What's Wrong with 2012 Polls?

There has been an entertaining discussion on the utility of polling going on this week between Conor Clarke over The Atlantic and John Sides (among others) at The Monkey Cage. Clarke got the ball rolling in the Idea of the Day special section of The Atlantic's site by questioning the usefulness of polls -- mainly the overabundance of them and the effect that has on democratic governance and government. Sides, in a rejoinder to Clarke's response to his rebuttal, counters by arguing polling's positives are based on the accountability, evidence and representativeness they provide. I'm not going to rehash the arguments here (but do urge you to go check the discussion out), but I did want to take issue with Sides on one of his closing remarks.

"Lest I sound like a cheerleader: some polls bug me, much as they must bug Clarke. I hate the vastly premature 2012 presidential trial heats, for example."

First, I should say that I obviously come down on Sides', uh, side of the argument, but this hits a little close to home considering the ramped up 2012 gazing on FHQ of late (see here, here, here and here). Also, before I get in to this, I think that it is instructive to make a distinction between the trial heats and the GOP primary polling for 2012. I find the latter to be of greater use simply because of the position the Republican Party finds itself in in the aftermath of last November's elections: out of the White House, out of power in both chambers of Congress and leaderless.

On that last point is where the primary polling is of particular import; it is gauging how Republicans perceive the field of candidates/leaders to be shaping up. Now, it may be that at this point in the cycle what we are seeing in the cross-tabs is being driven by nothing more than name recognition, but that is providing us with a baseline for comparison as this race fully formalizes over the next couple of years. Stated differently, it is providing us with some evidence of a basic ordering of candidates. We could rely on pundits to tell us that it is all Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee or we could poll it to find some evidence of this (Of course, the logical question that emerges here is whether the polling is influencing the pundit-speak or vice versa.). For a party that is leaderless on the national level, the 2012 nomination question is more than a mere proxy.

But what about these trial heats? I've tried to caution FHQ readers about the limitations of these polls. First of all, with the exception of the University of Texas poll last week, all of the national and statewide polls asking the "if the 2012 presidential election were held today" question have been conducted by Public Policy Polling. That, in addition to the relatively small sample sizes (only above 700 respondents) for their national polls, is a hit for these polls on the representativeness score. And I'll grant Sides that. This may not be the most representative series of polls and as a result may not be the best evidence of the true state of something (the 2012 GOP nomination) that may not be a race yet.*

Here's the kicker, though: You'd expect these trial heat numbers to track with either Obama's approval or favorability ratings. But they don't; not across the board at least. Let's look at those PPP trends (Obama v. Gingrich/Huckabee/Palin/Romney) on the national level versus the data on the president's approval and favorability:





Now, there's been a steady decline in both the approval and favorability trends since they peaked for Obama in December and January respectively. But that's not the trend we see across the Public Policy Polling surveys. Obama opened with good leads over all four prospective Republican candidates, widened those leads in May and came back a bit in June.

What's the deal with May? Why is it that those numbers go against the grain of what we might otherwise expect? It may be something as simple as sample size. The May poll was the only survey in which PPP had a national sample size approaching the 1000 (+/-) respondent mark that is standard. The others hover in the 600-700 range. Again, representativeness takes a hit in those circumstances. The interesting question from this is whether PPP's other numbers outside of May are over- or understating Obama's or the Republicans' positions relative to each other. If all the samples were 1000 respondents in size would we have witnessed a steady decay was we see in the national favorability and approval numbers for the president? That's really the question here.

So have I made the case for the 2012 polls here? No, I don't think so. There are some problems with these polls -- sample size and the fact that only one organization is doing the general election trial heats. But what this does provide is some context and that was one of Sides' underlying points in this discussion; that the interpretations of these polls be more than, "Here are the numbers" and that the folks consuming them do so with an eye to detail.

The thing about polling is that a snowball effect can build rather quickly. Once you start asking a question like "If the 2012 elections were held today who would you vote for?" all that does is trigger increased polling to find if there was any validity to the original results. And on and on it goes. Is it too early in the 2012 presidential cycle to begin asking this question? Maybe. McCain campaign (circa 2000) strategist, Mike Murphy just yesterday tweeted this: "New polling out on GOP '12 race. I say ignore it and heed the Milt Gwirtzman Rule; nothing matters till first contest." That dovetails with John Sides' statement and I partially agree with both of them.

But if the prospective candidates are seemingly acting as if they are running (There's no doubt in my mind that the not-so-behind-the-scenes campaigning and positioning that is currently going on is the opening salvo in the 2012 invisible primary.), then wouldn't it behoove us to have some data to back that up? If the candidates are active and fundraising (even if through their PACs), wouldn't make sense to have the other piece of the puzzle that is so often looked at in these candidate/nominee emergence models (Mayer, for example). And wouldn't that have at least some effect on the piece of the puzzle Cohen, et al. brought to the table in The Party Decides (endorsements)?

Perhaps. But it could also be that I just like the polls.

...even if they're too early and meaningless.

*Though, the actions of Huckabee, Palin, Pawlenty and Romney make it appear as if each is at least angling for a national run. Huckabee is making seemingly beneficial endorsements in Iowa (Chuck Grassley, Bob Vander Plaats) and Florida (Marco Rubio). Both are early states given the 2008 calendar (2012 is subject to change) and those endorsements are solid given that each would help among conservatives in primaries or caucuses closed to independents and Democrats. Palin's actions have been difficult to explain, but there seems to be some national ambition in there. Romney is building the organizational infrastructure necessary to be successful in 2012 given his fundraising and strategic disbursements to candidates and leaders within the party. And Pawlenty's decision not to seek a third term seems to have at least been somewhat politically driven. Again, there appears to be some upward ambition there.


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey (7/16/09)

Romney Leads 2012 GOP Race (...and in more than just the Gallup Poll)

Revisiting Democratic Delegate Allocation (1976-2008)

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (7/16/09)

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On the day President Obama is to arrive in New Jersey to appear at a Corzine rally, the incumbent Democrat continues to lag almost ten points behind Chris Christie based on a new Monmouth poll [pdf]. Jon Corzine trails his Republican counterpart by a count of 45-37 (with independent candidate, Chris Daggett, polling at about 4%), but will an Obama visit help or is Corzine too far gone? The polling has been consistent in this race recently, thus the relative stability of FHQ's graduated weighted average. However, despite all this July evidence, there is at least some hope in this poll that Cozine can mount some modicum of a comeback.

Monmouth was at least kind enough to score respondents' answer on a 7 point scale similar to that of the traditional party identification measure. And that provides us with some measure of who remains persuadable as summer inches toward fall. Among those who named a candidate and are strongly behind their choice, Christie led in this poll 29-25, leaving 46% as either undecided or weak/leaning toward one of the candidates. When and if that particular number begins to drop, keep an eye on Corzine's numbers. If the incumbent is not gaining ground then, he's in for a long autumn.

*As was the case in the Quinnipiac poll two days ago, Christie is pulling in an above average share of the minority vote. The Q poll showed him at 29% among African Americans while this Monmouth poll has the Republican just under the one-quarter mark (24%) among African Americans and Hispanic combined. On the surface that makes it look as if many of those Democrats who are undecided or for Christie at this point are minority voters. And those might be two groups among which the president could help Governor Corzine.

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Recent Posts:
Romney Leads 2012 GOP Race (...and in more than just the Gallup Poll)

Revisiting Democratic Delegate Allocation (1976-2008)

On the Polling Horizon: Louisiana 2012?

Romney Leads 2012 GOP Race (...and in more than just the Gallup Poll)

FHQ has been in the habit of calling Mitt Romney the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination despite polls conducted earlier in the year that have shown him trailing Mike Huckabee and/or Sarah Palin. That trend has also held in hypothetical general election match ups against President Obama. July, though, has been good to Mitt Romney. Perhaps it is due to poll respondents just coming around to the idea of Romney as a likable (and likable may not be the proper word) 2012 candidate or because all the commotion among other GOP prospects for 2012 (see Ensign, John and Sanford, Mark). That probably isn't an either/or proposition. Respondents likely look on Romney more favorably now simply because of what is going on among the other possibilities. Comparatively, the former Massachusetts governor looks quite good.

And though the favorable/unfavorable differential for Romney still trails both Palin and Huckabee among Republicans, the next-in-line guy for the GOP leads the pack in Gallup's look forward to the race for the Party of Lincoln's nomination. Here are the particulars:


And I'm assuming that the remaining 15% either did not have an opinion or named other candidates (who received 1% or less).

These results dovetail nicely with the similar Rasmussen results from last week. Romney leads but is clustered with Palin and Huckabee ahead of Newt Gingrich and well ahead of other prospective challengers with less name recognition (at this point). And though those top three have taken turns in the top spot, they have, as a group, consistently hovered above everyone else with only Gingrich coming close. Here's how the trend looks across the limited polling conducted thus far in 2009:

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But polling isn't really the full story. It never is. The Cohen, et al. (2008) book I've referenced several times in this space would have us look at fundraising totals and endorsements as well. As we're still in 2009, information on the latter is going to be hard to come by, so let's focus on the fundraising aspect, but more generally the financial activity of the top three's political action committees. With disclosure reports due to the Federal Elections Commission recently, a host of up-to-date data have been made public. Just this morning Chris Cillizza at The Fix examined not only how much Romney's Free and Strong America PAC had raised during the first five months of the year (the most recently filed report for Romney only covers January-May 2009), but also to whom the PAC was contributing. Here's Cillizza:

"Romney Fundraising Soars: Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney proved he is light years in front of his 2012 rivals in the fundraising game by collecting more than $1.6 million through his Free and Strong America PAC in the first six months of 2009, and spreading donations out to a variety of candidates and causes in critical states. Romney donated the maximum $6,800 to New Jersey Republican gubernatorial nominee and made a series of $5,000 donations to Bob McDonnell, Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli who are running for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in Virginia this fall. Romney also directed contributions to key 2012 states; he donated $5,000 to South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and used his affiliated state PAC to give $10,000 to the New Hampshire Republican Party and $1,000 to Jeb Bradley, a former congressman who won a New Hampshire state Senate special election earlier this year. A dozen Republican members of the House received $1,000 contributions from Free and Strong America including Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas). Romney ended June with $842,000 in the bank. The depth of Romney's fundraising coupled with the strategic smarts with which he doled the money out is evidence that he has never really stopped running for president following his primary loss to John McCain in 2008."

The formula, then, is not unlike Barack Obama's following the 2004 elections: raise money for and get involved in high profile races and strategically contribute to candidates in crucial (presidential) electoral locations. As the numbers indicate, Mitt Romney has had more of an opportunity to do this than the other two candidates he has been lumped in with in the early going of the 2012 cycle. Romney's Free and Strong America PAC has pulled in $1.6 million to Palin's SarahPAC's $733,000 to Huckabee's Huck PAC's $0 (Follow the links to the PAC's pages at OpenSecrets or the FEC.). [Note that the scales on the vertical axis in the figures below are different. Romney's bars may come in under where Huckabee's and Palin's are, but there's a more than 3:1 difference in those scales.]

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I actually saw Romney's financial numbers this morning before the Gallup poll and it got me thinking about the state of Huckabee's operation as well. Ed Kilgore, in tearing down what he called the Next-In-Line Myth, stated (I'm paraphrasing here) that if the measure of that status is the number of delegates won in a previous nomination cycle, then Huckabee has as much right to the next-in-line label as Romney. And that statement was in the back of my mind when I looked up Huckabee's (lack of a) haul during the first half of the year. What separates Romney from Huckabee and Palin is not polling (not at this point at least), but the money war and organization. In both regards, Romney has a pretty good head start over is competitors, making Cillizza's last statement above instructive.

The take home message here is that Romney is leading where it counts now -- fundraising -- and is angling for a solidification of the second part of the Cohen, et al. puzzle: endorsements. The former presidential candidate's ability to raise money allows him the relative luxury of contributing to the campaigns and PACs of leaders within the party and GOP candidates in close races for reelection. That sort of giving comes in handy when the invisible primary nears completion and endorsements are at a premium with Iowa and New Hampshire around the corner.


Recent Posts:
Revisiting Democratic Delegate Allocation (1976-2008)

On the Polling Horizon: Louisiana 2012?

State of the Race: Virginia (7/15/09)

Revisiting Democratic Delegate Allocation (1976-2008)

A few weeks ago when the Democratic Change Commission was holding its first meeting, FHQ posted a series of graphs the DNC produced to show the frontloading of delegate allocation over time. As I said then, "That, folks, is the impact of frontloading in a nutshell." To see the shift from 1976 to 2008 is somewhat staggering.

...well, if only the graphs were a little better. I wanted to see what those figures would look like if a line was added to account for the cumulative percentage of delegates throughout any given year's primary calendar. Ideally, you'd see a nearly even distribution of contests across primary season and a relatively straight line from 0 to 100% delegates allocated.

And that is essentially what is demonstrated in the recreation of the 1976 figure from the DNC (see below). There is some undulation, but basically there is a fairly even (linear) growth to that cumulative line. The same is true of the 1980 figure (not shown). The blue area, then is the weekly percentage of delegates allocated, while the red area is all the weeks to a given point stacked on top of each other.

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But in 1984, what starts is what I'll call the "volcano with a wind out of the west" phenomenon. [That's a long way of saying frontloading.] What popped up in 1984 was a burst of delegate allocation activity toward the beginning of the process. And over time that "volcano" has grown from a small hill to the towering mountain of Super Tuesday in 2008 (seen below).

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These are handy visuals that would fit right in (with a GOP version as well) on the monthly frontloading maps that adorn the left sidebar. Assembled, they basically tell the tale of frontloading since the McGovern-Fraser reforms took effect.

*I mentioned the 1984 figure, and should add that I'll be putting the entire series up at some point (probably in individual posts as time allows). In saying that I should also say that there is a problem with the 1988 and 1992 figures. If you look closely at the originals in the link at this post's outset, you'll see that those two years' patterns (and underlying data) mirror each other exactly. If however, you look at the calendars from 1988 and 1992, you can clearly see that they are similar, but not the same, calendars. At some point I'll have to fix that (I suspect the 1988 figure is the one that is off. Pay close attention to the hump on the left side of the Super Tuesday peak. That's Georgia and Massachusetts and the other states that jumped to the first week in March when the Democratic window expanded to include that week in 1992. There was no similar group of contests -- not in terms of numbers of delegates -- in 1988. Most of those southern contests were on the second Tuesday in March.)


Recent Posts:
On the Polling Horizon: Louisiana 2012?

State of the Race: Virginia (7/15/09)

North Carolina in 2012: Obama - 49, Palin - 42

On the Polling Horizon: Louisiana 2012?

I ended today's North Carolina post bemoaning the fact that Louisiana had beaten out California and Iowa in Public Policy Polling's vote to determine the location of its next survey. But what's to bemoan. Sure we'll miss out on Iowa numbers three years in advance (Once we get to the end of 2011, there will be more Iowa polls than you can shake a stick at.), but Louisiana could be interesting as well.

...especially if...

"Louisiana: This one will be getting my personal vote. How does Charlie Melancon do against David Vitter, and in general is Vitter really vulnerable or not? Plus, is Bobby Jindal more popular in his home state than Tim Pawlenty?

Voting is open until 11 AM Wednesday, we'll do the poll in the winning state over the weekend, and start releasing numbers from it on Tuesday."

I don't think Jindal v. Pawlenty is a bad consolation, nor do I think Obama v. Jindal/Pawlenty in the Pelican state is all that bad (...if that's what we get). In other words, I'll see you all at the same time, same place as today next Tuesday or Wednesday.


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: Virginia (7/15/09)

North Carolina in 2012: Obama - 49, Palin - 42

The Paths of Presidential Primary Frontloading

State of the Race: Virginia Governor (7/15/09)

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Rasmussen released the results from a new survey of the Virginia gubernatorial race earlier today and unlike the New Jersey case did not make a distinction between leaners and non-leaners. Oh well. What the poll did indicate was the Bob McDonnell continues to hold a small lead (44-41) over Creigh Deeds in the race for the top statewide slot in the Old Dominion. Oddly enough, that brings FHQ's graduated weighted average margin in the race to right at three points.

The noticeable thing about the polling conducted since the June 9 primary is that Rasmussen has tended to give Deeds a higher share of support relative to the other handful of polls released. In fact, Rasmussen's poll the day after the primary is the only poll (other than the Anzalone Lizst poll that FHQ is not incorporating into its averages) to show Deeds in the lead. This new poll, however, seems to be in line with the other recent polls that been conducted. As Christian Heinze at GOP12 pointed out today, though, Deeds has the higher "partisan ceiling" simply because he's pulling in fewer Democrats than McDonnell is Republicans at this point.

Deeds had a good June in terms of fundraising thanks to some assistance from the DGA and some labor organizations, but trails McDonnell overall in cash-on-hand. The extent to which the Democrat can unite blue Virginians and catch up in the money game will go a long way toward pulling him even with or pushing him past Bob McDonnell as the summer days fade into to fall. But we're not quite to August yet; still a ways to go.

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Recent Posts:
North Carolina in 2012: Obama - 49, Palin - 42

The Paths of Presidential Primary Frontloading

State of the Race: New Jersey (7/14/09)

North Carolina in 2012: Obama - 49, Palin - 42

Public Policy Polling today released the second half of its survey of North Carolinians (full results here -- pdf). It isn't that yesterday's approval numbers for Governor Bev Perdue, President Obama and former-President Bush weren't interesting to look at, but FHQ would be lying if it said it wasn't more interested in the prospective 2012 general election match up between the president and Sarah Palin.

Though Obama's approval in the Tar Heel state declined to below 50%, the president has basically held steady at the 49% share of the vote he garnered in November's presidential election against John McCain. With Palin substituted as the GOP standard bearer for 2012, the Republican share of North Carolina drops from 49% (McCain's nearly identical portion of the vote in 2008) to 42%. As Tom Jensen at PPP points out, that would amount to the largest margin for Democrat since the last time a Democratic presidential nominee won the state (Jimmy Carter's 1976 win over Gerald Ford).

There are a couple of interesting points hidden in the cross-tabs:
First, Obama did better among North Carolina women (53-38) while Palin bested the president among men in the state (47-45). Despite a woman representing the GOP at the top of the ticket the gender gap still favrs the Democratic candidate. And in comparison with the 2008 exit polls, the Republican margin among males drops from 12 points to the 2 points in this poll. Meanwhile Obama maintains about the same level of support among women in the state.

Based on party identification, Democrats still overwhelmingly support Obama (79-13), while Republicans strongly favor Palin (83-9). Among independents the split is only advantageous to Obama to the tune of 45-42. These numbers seem to indicate there were more Democrats in the sample than Republicans. [They also seem to indicate that the powers of deduction are strong with FHQ. As AKReport and Jack both point out in the comments below, the party ID splits -- 47% Dem, 33% GOP, 20% Ind. -- are on par with registration in the Old North state.]

As I said earlier in the week, it is nice to have one of these polls emerge from a 2008 swing state. Texas and Minnesota are nice, but may not end up being very swingy in 2012. And even though other prospective candidates being included would have been ideal, it is at least something of a baseline to see where one of the most high-profile Republicans stands relative to the president. Now if only PPP had decided to poll Iowa instead of Louisiana next week, I'd be a happy camper.


Recent Posts:
The Paths of Presidential Primary Frontloading

State of the Race: New Jersey (7/14/09)

A 2012 Obama v. Palin Poll in North Carolina?

The Paths of Presidential Primary Frontloading

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At various points during the tenure of this site, FHQ has referred to the process that is the frontloading of presidential primaries. [As the site is called Frontloading HQ, we should probably do more of that. But I digress...] To this point, though, the piecing together of that process has been left to reader. I thought it might be helpful to take a step back and discuss this at a time in the presidential election cycle when frontloading is dormant until at least early 2010 (if not 2011) and the talk of the field of Republican candidates is still a low whisper (unless Sarah Palin is the topic of conversation).

The basic theory of frontloading, as I'm laying it out, is based on a twofold approach. Frontloading decision-makers, whether they are state governments, governors, secretaries of state or state parties, are faced with varying levels of obstacles from state to state that affects both a state's willingness and ability to move its delegate selection contest. But while there are obstacles to frontloading, there are also benefits to the moves or else the presidential primary calendars from 1972 to 2008 would have remained static. In this cost/benefit analysis, the costs disproportionately affect a state's ability to move while a state's willingness to shift to an earlier date is influenced by both the costs and the benefits of the frontloading move.

Now, I should note that much of this is predicated on the idea of a rational-acting decision maker. Faced with costs that outweigh benefits, a state's decision maker will opt to stay put. Conversely, states with more benefits relative to costs, are more likely to move, all things held constant. That said, the goal here is to look at the behavior of these various political actors over the course of the last nearly four decades and generalize. Certainly there are instances where, say, Zell Miller and Bill Clinton were good friends from their days in the Democratic Governors Association and that relationship got the ball rolling on Georgia's move -- one advantageous to Clinton after New Hampshire -- to the first week in March in 1992. However, the point is to construct a theory here that can help us to set a certain level of expectation concerning why some states move and others decide not to.

Let's start by taking a walk through the flowchart that led the post. It captures the topmost layer that best evidences the obstacles to frontloading. First off, the national parties, as they are doing now with the Republican Temporary Delegate Selection Committee and the Democratic Change Commission, set the rules of the presidential nomination process from cycle to cycle. That includes rules covering the timing of delegate selection events. Those rules are then filtered through the state party level, where the decisions are made regarding how (and more importantly for our purposes, when) delegates will be chosen in a given state. Those decisions are then submitted to the national party for approval (...at least on the Democratic side. There is a bit more leeway granted states within the Republican process.).

At the outset of the the McGovern-Fraser era, the easiest way for states to check off the guidelines set forth was to hold a primary election concurrently with those primaries for state and local offices. That did two things: First, it brought state governments into the process and then, once presidential primaries proliferated, institutionalized their presence in the process. But that presence in the process is not uniform across all states. State parties have an easier decision to make if the state is footing the bill for the primary election, but at the same time are potentially hamstrung by where the state government holds its primary or moves its primary to on the calendar.

This effectively sets up a barrier between primary states and caucus (and party-run primary) states. Sure, state parties can opt to hold a caucus or primary on its own, but most take advantage of the state's elections infrastructure. That's why that path -- from state party to state legislature to governor to primary move -- is highlighted in gray; that is the road most traveled in terms of presidential delegate selection contest movement. It is the most traveled, yet most obstacle-laden path simultaneously. Obviously, if a state party prefers a caucus or party-run primary to a state-funded affair, it has the ability to move the contest wherever it pleases. The institutional roadblocks are minimized. The same is true for states where either the governor (Arizona and New Mexico) or secretary of state (New Hampshire) has the ability to single-handedly make the frontloading decision. Again, the roadblocks are minimized.

But in the case of the state government making the decision, the road is far bumpier. State governments have to be concerned with divided government (inter-chamber or inter-branch), whether and if the state's presidential primary is separate from its primaries for state and local office, and where the primary was in the previous cycle. All those structural factors separate the states that can move and those that can't or won't move.

If you'd like to read a more in-depth treatment of this, I have a paper [pdf] I presented at the Western Political Science Association's meeting last year. However, the data only goes through the 1996 cycle. Soon, I'll be able to update those numbers for you through 2008.

...if you're interested (and probably even if you're not).


Recent Posts:
State of the Race: New Jersey (7/14/09)

A 2012 Obama v. Palin Poll in North Carolina?

A Woefully, nay, Dreadfully Tardy Update of the 2012 Presidential Trial Heats

State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (7/14/09)

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Quinnipiac has a new poll out in the New Jersey governors race, and like the recent Rasmussen poll offers some choices. Instead of a leaners/without leaners distinction, though, Quinnipiac provides us with both a two-person and three-person race perspective. Coincidentally, the two-way race with independent candidate, Chris Daggett, excluded, looks an awful lot like the "with leaners" version of the Rasmussen poll last week. [Both polls show a 53-41 advantage for Christie.] With Daggett included, Christie's and Corzine's numbers trail off a bit. Christie maintains a fairly significant advantage either way, but with Daggett in the picture, the Republican's advantage is 47-38 over the incumbent Democrat. [Daggett comes in at 8%.]

A few of notes:
1) FHQ's policy has always been to include the polls that account for third party candidates when available. The third party candidate is in the race, after all, and as such, the version with said candidate included is theoretically the more accurate depiction of reality. [Yeah, we could probably debate that logic.] We employed the same methodology in last year's electoral college updates as well.

2) That said, Daggett's share of the "vote" in this survey strikes me as a touch high. In other polls since the beginning of 2009, "someone else"/generic "other" candidate (other than Corzine or Christie) has never exceeded 6%. That's a poor comparison, but Daggett has yet to be included in any Quinnipiac poll prior to this just-released survey.

3) Just for the sake of transparency, if the numbers from the two-way race were used, the same 47.2-38.2 spread from the last New Jersey update would have been maintained (as opposed to the drop you see both above and below in the graph).

The major take-home message from this poll is that, the independent polls in this race are not showing the same things Corzine's internal polling seems to be indicating. Christie may be back under the 50% mark (a level the Republican exceeded for much of June after his primary victory), but Corzine does not seem to be breaking that 40% barrier anymore either. Just after the June 2 primary, FHQ got in its time machine and took a trip back to the two most recent instances of incumbent Democrats seeking re-election in New Jersey. Of those two instances, Corzine's current position is still closer to Byrne's (1977) than Florio's (1993) simply because Corzine, like Byrne, is trailing by double digits in July. Whether Corzine can repeat the Byrne comeback is yet to be seen. The climb is an steep one, but not an unmanageable one.

NOTE: The Quinnipiac poll also did not have a question about how firm respondents were in their current choices or the likelihood they would switch candidates between now and November. That was the one silver lining for Corzine in the Rasmussen poll last week.

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Recent Posts:
A 2012 Obama v. Palin Poll in North Carolina?

A Woefully, nay, Dreadfully Tardy Update of the 2012 Presidential Trial Heats

A 2012 Minnesota Toss Up, Too?

A 2012 Obama v. Palin Poll in North Carolina?

If you didn't catch my tweet earlier, Public Policy Polling is due to begin releasing some numbers from its most recent survey of North Carolinians tomorrow. Included are some questions regarding President Obama's favorable ratings in the state as well as Sarah Palin's. And as I alluded to in the above link, PPP has hinted at the fact that this will include a North Carolina sample on the Obama v. Palin question for 2012. Now, Minnesota and Texas weren't anything to sneeze at -- again, a poll is a poll, especially where 2012 is concerned -- but in North Carolina, you have one of the closest states from the the 2008 presidential election and a real potential barometer of the current (and distant) state of play for 2012. We may not be able to draw anything from this survey, but it will be interesting to see how the numbers shake out in a 2008 swing state.

Here's the link to PPP's blog. FHQ will have something up when and if they post the 2012 numbers. Last week's Minnesota poll came out in two parts, so it could be Wednesday before the 2012 numbers go live and the full results are made available. Stay tuned for that and a couple other little things I've put together for tomorrow.


Recent Posts:
A Woefully, nay, Dreadfully Tardy Update of the 2012 Presidential Trial Heats

A 2012 Minnesota Toss Up, Too?

A 2012 Texas Toss Up?