Ruy Teixeira on those last minute polls--Very smart analysis

[longship]

State of the Race: Final Update

Super Dem analyst Ruy Teixeira has analyzed the last round of polls, and specifically the generic Congressional poll.

The bottom line is that things are shaping up very well for Democrats. Republicans are in big trouble, especially since the internals of these last minute polls are showing that Dems might be going to the polls in greater numbers, something none of them are modeling.

Read it and watch the GOP weap.

The blizzard of polls released over the weekend and today suggest some tightening of the race, but do not appear to fundamentally alter the assessment I offered five days ago in my last update. Tuesday should still be a very good day for the Democrats.

Start with Bush's approval rating. Taking the latest polls into account, Charles Franklin's trend-based estimate now stands at 38 percent. Pretty bad for the incumbent party.

Turning to the generic congressional ballot, confusion abounds, so let me try to separate signal from noise as best I can.

There have been seven polls released in the last couple of days. Here are the results for likely voters (LVs):

CNN (Fri-Sun): +20D
Newsweek (Thu-Fri): +16D
Time (Wed-Fri): +15D
Fox (Sat-Sun): +13D
USA Today/Gallup (Thu-Sun): +7D
ABC News/Washington Post (Wed-Sat): +6D
Pew (Wed-Sat): +4D

Quite a spread! And here are the same polls, this time for registered voters (RVs):

CNN (Fri-Sun): +15D
Newsweek (Thu-Fri): +16D
Time (Wed-Fri): +15D
Fox (Sat-Sun): no RV data
USA Today/Gallup (Thu-Sun): +11D
ABC News/Washington Post (Wed-Sat): +10D
Pew (Wed-Sat): +8D

Somewhat closer together, but still a fair amount of variation.

Here are some observations on these data that may help make sense of them.

<much more at link>

[LibertyorDeath]

1. Thanks for that longship

Big Rec!

[AntiWarPoster]

2. I just exhaled

for a second I thought those +D numbers were estimates for the number of seats Dems would pick up in the House, so of course I thought that they were on the low side.

Then I realized that the +nD numbers are the spread in the generic polls.

[Quixote1818]

3. The pew poll is the out lier. It should just be thrown out.

It looks like about a 12 to 13 pt. lead for Dem's and as you said, Dem's are more motivated!

[Erika]

4. Fantastic post. Thank you. n/t