Pew poll: Obama 50, Romney 43

UPI ^ | July 12, 2012 | UPI

[xzins]

U.S. President Barack Obama leads presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney 50-43 among registered voters nationwide, a poll released Thursday found.

snip

Obama is favored by 88 percent of Democrats while 89 percent of Republicans favor Romney, who leads among independent voters 46 percent to 45 percent for Obama. The poll found 34 percent of Romney backers said they support him strongly, while 64 percent of Obama voters said they support him strongly. snip

Unemployment remains the No. 1 issue for voters overall. Forty-six percent said they favored Romney on the issue, and 42 percent favored Obama.

However, Romney has gone from an 8-point advantage on the question of which candidate is better able to improve the economy, to an 8-point deficit, trailing Obama on the issue 48 percent to 42 percent.

The poll was conducted by landline and cellphone June 28-July 9, 2012 among 2,973 adults, including 2,373 registered voters. The samples were weighted to account for demographic composition, with sampling errors taking into account the effect of weighting.

Pew said the survey has a 95 percent level of confidence for different groups.

[bigbob]

“registered voters”

[Westbrook]

The fawning media coverage that Obama gets is worth at least 10 points.

[Former Proud Canadian]

Throw this poll away. 20% of those polled aren't even registered to vote. They have so little interest they can't even be bothered to register. Their opinions don't count and, I'm sure, are weighed heavily towards the regime.

Of the remaining 80%, how many are likely to vote?

[Bikkuri]

I haven’t tried to check the demographics... Being PEW, what do you think?

80% Democraps
105 IND
!~5 Repub?

and this is not even putting in Conservs... :/

[mojito]

“registered voters”

Ditto.

This might as well be a poll paid for by the Zero campaign to make him look good after weeks of results showing him slipping in the polls.

[EyeGuy]

What’s an “independent”?

What does it stand for?

How does one get its vote?

[KarlInOhio]

The samples were weighted to account for demographic composition,

Romney wins slightly among independents with each candidate has about 90% support among their own party. To get to the 50-43 Obama lead that means Pew must have assumed a huge (and unwarranted after the 2010 election) lead in the number of Democrats. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Bikkuri]

Sorry, should have checked before I posted :p

80% Democraps
10% IND
10% Repub?

and this is not even putting in Conservs... :/

[FlingWingFlyer]

It’s not called the “Pew” poll for nothing. It’s worthless. However, it does provide jobs for a lot of people.

[nhwingut]

Sample: D+9.

[tsowellfan]

I think if this were a poll for Obama vs “un-named candidate” Obama would be losing.

[xzins]

U.S. President Barack Obama leads presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney 50-43 among registered voters nationwide, a poll released Thursday found

The results about 50-43 are based on registered voters. To get that number the poll had to interview 2973 adults.

Since a registered voter is already registered, they are POTENTIAL voters if their candidate can get them fired up. Already registered is the key.

4 months out, there is reason to still be looking at registered voters. After the conventions, there's no way I'd be looking at anything but likely voters, but 4 months out it gives significant information to know what the registered electorate out there is thinking.

I'd be interested in how they weighted their sampling, though. That isn't given.

[Gay State Conservative]

Registered voters.Now lets find out just who they polled.Was it 51% Rat,22% Republican?

[Lazamataz]

THIS HEADLINE MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD, *LITERALLY LAUGH* THAT MY COWORKERS CAME AROUND TO SEE WHAT WAS SO FUNNY!!!! OMG WTF LOL.....

[wattsmag2]

Make that “registered DEMOCRAT voters”

[Perdogg]

This was talked about and analyzed yesterday at great lengths. The sample size, included about 7 percent more democrats than republicans and included a large number of “adults”. Sorry, just more propaganda.

[nhwingut]

Comment over at NRO with title: Why Are So Many Pollsters Oversampling Democrats?

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/309347/why-are-so-many-pollsters-oversampling-democrats#comment-bar

I have a MS in Computer Science, majoring in Quantitative Mathematics/Statistics. So my side hobby is sort of re-engineering these oversampled polls to the proper party id.

The party id split in 2008 was D+7. While the diff in 2010 was essentially tie.

My program I use just about splits the difference (D+3) to be conservative (even though I think that the R turnout will be higher).

Based on my analysis using a sample of D 36 R 33 I 31 across all national polls over the past 3 months (using RCP list which provides internals/crosstabs), Romney is leading 48.6 - 44.2 (Romney +4.2)

If you use a 34|34|32 sample, you would get Romney leading 49.8 - 43.4 (Romney +5.4)

[tsowellfan]

Pew is known as the most accurate poll out there

[xzins]

We don’t have their weighting strategy, but with independents breaking about even, but slightly for Romney, I agree that they are still deciding to see the population with more democrats than republicans.

Rasmussen uses polling to determine their breakdown of dems vs repubs, iirc. Those would be self-reports of party affiliation.

Nonetheless, what this poll says is that Romney is not creaming Obama.

His decision to play rope-a-dope is allowing Obama to define him and define the issues.