Pew Will Either Be Pow or Phew

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

One more thought on the Pew poll — among registered voters, they put Obama ahead, 52-36, an astonishing 16 percent lead, way ahead of anyone else except Newsweek. (They've also got Nader at 3 percent in their swing states.) They have a 15 percent margin among likely voters. Either they're really accurate, and we're heading to a popular vote blowout on par with 1984... or their model is really, really wrong.

Of course, their end-of-October poll in 2004 put Kerry ahead among registered voters, 46-45. Their likely voters numbers put Bush ahead.

I know we always see some margin in the final polls, but 13 percent? Gallup's traditional likely voter model has it at 2 percent, and Pew puts it at 15 percent?

Looking at this chart of various pollsters' final polls, the margin was about 8 percent last time — Newsweek had Bush by 6 percent (!) and Fox News had Kerry by 2 percent. (Would have figured the other way around, huh?)

UPDATE: JD thinks the Pew sample actually skews even further, 24 percent Republican, 39 percent Democrat.

10/28 02:07 PM Share