The Drive-By Media spent last week telling us it was absolutely over. Obama has a commanding lead in the Swing States. He's going to win, they tell us. The current Real Clear Politics average shows Obama with 269 electoral votes either strongly, likely or leaning his way. So they say.
There was a day they would get away with this. We talked about a few of these cooked Swing State polls last week:
Virginia Voter Registration: +3% Republican- For NBC to get Obama to +2%, they had to oversample Democrats by +4%.
- For Suffolk to get Obama to +2% they had to oversample Democrats by +3%
(Other polls were included in this average, however they did not publish their samples.)
In Wisconsin, to get Obama to a +6.7% average lead they had to oversample Democrats by an average of 6%. Again, assuming 90% of undersampled Republicans reweighted will give you a much smaller Obama lead of 1.1%, well within the margin of error.
In Virginia, when you take that 3.7% lead and the 3% oversample of Democrats to get to even (or 6% oversample of Democrats against
Well friends, it's becoming almost comical how frequently the Drive-By Media keeps giving us cooked polls. This one's about a week old, but with so much going on, I haven't had time to delve into it. But today campers, we're going to be doing just that.
The perpetrator this time is a CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac Poll of three critical swing states: Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. One problem that presents right at the start is that it's essentially three polls in one and it only has about 1200 "likely voters" in the poll. If you figure that it's only 400-500 individuals per state, that makes the margin of error ridiculous. The poll claims the following:
ObamaRomney Result Florida 49% 46% Obama +3%
Ohio 50% 44% Obama +6%
Wisconsin 49% 47% Obama +2%
So all three are pretty close. However, all three polls have oversampled Democrats significantly, especially for a poll of Likely Voters, not Registered Voters. As we've discussed time and time again, Republican voters are more reliable to the tune of about a 2-4% swing in the GOP's favor whenever the poll goes from Registered to Likely voters.
We're going to be a little imprecise due to lack of data on what the samples OUGHT to be, because the best I can find in those three states are statistics of their party registration. We'll then use a conservative estimate from that registration sample of +2% to the Republicans to account for likely voters.
DemocratRepublicanAdvantageAdjusted Advantage with Likely Voters
Florida 41% 36% D +5% D +3%
Ohio 36% 37% R +1% R +3%
Wisconsin 38% 34% D +4% D +2%
So friends that's our baseline. Florida with a Democrat +3% Advantage, Ohio with a Republican +3% advantage and Wisconsin with a +2% advantage. We can expect likely a bigger swing in favor of the GOP considering, at least nationally, given that when Independent leaners are added into party registration you end up with an even split.
So let's look at what the Poll used as THEIR party sample:
DemocratRepublicanAdvantageOVERSAMPLE vs. Baseline(Without Baseline Adjustment)
Florida 34% 28% D + 6% D +3% (D +1%)
Ohio 34% 26% R +1% D +11% (D +9%)
Wisconsin 32% 28% D +4% D +4% (D +2%)
The most ridiculous is Ohio, that oversampled Democrats by 11% against our Likely Voter baseline! Even if we don't use our baselines, there's still a 9% oversample of Democrats! That's just plain ridiculous! The rest of the oversamples happen to be JUST ENOUGH to turn the polls in Obama's favor.
So let's go right ahead and adjust that poll, considering that if we added the proper number of Republicans back into the poll, and presuming (and this is a conservative estimate) that 3/4 of Republicans will vote for Governor Romney, shall we:
Now isn't THAT interesting? When you remove the party biases and oversampling of Democrats, now all of a sudden, shock of shocks, Instead of winning these three crucial swing states, now Obama is LOSING these three states! Amazing!
Friends, this exercise we've just performed is by no means intended to be scientific. However, I believe it does do a fair job showing the difference in the Drive-By Media's outcomes with completely cooked samples vs. honest samples based on voter registration and voter probability.
Rest assured on this final note, my friends: The Drive-By Media wants you to think Obama is winning. As we have continued to show you in poll after poll, the facts simply do not show it to be true when looking at a real electorate and not a fantasy electorate that come from the mind of a liberal news manager's imagination.
I leave you with this final thought, from the classic baseball movie "A League of Their Own":
