Aug. 20: When the Polling Gets Weird
By NATE SILVER
Monday brought a Monmouth University poll showing President Obama ahead by one point in the national race — the same margin that he had in the last poll they conducted in June. Mitt Romney held onto a 2-point lead in the Gallup national tracking poll, and pulled ahead of Mr. Obama again by one point in the Rasmussen national tracker, which has fluctuated a bit recently but usually has a steady number like that.
Oh, and there was an Oklahoma poll, which was conducted on behalf of the Tulsa World. Mr. Obama is surging there! He now trails Mr. Romney by only 29 points. (He was 35 points down in the prior rendition of the same survey.)
All of this polling was pretty normal, of course. But there was one last survey. It was from the polling firm Foster McCollum White Baydoun, which conducts polls for Democratic candidates as well as independently. It was a poll of Florida and it had Mr. Romney ahead by nearly 15 points there.
A general word about Florida: I’m mostly on board with this post by Nate Cohn, which criticizes the idea that Paul D. Ryan could be especially damaging to Mr. Romney’s chances there. (The theory Mr. Cohn is arguing against is that there will be some sort of revolt among seniors in Florida against Mr. Ryan’s Medicare plan.)
The basic flaw in the argument, as Mr. Cohn notes, is this: there are a lot of seniors who will vote in Florida. But there are also a lot of seniors who will vote in every state. Age is not one of those demographics that varies that widely in different parts of the country.
In 2008, for instance, voters 65 and older made up 22 percent of Florida’s electorate, according to exit polls there. By contrast, the same demographic made up 16 percent of the national vote.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/aug-20-when-the-polling-gets-weird/#more-33452 more
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