Perspective --- Polling Trends in 2008 vs '04 and '00

[jefferson_dem]

Charles Franklin has a new graph up. Very interesting...

Monday, August 04, 2008
Polling Trends in 2008 vs '04 and '00





The most common description of polls is that they are snapshots, not predictions. A good way to look at that in the 2008 election is to compare the '08 campaign with the two that came before.

The chart above shows the trend estimates for each of the last three presidential campaigns. I'm plotting the estimated margin between the two candidates, Dem minus Rep, for each year.

With 93 days to go until the 2008 election, Obama holds a 3.3 point advantage over McCain, though that has been eroding over the past six weeks. If we put a confidence interval around today's estimate, we get a race that is just barely leaning Democratic.

But what about the future? The dynamics of the next 92 days are all important for where we stand on November 4. Since we can't foresee those 92 days yet, let's see what happened during the same time in 2000 and 2004. That gives us a better idea how much change we might anticipate in the next three months.

In 2004, Kerry slowly built a 2 point lead by this time, and held a small lead through much of the summer. But then the race took a sharp turn, with Bush making a 6 point run, taking a four point lead with 50 days to go. Kerry gained back 3 points of that in the polling, but less than 2 points of it in the actual vote, losing by a 2.4 point margin.

In 2000, Bush led in most of the early polls, holding a 6 point lead with 107 days to go. Then Gore moved sharply up, erasing Bush's lead and then adding a 3 point lead for Gore with about 56 days left. Bush promptly reversed Gore's gains with a six point move in the GOP's direction, and led by about 3 points over the last three weeks of the campaign. Of course, the 2000 polls were misleading in predicting a Bush win. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 points.

So far in 2008, Obama has enjoyed a run up of 5.5 points since his low point in late March. That run is on a par with Bush's in 2004 but still a bit less than Gore's 9 point run in 2000, and on par the Bush's 6 point rebound that year.

Judging from the dynamics we've seen in the past it is quite reasonable to expect the current trend to shift by half-a-dozen points. August and the conventions have been periods of substantial change in both previous elections, so if history repeats itself the next 4 or 5 weeks should be pretty interesting.

The bottom line is neither campaign should be complacent or despondent. There is a lot of time left and recent history shows that both up and down swings of 6-9 points are entirely plausible.

http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2008/08/polling-trends-in-2008-vs-04-and-00.html

[kurtboss]

1. Good stuff

Thanks.

[skids]

2. Thanks I was looking for exactly this sort of thing last week. n/t

[Awsi Dooger]

3. Not a valid comparison

The GOP was in far better shape in 2000 and 2004, basically 50/50 in favorable rating. Now they are dragged down by 3+ years of Bush in sub-40% approval range. That regulates any type of surge from McCain, unless Obama completely implodes.

[DLnyc]

4. My gut feeling is the steep downturns for Gore and Kerry corresponded with

highly coordinated negative onslaughts by the right-wing noise machine.

In the case of Gore, I seem to remember a period of Love Canal/Invented Internet/Too Stiff/Earth Tones repeated and echoed throughout the "press" that took him down.

For Kerry, it certainly started with the terror alert timed to overshadow the Dem Convention, followed by the swift-boat campaign and later the bullshit 'history' of 9/11.

Sort of seems like the thugs are having trouble getting a good smear going on Obama--maybe they're not playing hardball yet, maybe Obama is a much better candidate with a much better-organized campaign, maybe a significant percent of the American people are awakening from their stupor, or maybe I'm just imagining things.

[woolldog]

5. 2008 and 2004 look to be following a roughly similar path.