TPM Reader JR wonders what the Romney camp was thinking going so all out to discredit today’s ABC/WaPo poll …
I’ve followed with curiosity today Team Mitt’s complaint about the WaPo/ABC poll methodology on the horse race question.
It’s a very strange complaint that leaves me scratching my head as to what they hoped to gain from this, and how sincere their complaint really is.
As your story on TPM pointed out, nothing in this WaPo poll was an outlier. The 6-point margin is in the ballpark of other recent and not-so-recent polling. If a major media poll comes out showing Obama up, say, 10, then one can understand pushback……maybe……but even then campaigns usually shrug it off unless they have a specific fear they need to head off.
But even more amazing is that Romney’s pollster who led the pushback, Neil Newhouse, is a principal in Public Opinion Strategies, which is the same firm that joins with Peter Hart to do the NBC/WSJ monthly poll that had almost identical results last week! That NBC poll had Obama at 48-46 job approval, at an improved 45-50 approval on the economy, and with a 49-43 lead over Romney. This WaPo poll has Obama at 50-46 job approval, at an improved 44-50 approval on the economy, and with a 51-45 lead over Romney. Newhouse’s colleague Bill McInturff handled that poll. The differences in the NBC and ABC poll results are trivial; yes ABC has Obama breaking 50 on a couple key data points, but those are purely psychological benchmarks that don’t carry any significance in statistical sampling; i.e., in statistics 50 is to 48 the same as 48 is to 46, there’s nothing magical about 50.
Not only that, but an examination of a list of recent polls over the past month-plus reveals several polls showing Obama up 5-6 points on Mitt.
And on top of all this, I pointed it to several voices on Twitter today that the 51-45 Obama lead on Romney in the ABC poll closely tracks Obama’s 50-46 job approval, which is about one would expect since job approval and horse race vote share usually aren’t very far apart; indeed, in this poll they track together more closely than is normal. And that job approval question was the ABC poll’s very first qusetion, so it was completely untainted by anything else. Does Team Mitt really think a poll that gives Obama 50-46 job approval, positive by 4 points, is going to have Mitt any better than that in the horse race, or that 6 points differs wildly from 4? Seems strained to believe that.
Romney’s campaign must know all this, or at least Newhouse must know it.
So what’s their motive? I don’t think they plant any serious doubt into the media consciousness, the political media follow polling enough to realize Team Mitt’s complaints are meritless. I also don’t think the manner of their complaining furthers any posturing of Mitt as somehow anti-media; the complaints about the ABC poll are too cerebral and not emotional enough to accomplish anything like that.
I suppose it could all be sincere, and they just haven’t considered all of the above polling information that’s been out there. Public Opinion Strategies, for their part, was guilty of embarrassing failure in the very last Presidential election working for McCain. Toward the end of the general election, the pollster heatedly insisted that McCain was within a point of Obama in Pennsylvania a week out, and running extremely close also in Iowa, and gaining in both cases. Charlie Black, a McCain advisor and big name in Beltway GOP circles, infamously promised McCain “probably would win” both Pennsylvania and Iowa. All this was bunk, and public polling and Obama’s private polling proved correct that Obama had comfortable margins in both states.
Ultimately this is all very bizarre. I can’t see Romney gaining at all from these complaints today, and I’m curious what others think.
