Bush has been climbing, not Kerry.

Nice try.

Cite? I think it's crap you either A) Pulled out of your ass, or got from Newsmax, which they pulled out of their ass.

I'd also like a non-Newsmax article saying the LATimes A)over-sampled Democrats, AND That is was purposeful. Failing this, I cry "BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLSHIT!"

Whoops! NewsMax caught packing its latest articles with lies!

Another article, this time from the Liberal web site, Slate.....




John McCain Meets Jo Moore
Plus--inside that L.A. Times shock poll.
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Friday, June 11, 2004, at 2:51 PM PT


It's a Jo Moore Week and it's a Friday! What better time to let AP's Ron Fournier learn the news that John McCain has "personally rejected John Kerry overtures to join the Democratic presidential ticket"? ... Sorry, Iggy! ... P.S.: Oh well. Didn't Adam Nagourney helpfully explain to us that the Kerry people didn't really want McCain anyway? ... P.P.S.: This story looks mighty Jo Moorish too. ...23 P.M.

The LAT Does It Again: Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster, blasted the latest LAT poll (showing Kerry up 7) as a "mess." Specifically, he noted in an email sent to NBC and ABC that

Bush is leading independents by three, ahead among Republicans by a larger margin than Kerry is ahead among Dems, and we are down by seven. Outrageous. And it gets worse. They have Dems leading generic congressional ballot by 19. this means this poll is too Democratic by 10 to 12 points.

Who's right? Ask Governor Gray Davis! O.K, thats a cheap shot. But LAT-watchers have been skeptical of the Times Poll ever since it alone showed Davis closing to a virtual dead heat in the recent California gubernatorial recall--a report that virtually everyone else (including rival campaigns and the rival Field Poll) scoffed at. I've been told, however, that Times polling director Susan Pinkus is a straight shooter, so I did the irresponsible thing and postponed sniping while I called her up. [Don't let this happen again--ed] Here's what I learned:

--The party breakdown in the LAT poll was 38 % Democratic, 25% Republican, 24% Independent. That's about the same as the 38/19/26 breakdown of a year ago, but it's a big increase in Democrats since March of this year, when they were only 33 percent of the sample. Pinkus argues her latest numbers are not that different from a recent ABC poll that she said showed Democrats with a 37/27 percent edge. And she says her overall horse-race result isn't much different from the latest Gallup poll, which had Kerry up 6 in a three-way race. (That was among "likely" voters. The Times surveyed "registered" voters--and Gallup only had Kerry up by 3 in that broader group.)

--On the gigantic Democratic generic Congressional-preference lead in her survey, Pinkus said, "I don't know what's happening with that. If that's true, it's huge. ... I've seen it 5 or 6 points, but never 19, it's true." She said she stood by her poll, however. (Earlier she had noted that one out of 20 polls will be wrong, given the accepted margins of error.)

--Other commentators (such as RCP's T. Bevan) have hung their critique on Bush's much better showing in the Times' separate, more intense look at three battleground states. Can Bush really be losing nationally by 6 points and still be winning Missouri by 11 points? Seems unlikely. One possible explanation: The Times apparently used a different telephoning outfit to conduct the state-by-state polls than it used for the national poll. Might not something in the different survey techniques of the two firms have skewed the results in two directions? "I don't know. I can't answer that. That's a legitimate question," said Pinkus. If there is a difference in the results of the two survey techniques--even using the exact same questions--then which technique is more accurate? Maybe the Times' technique really does skew results to the left, no? (That would explain a lot!) Or its subcontractor's technique might skew results to the right. It could be something very simple. If--speaking hypothetically--all the Times' phone surveyors were Latinas with exacting NPR-style Spanish accents, those surveyed might try to please them by appealing to their assumed Democratic leanings. They might get a different result than would a survey conducted by men with thick Southern accents and gruff manners. One group would get it wrong.

P.S.: Note that the generic Congressional result was also much more "normal"-- and much less pro-Democratic (6-8 points instead of 19)--in the three "battleground" states surveyed by the subcontractor. Why would Missouri, Wisconsin and Ohio all happen to be almost equally less pro-Democratic than the nation as a whole? Or is the difference really a difference in the techniques of the subcontractor that did the "battleground" state surveys?

Does Pinkus plan to post the LAT's methodological numbers, as requested by ABC's Note? "Not at this time ... I guess I could but I haven't thought about it." She points out that she has given ABC a response to Dowd's charges. (Check The Note tomorrow.)

People who know more about polling than I do should feel free to pick apart these numbers and email me with any especially juicy points. ...

Bonus Buried Lede: Matthew Dowd argues that the LAT's 19 point Dem advantage in "generic" Congressional preference is "10 to 12 points" off. Doesn't this mean that the Democrats are winning by 7 to 9 points? There's your hed! "KEY BUSH STRATEGIST SAYS DEMS HAVE BIG CONGRESSIONAL LEAD." [Thanks to an alert kf reader who happens to be a national pollster.] 7:53 P.M.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102054/




Whoops!!!!

It also begs the question: If there were 13% more Dems polled, why is Kerry up by only 7%?


Bush landslide alert!

13% is an estimate...and the margin of error accounts for it. Its typically +/- 3 points it seems...which would bridge that gap. They can't use the extremes of choices, its not statistically sound. That's what the margin of error is for; accuracy based on the sample.

No, the margin of error is for the size of a given sample. It does not take into account polling 13% more Democrats than Republicans.

Gray Davis found out that the LA Times was lying when Arnold beat him soundly.

Actually, you're wrong. The margin of error is based on the accuracy of the results for the given sample. So if someone on the poll is at, say, 50 with a margin of error of 3, that means that the actual percentage of the population is within the interval of 47 through 53.

How many people were polled?
100?
1,000?
100,000?

And who's to say that the people didn't make a mistake when writing down the political parties?

And who's to say that the information itself was what it was due to "random dialing" and getting people who didn't hang up to give the data?

I know I hang up whenever someone says "I'm not selling anything."

The MOE does not account for polling 13% more Democrats.

Sorry.

A lot does depends on the survey method used. If it was based on a written survey, a lot of conservatives might have looked at "LA Times" and thrown it out right then.

Ah, the sound of desperate reasoning.

"Desperate reasoning" versus looking for the truth?

By the way, why do the percentages for Bush and Kerry not equal 100%?

Bustamante Has Big Lead on Schwarzenegger
But nearly half say their choice for a successor to Davis, if he is ousted, may change. Predicting who will turn out for the election is difficult.



By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer


Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante holds a wide lead over Arnold Schwarzenegger in the race to succeed Gov. Gray Davis, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll, which finds the Republican vote splintered among several GOP contenders.

As the sole major Democrat running to replace Davis — should the incumbent be ousted Oct. 7 — Bustamante enjoys the support of 35% of likely voters, the poll found.

Schwarzenegger received the support of 22%, followed by three fellow Republicans: state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks with 12%, businessman Peter V. Ueberroth with 7% and Bill Simon Jr. — the GOP's 2002 gubernatorial nominee — with 6%.


http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/t...ews-times_poll



Go ask Governor Bustamante how accurate the LA Times is!

Independents.

And "undecided."

The telephone poll surveyed 1,230 registered voters nationwide from Saturday to Tuesday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...652EDT0025.DTL

Took two seconds to find.

The telephone poll surveyed 1,230 registered voters nationwide from Saturday to Tuesday. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...lection_poll_4

Helps back the numbers.

Now 1,230 times .10 = 123. That's a very small amount of people, especially since it was nationwide AND by telephone.

How exactly did they decide on who to call? Nobody knows, or cares to say, since nowhere in either of those articles is how they called up the people. Perhaps they just called the first 1,230, or called random people up until a certain time.

That's good. If they called likely voters, which tend Republican, Bush would have a bigger lead than he would have if they used a fair sample.