COLORADO SLIPPING AWAY? 4 Takeaways From The Denver Post Poll That Should Scare Barack Obama

Published on October 15, 2012 by

The latest Denver Post poll of Colorado showing Romney taking the lead 48%-47% has many reasons to scare the strategists at Obama HQ back in Chicago. The host state to Obama’s historically embarrassing first debate loss not only has shifted away from the President, but the Post‘s topline results likely mask a much larger Romney lead than the single point that hit headlines.

The Denver Post has set an admirable bar by posting the full crosstabs and question phrasing on their Colorado polls from SurveyUSA. That lets readers know what kind of biases are cooked into the results they release.

From the way questions are asked to whom they are asked of, this data affects the horserace numbers in the headlines. The numbers below — what different ethnic groups, genders, income levels, party members, etc think about candidates and issues — also give a much better sense of the direction of a race than do the top-line candidate A vs. candidate B figures.

In the case of The Denver Post poll released last Friday, and scooped by the Peak on Thursday, there are a number of issues that lead us to believe Governor Mitt Romney’s lead in Colorado is actually more than the one-point advantage the poll found. Here are 4 reasons Barack Obama has more to fear from the latest Post poll:

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DENVER POST POLL: Obama & Romney Tied In Colorado

Published on September 14, 2012 by

The Denver Post released a Colorado poll confirming what everyone other than Democrat polling firms already knew — the race for President in Colorado is tied.

Reports John Ingold and Kurtis Lee:

After months of campaigning, multiple visits and millions spent on advertising, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are dead even in Colorado, according to a new Denver Post poll.

The poll results — first announced Friday on the noon broadcast of DPTV— show Obama ahead of Romney by a single, statistically insignificant percentage point, 47 to 46 percent. When former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who is running as the Libertarian nominee for president, is factored in, Obama’s single-percentage-point lead remains, 45 percent to 44 percent. Johnson registers at 3 percent of the vote.

We have only one slight problem with the poll — as Alan Philp noted on Twitter, the poll’s sample assumes a higher turnout of Democrats than Republicans.

The sample is 34% D / 34% R / 30% Unaffiliated. As there were almost 100,000 more registered active Republican voters than Democrats as of September 1, an equal turnout from Democrats would assume they are actually turning out at higher rates than Republicans.

We don’t see that happening. Just look at Obama’s recent visit to CSU: In 2008, he attracted a crowd of 45,000. This year: 13,000. Does that seem like it portends a 2008-like turnout among Democrats?

If the poll were to have a more realistic likely voter sample, Romney would actually be in the lead, which we know would probably break Denver Post Publisher and Obama fan boy Dean Singleton’s heart.

 

MEDIA POLLING #FAIL: PPP Puts Out Bogus Poll, Media Bites Without Reading Sample

Published on June 19, 2012 by

Polling is about determining a population's belief by asking a representative sample, so polls that don't accurately represent the population they are polling shouldn't be counted as accurate representations of that population's sentiment. Case in point (again): PPP's latest poll of Colorado.

The PPP poll out today claims Obama is beating Romney in Colorado, 49-42, but that's when they oversample Democrats by 7.3%, undersample Republicans by 2% and undersample unaffiliateds by 4.4% compared to the active voter registration totals in Colorado as of June 1. 

Every other recent poll — Rasmussen, Purple Strategies, NBCNews/Marist — has had the race tied or within the margin of error. Yet somehow, after weeks of bad press, and Colorado's unemployment rising in April and May, Obama is up 7 in the PPP poll?

The Democrat flacks over at PPP must also have missed veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart's focus group in Colorado last week where Obama was dubbed a "slick salesman, but his words didn't match his actions" by a group of undecided voters, 10 of 12 whom voted for Obama in 2008. 

And for some godforsaken reason the media is reporting the poll without any mention of the serious sampling flaws. 

For example, Alicia Caldwell at The Denver Post blindly wrote up the results without bothering to mention the fact that it polled a Colorado electorate that doesn't exist. Do they teach statistics in J-School? Did she not scroll down her own blog to read Curtis Hubbard's coverage of the brutal Denver focus group? Didn't that make her wonder about such a wildly divergent result in the PPP poll versus the focus group?

Even the normally solid reporter at Politico, Alexander Burns, reports the poll without even mentioning the enormous statistical problem it has. 

It may be an easy post and click generator to write up poll results, but reporters should at least know what they're reporting before they click the publish button. 


 
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