Are Kerry supporters like UK Tories - too embarrassed to admit it?
October 31st, 2004
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Could the pollsters’ UK failings hold the secret of next Tuesday?
For political gamblers this election could not be closer and it’s going to come down to how you read the opinion polls - both state and national. Of the five latest, three have moved to Bush and two have moved to Kerry.
Polling round-up showing variance of margin on last poll
Bush 50 Kerry 45 Fox Kerry +2
Bush 47 Kerry 48 DCorps Bush +1
Bush 46 Kerry 47 Zogby tracking Kerry +1
Bush 46 Kerry 46 TIPP tracking Bush +2
Bush 50 Kerry 44 Newsweek Bush +3
The big issue that polling experts are debating is what will happen to those who say they are still undecided - but will vote. How will they split between the incumbent and the challenger?
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It’s on the incumbency split that this election will be decided.
One theory that certainly chimes with the years of underpolling of the Tories in the UK is that Kerry supporters might be more likely to tell this to a machine in an automated poll than “to admit to a fellow citizen that they were going to abandon a likeable, steadfast, patriotic wartime leader and vote for a dull, equivocating, aristocratic former anti-war activist.”
There’s hard evidence that this can happen from the 2001 UK General Election where Rasmussen’s interviewer-free polls were the only ones to get the Tory share correct. With a single exception all polls where those surveyed were interviewed underestimated the Tories. But is the US the same?
The “Mystery Pollster” writes this of Survey USA - which does automated polls. I think I see evidence of this in the polls by SurveyUSA in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In each of those states, SUSA has Bush matching the RealClearPolitics average but has Kerry running a few points higher. Their surveys always show a higher undecided than most other surveys, and Jay Leve, SurveyUSA’s director has always speculated it is because their recorded interview better simulates the solitary experience the voting booth. At the same time, I see an opposite pattern in Iowa, Missouri and Colorado - so perhaps I’m just data mining. I want to watch this closely over the weekend.
If this proves to be correct it will completely change the way we look at polling for the coming UK General Election. Meanwhile there’s been a distinct move back to Bush in all the betting markets in what looks like a response to the Osama video.
Betting round up - 0730 GMT Sunday
Bush 55.7 Kerry 44.3 Iowa Political Futures Market
Bush 55 Kerry 45 Tradesports exchange
Bush 1.75 Kerry 2.32 Betfair exchange
Bush 8/13 Kerry 6/4 UK bookmaker best price
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Did they become even more embarassed post Osama endorsing Kerry?
There\’s been an enormous move in the Date of GE market on Betfair following the press speculation that Blair might go in February. I personally am deeply sceptical - I still believe Labour supporters are less strongly motivated than 2001.
We fought a by-election last February… it snowed for a large part of the day (admittedly pretty unusual down here) and the Labour vote share almost halved. I don\’t think this was entirely coincidental. Would Blair like to be blamed for a turnout below 50%?
Interesting CNN quick-vote on their website. Not scientific, but over 210,000 votes cast. 39% think the Osama tape will boost Kerry, 26% think it will boost Bush – 34% say it’ll make no difference.
Good piece by Nick Cohen in the Observer on opinion polls - picking up a few facts that have appeared on this site.
Nick does make the traditional error of describing political pollsters as standing in shopping centres with clipboards though - even MORI don\’t do that these days (they turn up on doorsteps and accost you in your home instead!).
Anyway - sorry to be off-topic Mike but the odds on betfair for the date of the election have been moving like crazy after the reports in the Sundays. The odds for a Jan-Mar 2005 election
have fallen from 25 to 2.18, at one point falling as low as 1.5 (heh - I backed at 18 and laid at 1.5, which is nice free money).
Odds for a Apr-Jun election have gone up from around 1.3 to 1.7, briefly touching 2.1 (which was nice)
Frankly Mike I think this theory is rubbish. Now I agree the polls could (for any number of reasons) be wrong, but to suggest there\’s some sort of \”shy Kerry\” syndrome affecting his percentages sounds like idle speculation. You think Kerry will win, the polls aren\’t showing that convincingly, so you\’re grabbing a \’proven\’ (to most experts satisfaction) concept in the UK and guessing that it applies to the US. (This at the same time as with respect to the UK you are attempting to argue against the idea, as mooted by some UK pollsters, that a \’shy Labour\’ phenomenon might exist).
For every reason why someone might refuse to admit to being a Kerry supporter I could come up with a similar reason for Bush - but you don\’t suggest that his poll numbers could be being suppressed by it.
And if you\’re so confident about Rasmussen why don\’t you for the US election? (they\’ve got Bush in front BTW)
I think the issue isn\’t so much whether people are embarrassed to admit a preference for one candidate or another, but whether the polls themselves are accurately picking up the population in a representative way. Should they include only likely voters - but who is a likely voter in the politically charged climate of 2004? Should they weight by party registration - and is that changed since 2000? (Gallup being the prime example here). Are they picking up the young, the black community adequately?
In 2000 the pre-election polls tended to favour Bush by 4-5 points; this election looks \”closer\”. If the same happens in 2004 as in 2000, Kerry should win. But if the pollsters have improved their game then it is Too Close To Call, though I suspect it will in the end break one way or the other fairly decisively depending on the mood of the undecideds. I don\’t expect a repeat of 2000 - by Wednesday morning we should know who the POTUSA will be in January.
Interesting that Andy should refer to POTUSA - the Secret Service leave the \’A\’ off the end.
Shy Kerry supporters? Not entirely convinced. It may be, though, that the pollsters are not picking up on the Kerry supporters whose only phone is their mobile (traditionally lower-income groups).
If Bush wins on Tuesday, this will be the first time post-war that an elected president squeaks home for a second term (they\’re usually re-elected by a landslide, as with Eisenhower in 56, Nixon in 72 or Reagan in 84). Precedents are there to be broken, of course, but it\’s more probable that Kerry will win narrowly, or that Bush wins comfortably.
People say that no war-time president has been defeated, but that\’s only because two war-time presidents, Truman and Johnson, dropped out of the race after unexpectedly poor primary showings (both in New Hampshire) which reflected their wider unpopularity (unpopularity incurred in no small part by their handling of the Korean and Vietnam wars).
As you\’ve probably noticed, I\’m hedging my bets with a vengeance. Before the bin Laden tape, my instinctive feeling was that Kerry would win, but now I\’m genuinely undecided (as I was in 2000).
Richard - I feel the same and very uneasy. Alex is right - when you want something to happen so much it tends to affect your judgements and I do trawl the US blogsphere trying to find some hope and inspiration. The embarrassed Kerry supporters notion was not my idea - but was being discussed by the Mystery Pollster and others. I\’ve just brought this to the attention of this site.
It might be that automated polls are what Tories need because of the general reserve of, certainly, the English middle classes. I\’m not convinced that it applies in a much more open society such as the US.
As to the betting I\’ve closed my long Kerry position and make money whoever wins.
There is plenty to document that by the time of the NH primary in 1952, Truman had already decided not to run and was conferring with other Democrats to try and find an anointable successor. He always justified the decision publicly by saying that having served most of Roosevelt\’s fourth term plus all of his own, running again would have been outside the spirit of the convention (all it was then) that presidents only served two terms. No one will definitively know how much that was the whole story and how much was pessimism about his chances.
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