More On the Controversial ARG Poll

Realclearpolitics.com ^

[SwaggerNDagger]

Thursday, September 23 2004 FLORIDA, ARG, KERRY UP 1PT?: Yesterday I was speaking with a major pollster who has been polling in Florida for over twenty years. He had serious questions about the ARG poll released yesterday showing Kerry ahead one point in the state.

ARG's poll was conducted Friday - Monday and this pollster had several problems with those dates. First, he wondered how you could get through to anyone in the panhandle when there was still massive electric and phone outages throughout that entire section of the state. Second, Friday night polling is apparently seriously discouraged in Florida because of Friday night high school football.

He pointed to a just concluded 2 -day poll of 800 likely voters in Florida's I-4 Corridor (the swing part of the state from Daytona to Tampa which traditionally mirrors the state wide vote, give or take a point or two) which had President Bush leading Senator Kerry by 13 points, 51 - 38. The same poll also had Governor Jeb Bush's approval rating for the hurricanes at 84%. Given these numbers this pollster felt it extremely unlikely John Kerry was ahead in Florida by one point.

Apparently Quinnipiac agrees. They have just released a Florida poll of 819 likely voters showing President Bush leading Senator Kerry, 49 - 41.

[SwaggerNDagger]

Apparently the ARG Poll which shows Kerry up by 1 point in Florida is also being disputed on Realclear Politics.

[Josh in PA]

Broken record time..

ARG had Gore winning Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee by double digits in 2000.

[KC_Conspirator]

ARG had Gore winning Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee by double digits in 2000.

Are you shi**ing me?

[HostileTerritory]

Can you link to anything? I would loooooove to show those polls to some coworkers of mine...

[pissant]

ARG stands for Anti Republican Girliemen

[Josh in PA]

I'm at work right now, and browsing unauthorized non-business websites is frowned on.. FR is as far as I dare to tread.

Someone ping me and i'll get back to this at around 7.

[GAGOPSWEEPTOVICTORY]

ping.

We all know about the RAT leanings of ARG. Josh will prove it.

[conservativecorner]

There's also this analysis:

The Sept 22 ARG Poll Analyzed
polipundit ^ | Sept. 23, 2004 | DJ Drummond





Yesterday, in the ‘comments’ section of another article, I noted ARG’s nationwide State Polling results (ARG is American Research Group), and wrote that ARG had ‘cheated’. That was a little bit unfair. ARG worked hard to produce a comprehensive poll for the Presidential Election in all 50 states plus D.C., and showed their demographics as well for each and every state. That is certainly worthy of praise, and attention. However, I would still have to say that ARG’s self-review before publishing, appears to be on a par with CBS News. I found what I can only call errors, unless I want to be mean and claim deliberate manipulation. Consequently, I took their numbers and adjusted them to match known and more reasonable demographics, which I will explain further as I go on. Here on Polipundit, I am publishing the overall results. Those interested in the individual states results, may find them over on my personal site, Stolen Thunder.

The first thing which jumped out at me, was the date range for this poll. While some states began polling as early as September 7, others began as late as September 17. Some finished their polling as early as September 9, while others finished as late as September 21. Some took 3 days for their polling, others as much as 6 days, and size was not a factor in the speed; California was the largest state, but only took 3 days, while Oklahoma took 6 days to cover.

There was also a clear fallacy in the gender voting. When I tallied the numbers, women made up 53% of the poll, even though they have never, historically, voted in such majority. A better balance would be 52-48 Women if you want to use the 2000 Demographics, and overall, a 50-50 match makes much better sense.

Race was not mentioned in the poll’s demographics. I expect that with a base response of 30,600 adults, race was discarded as a factor, but this further complicates a valid review of the stated results. Also, there is no statement about whether the respondents are Adults, Registered Voters, or Likely Voters, so from the size of the base and the lack of specific comment, I presume we are discussing Adults only. This is significant, because almost every poll has shown Bush collecting higher support as you move from Adults to Likely Voters.

Then there is the matter of the party alignment. When all 50 states and D.C. are tallied, ARG counted 41.4% Democrats, 35.5% Republicans, and 23.1% Independents, which is an unreasonable makeup, and clearly biased in favor of Democrats.

I took ARG’s numbers for each state and plugged them in. Using their numbers as they reported it, President Bush leads John Kerry by only 0.5%, 46.5% to 46.0%, but Kerry would win the election 271-252 EV (with two states too close to call).

I then went to my own table to Voter Registration (compiled by contacting the Secretary of State for each state keeping such records and noting their alignment as of December 2003, and for states which do not keep registration records by party, noting the party split in Federal Elections from 1994 through 2002), and plugged in those alignments, which balanced things a little better. Using the same party-vote numbers ARG presented, the new tally favors President Bush by 3.5 points, 47.9% to 44.4%, over John Kerry, but Kerry would still win the election, 291 EV to 247.

However, I was not happy with those numbers, not only because they were counting Adults overall instead of Registered or Likely Voters, but because I noticed their strength-of-support numbers seemed very low for what I had seen in internals. I attributed that to the respondent base, and tweaked the numbers to match more conventional strength-of-support numbers, as I have seen since July in every major poll citing that data (Pew, Gallup, IBD, CBS, Fox, Newsweek, Zogby), and with those punched in, President Bush leads John Kerry by 4.7%, 49.1% to 44.4%, and would win the election, 330 EV to 218.

So overall the ARG poll is slanted, but not horribly so. The data is interesting, even where it runs counter to the polls from other groups. It’s also interesting to see that the most significant change comes from noting strength-of-support, which has strongly favored President Bush all year. And finally, for those interested, I have put up the specific numbers for each state over on Stolen Thunder.

http://stolenthunder.blogspot.com/2004/09/september-22-arg-poll-dissected.html

[marblehead17]

ping

[creepycrawly]

ARG had Gore winning Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee by double digits in 2000.

I was just at ARG's Web site looking for their 2000 numbers, but couldn't find any. Where'd you get this? I'm trying to get info on all the major pollsters. Thanks.

[Josh in PA]

They don't have their past record on their website for the same reason John Kerry doesn't want to talk about his record in the senate. The record is pathetic.

i have the link bookmarked at home. Check back here tonite.

[creepycrawly]

Thanks.

[Mr. Silverback]

I concur with McIntyre. In a race where local polls show New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois in play and Wisconsin going to Bush by 10 points, it is very hard for me to imagine Kerry suddenly gaining in Florida.

[Mr. Silverback]

I'm sure Josh has a good link, but I searched FR on ARG and found this stuff.

This ARG poll released on 10/25/2000 and this ARG poll three days before the election both had Gore winning Florida by 4 points.

This is a SWAG, but since they predicted a pretty solid Gore win and the state went even with a large number of panhandle voters staying home, I'd say that means that this time Dubya is up by at least 5 points.

[creepycrawly]

Thanks. They also had Bush taking Oregon by 4 and the other two correct. So they got 50% on those four.

Also, this was two weeks before the election. At that time, Harris had Bush up by 5 nationally and then, right before the election, had it as too close too call.

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

Apparently the ARG Poll which shows Kerry up by 1 point in Florida is also being disputed on Realclear Politics.

Ooh...busted!!

[HostileTerritory]

Thanks... but I think you'll agree, a poll showing Gore winning Kentucky or Louisiana by double digits in 2000 would be a lot better to show off...

[Darth Reagan]

It just goes to show you. There's a lot more to understanding poll results than knowing the margin of error.

And this week I'm getting an education on partisan breakdowns and adjustments done by pollsters. I've decided you should never adjust for partisan breakdown and just report the poll as you get it.