure sounds like more "pivot to Clinton" material from her, doesn't it? I think she's laying the ground work for getting on Team Clinton after the primaries. She's already shown that she's flexible: moving to team Cruz and all.

      Delete
    2. Rubin is the sort of moderate female GOPer who could buy into Hillary. Your suburban soccer mom types might choose the first female POTUS over Trump's caveman antics

      Delete
    3. Erick Erickson published a bit a day or two ago about one very good reason that #NeverTrump should NOT run a 3rd party candidate: to make sure the right people get ALL the blame for a Clinton presidency. He argued that running a 3rd party candidate (a "true conservative" no doubt) would just make #NeverTrump people a scapegoat for the larger anti-Hillary forces. I was a little surprised because they've really been pushing the 3rd party thing.

      Delete
    4. ... in fact, if they don't run a 3rd party candidate, it wouldn't surprise me at all if in the privacy of the voting booth, a good chunk of the #NeverTrump folks secretly vote for Hillary (perhaps even Erickson himself!) ... just to make SURE that the Trumpsters get full blame.

      Delete
    5. ... I just have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of high-and-mighty God-squad types, who claim it's a sin to vote for Hillary (and her abortion loving ways), deep down in their lizard brain, know that God cant' see what they're doing in the voting booth. Lol.

      Delete
    6. Someone had a piece yesterday and argued that the third party scenario is actually to make sure Trump isn't elected. In other words, these are GOPers who'd rather Hillary Clinton.

      Our buddy Greg-he likes you better now with all my Bernie bashing, LOL-had a good observation.

      "I don't see enough Bernie supporters going to Trump to overcome the other GOPers who will hold their noses and pull for Hillary."

      "One thing about establishment conservatives, they love the status quo. They created for the most part the status quo. Trump is way more disquieting to them than Hillary. The worst thing they fear with Hillary is tax increases, which they can always fight and claw back most of them. What do they fear most with Donald Trump? They have no frikking idea how things will be! Its that complete lack of knowing what they will get that terrifies them. Hillary is a known commodity and of one thing she gives them what they really need most..... a scapegoat in the govt. Conservatives need to be able scapegoat the govt..... its one reason why they don't do well in political leadership I think. They are more natural at being able to criticize the govt as the source of our ills, they cant do that when its one of theirs."

      http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-many-bernie-supporters-would-vote.html?showComment=1458897504571#c955982503570025959

      I think there''s truth there. They'd' rather the status quo of blaming everything on Hillary for the next 4 years as they've blamed everything on Obama the last 8 to having Trump become the leader of their own party.

      Their own place in the party would be better served with the status quo

      Delete
    7. Thanks for sharing Mike. Greg sounds like a wise man. :D

      The rational I've heard for a 3rd party amongst the #NeverTrump crowd (from RedState to Erickson to Rubin) it to provide something for True Conservatives™ to come to the polls for... i.e. to limit the scope of the down-ballot catastrophe they fear will happen if their people stay home altogether. I was never about actually winning... unless they all got on their knees and prayed extra hard, and the election was such a mess that that GOP controlled congress had to pick a winner.

      Delete
    8. That should read "It was never about..."

      Delete
    9. ... so the logic boiled down to "Clinton wins either way if Trump is the nominee, so why not give decent people (i.e. True Conservatives™) a way to both vote AND have a clean conscious?

      ... what they're starting to realize is the caveman wing of the party won't understand those subtle distinctions.

      Delete
    10. BTW, it must just KILL Erickson to be painted by the mob as "establishment RINO" and tossed in the same bin with Kristol, Rubin, the WSJ Editorial page, National Review and Romney. Lol...

      Delete
    11. Yup. LOL. That's the trouble really. No one in the GOP likes to admit they're the Establishment.

      There is no leadership as the leaders don't want to admit that's what they are

      Delete
  2. Since the GOP debates appear to be over, how about this more cerebral fare: Heidi vs Melania... kiddie pool full of mud, no rules!

    ReplyDelete