Fickle polls give little away / Bush way ahead or just behind -- depends who asks

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Fickle polls give little away
Bush way ahead or just behind -- depends who asks
- John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004

Depending on which poll you like, President George Bush is ahead of Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the race for president by 13 percentage points, has a solid nine-point lead, is losing by a single point or is clinging to a one-point advantage.
As for the effect the Republican National Convention had on the race, it either gave the president a small bump, which is growing, or a big bounce, which is shrinking.
It's an embarrassing moment for pollsters, who must explain to a skeptical public how scientific surveys taken at roughly the same time and from similar groups of people about the 2004 presidential campaign can come up with such very different results.
"We pollsters are our own worst enemies,'' said David W. Moore, senior editor of the Gallup Poll, because the numbers they report suggest a certainty that pollsters know doesn't exist.
The Gallup Poll released Thursday, for example, gave Bush a lead of 55 percent to 42 percent among likely voters, nearly double the seven-point advantage the president had in a poll taken right after the GOP convention.
That 13-point margin comes from telephone interviews with 767 likely voters from across the country, conducted from Monday to Wednesday. But as with any poll, there's a margin of error, which in this case is 4 percentage points to either side. That means there's a 95 percent probability that Bush's actual lead is between nine and 17 points.
But there's also that 5 percent chance that the real answer is nowhere near that.
"It's a snapshot,'' said Eric Nielsen, senior director of media strategy for Gallup. "It's going to change; it's going to go up, and it's going to go down.''
Gallup's numbers have drawn criticism because they give Bush a bigger lead among likely voters than most other pollsters. Even people with the president's re-election campaign are talking about a four- or five-percentage- point margin in the race.
"Of the people who make a living doing this, no one has the number there (at 13 percent),'' said Steve Kinney, a veteran California pollster and partner in the national firm of Public Opinion Strategies. "I've heard numbers between three and seven points.''
Poll results also depend on whose answers are counted. While the 767 likely voters in the Gallup survey gave Bush a 13-percentage-point lead over Kerry, that margin dropped to eight points, 52 percent to 44 percent, when all 935 registered voters were included in the survey.
That's not much different from the president's 50 percent to 41 percent lead among registered voters in the CBS/New York Times poll released Friday evening, although it's still well above the 46-46 dead heat shown in a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The Pew survey, which gave Bush a one-point edge among likely voters, was taken from last Saturday to Tuesday and included 1,002 registered voters, with 725 expected to vote in November.
Pew's numbers were virtually echoed by the Harris Poll, taken from Sept. 9 to Sept. 13. The 803 likely voters gave Kerry a one-point lead, 48 percent to 47 percent.
Like most polls, Pew asks voters a few screening questions to find out when they have voted in the past and whether they plan to vote in November. Pollsters then apply a turnout model to decide which of those people are likely to vote.
In a low turnout election, only the most dedicated voters are likely to come out, while more occasional voters will show up if an election draws a crowd to the polls.
"No one's 'likely voter' screen is perfect,'' said Michael Dimock, research director for Pew. "There's plenty of people we throw away who will vote, and there are plenty we keep (as likely voters) who won't vote.''
Pew and Gallup base their surveys on a projected 55 percent turnout among the voting age population in November, slightly more than the 54.5 percent who went to the polls in 2000 and well above the 49 percent in the 1996 election.
As the turnout rises, so do Kerry's numbers. With a 60 percent turnout model, Bush's lead among likely voters drops to 11 percentage points, said Gallup's Moore.
The human factor also makes a difference in a poll's outcome. The Pew survey shows that 7 percent of likely voters were either undecided or supported a minor candidate, but only 3 percent fall into that category in the Gallup poll.
"The way we ask questions, we pressure (voters) to give a response,'' said Moore. "Gallup interviewers tend not to take 'no' for an answer.''
What the widely differing polls agree on is that rapid changes are going on among voters who seemed only weeks ago to have their presidential choices etched in stone. That stone appears to be cracking.
The changes were so fast and so startling that Pew split its survey in two. Polling done from Sept. 8 to Sept. 10 gave Bush a 12-point lead among registered voters and a 16-point bulge, 54 percent to 38 percent, with likely voters. But polling over the next four days virtually eliminated the president's lead among both groups.
"There was a real dramatic difference from the first to the second part of our survey, which is why we felt we had to report it in two parts,'' said Pew's Dimock. "As the election gets closer, there's usually less change, not more, but there's a lot of volatility out there now.''

Election 2004
Oct. 18: Deadline to register to vote or to change your party registration.
Oct. 26: Deadline to apply for an absentee ballot.
Nov. 2: Election day.
For more information, contact the California secretary of state's office at (800) 345-8683 or http://www.ss.ca.gov//

E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com
    Split decisions
    Four major polls released this week provide different views of the state 
of the 2004 presidential campaign. The polls are:
    CBS News/New York Times
    George Bush  50%
    John Kerry   41%
    The poll was conducted Sunday-Thursday of 1,088 registered voters and has 
a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
    Gallup/USA Today
    Bush         52
    Kerry        44
    *Bush        55
    Kerry        42
    The poll was conducted Monday-Wednesday of 935 registered voters and has 
a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
    *Conducted of 767 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 
percentage points.
    Pew Research Center
    Bush         46
    Kerry        46
    The poll was conducted last Saturday-Tuesday of 1,002 registered voters. 
The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
    Harris Interactive
    Bush         47
    Kerry        48
    The poll was conducted Sept. 9-13 of 803 likely voters and has a margin 
of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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