Weigel: This Early Vote Calculation from Gallup Looks Terrible for Obama

[RandySF]

It hasn't gotten too much attention outside of talk radio, but if accurate, Gallup's study of early voters neutralizes one of the Obama campaign's best road-to-victory talking points. As it conducted tracking polls (which have been paused for now), Gallup asked voters whether they'd cast ballots or intended to before election day. The early voters broke 52-46 for Mitt Romney. The dawdling voters who would vote before election day were tied, 49-49. The voters waiting for November 6 broke for Romney, again, by a 6-point margin.

This would be easy to explain away if Obama had lagged in 2008's early vote. After all, this study includes votes in Georgia and Texas and other places that have broken away from Obama. But... in 2008, Obama was winning this vote. An identical Gallup study taken around the same time gave Obama a 53-43 lead with early voters and a 50-44 lead on voters who would wait for election day. I've asked the Obama campaign to explain what Gallup might be missing, and will update with any response, but what response would explain this?

UPDATE: But this is just Gallup. The Obama campaign has kept up an early vote blog, offering new numbers from the states, and it makes a good case that it's held its swing state lead. This, according to polls, is the range of the possible early vote lead.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/10/30/this_early_vote_calculation_from_gallup_looks_terrible_for_obama.html

[defacto7]

1. I still think Sandy has pretty much made polling obsolete

to much turmoil for any math to make reasonable sense. I think polling is done.

[MjolnirTime]

2. ooga booga!!!

[Jennicut]

3. I pointed this out earlier today.

It's hard to say this is accurate because Gallup asks those who intend to vote combined with those that did early vote. But we don't know if those people WILL early vote. Reuters has Obama ahead in early voting, after speaking to only people that actually DID early vote.

Gallup is tricky that way.

[progressoid]

4. "but if accurate"

Here in Iowa (swing state)...

In Iowa, more than 470,000 people had cast ballots through Saturday, the Iowa secretary of state's office said. If as many people vote this year as did in 2008, that would represent 30 percent of the total vote. Registered Democrats have cast 44.6 percent of the ballots so far, compared with 32 percent by Republicans and 23.3 percent by independents.

Democrats lead in early voting in Iowa, Nevada
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/democrats-lead-in-early-voting-in-iowa-nevada-1.4167237

[AtomicKitten]

5. Gallup 2012 is like Sofia Coppola's performance in Godfather III

-- weak

[winstars]

8. Our President is as cool a customer as Michael in this scene, rMoney as Senator Geary...

We will be fine folks, lets GOTV and not let them rob us next week!!!

[AtomicKitten]

14. yes indeed

[regnaD kciN]

6. To ask the obvious...are these national figures?

If so, most of what they're calling "early voting" really means absentee ballots.

Beyond that, all I'll add is what I've been saying for a couple of weeks: either, come 11/7, Gallup is being hailed for uncanny accuracy (the corollary to which being that each and every other reputable pollster will have gotten it utterly wrong -- and all in the same direction, and to roughly the same degree), or being the laughingstock of the polling industry. We shall see, but I'll only observe the old maxim that, if every other poll is saying X, and one poll is saying Y, it's unlikely that the former group will all turn out to be outliers.

[andrewgr]

7. Trouble with %

The problem with all these reports that keep touting how Obama's % lead over Romney in early voting is down compared to 2008 is this:

In 2008, Obama redefined how campaigns were conducted, becoming the first candidate ever to focus so heavily on early voting. McCain was caught completely flat-footed. The McCain campaign invested a paltry amount of resources in getting their supporters to vote early.

Having learned their lesson, the Romney camaign has quite understandably devoted way more resources-- advertising, people on the ground, etc.-- in getting Republicans to vote early this time.

If my cat were running for President as a Republican, she would get a higher % of the vote in 2012 than McCain did in 2008. Given that Romney is (for reasons that defy comprehension) actually a viable candidate with real support, you would expect his % of early voting to be much higher than it was for McCain.

I would personally expect that a healthy % of those early votes are just going to be taken from people that would have voted Romney on election day anway. You can't convince me that it's realistic that he was able to go out and find huge numbers of people that wouldn't have voted who suddenly are willing to vote early. There will be some, but it can't be that many.

For that reason, I think it's inevitable that the election day voting will be way better for Obama as a % than it was last election. Obama already did so well in early voting in 2008 that he's only got a small amount of room to improve, and no reason to expect his election day support will go down; Romney has an enormous amount of room to improve in early voting over 2008, and thus every reason in the world to believe he'll get less support on election day.

[yellowcanine]

9. "intend to vote early" doesn't mean they will. The only way you know someone

is a sure early vote is if they have already voted. Some of those who "intend to vote early" may not even vote.

[WI_DEM]

10. Good Grief! We have a ton of great polls for Obama today and we have to

shift back to Gallup shit?

[NightWatcher]

11. what is he, on dope? Florida EV numbers are HUGE for us

and have surpassed a couple times over the Rep numbers from absentee ballots

[ThomThom]

12. Gallup has no credibility

people, me included, are tired of phone calls, mailers and tv ads and are hanging up on these people and refusing to answer the phone or questions.

I still think rove and his people are going to try steal this election.
I hope Obama and the justice department are ready to bust them and send them all to jail.

[Thrill]

13. Gallup is full of shit