John Edwards should be mad that the Des Moines Register Poll was wrong

[Breeze54]

John Edwards should be mad that the Des Moines Register Poll was wrong

http://americanresearchgroup.com/

Conventional wisdom on the Internet is that the final Des Moines Register poll accurately predicted the official outcome of the Democratic caucus. When the results of the Des Moines Register poll are compared to the results of the http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225980/">Democratic entrance poll, however, it becomes clear that the party composition of the Register's Democratic sample was deeply flawed.

From the http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080101/NEWS09/301010015/-1/iowapoll07">Register poll:

The support from non-Democrats is significant because a whopping 40 percent of those planning to attend described themselves as independent and another 5 percent as Republican.

The entrance poll shows, however, that only 24%, not the 45% in the Register's sample, of Democratic caucus participants were independents or Republicans.

That is a "whopping" polling mistake.

Contrary to what the results of the Register's poll suggest, Barack Obama did not exclusively energize and turn out a wave of new caucus participants.

If the results from the Register's poll are adjusted based on party composition of the entrance poll, the Register's final poll results would be Obama 30%, Clinton 29%, and Edwards 24%. Using the final caucus results that include only the viable candidates, Obama picked up 8 percentage points of second choices (thanks in large part to the Richardson campaign), Clinton picked up about 1 percentage point, and Edwards picked up 6 percentage points.

Obama's margin of victory in the final delegate tally had more to do with the energy generated by the non-viable candidates than it did with his own campaign.

As the campaign moves to New Hampshire and its 373,000 undeclared (independent) voters, the conventional wisdom is that only Obama will vie for the undeclared voters with John McCain. Undeclared voters in New Hampshire, representing 44% of all registered voters in the state, are not a monolithic block. It is hard to imagine, for example, anti-war undeclared voters even considering McCain.

The Obama myth fueled by the flawed Register poll sample damages John Edwards because Edwards gains significant strength from middle-aged independents. Of all the Democrats, Edwards is more apt to compete with McCain for undeclared voters and those undeclared voters could make Edwards very competitive with Obama and Clinton in New Hampshire.

-Dick Bennett

[Breeze54]

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