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CA-Gov, CA-Sen: SurveyUSA Sees Small GOP Leads

by: Crisitunity

Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 11:40 AM EDT


SurveyUSA for KABC, KPIX, KGTV, and KFSN (pdf) (8/9-11, likely voters, 7/8-11 in parentheses):

Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 42 (45)
Carly Fiorina (R): 47 (47)
Other: 5 (3)
Undecided: 5 (5)

Jerry Brown (D): 43 (39)
Meg Whitman (R): 44 (46)
Other: 6 (7)
Undecided: 6 (8)
(MoE: ±4.1%)

SurveyUSA continues to put up odd numbers in California: Meg Whitman over Jerry Brown by a point, yeah, that's on the pessimistic side compared with other pollsters but certainly feasible. But Carly Fiorina beating Barbara Boxer by 5, with trendlines going completely the opposite direction from the Dem-trending gubernatorial race? SurveyUSA is not only the only pollster to have ever given Fiorina a lead, but also the only pollster to recently show conservative, HP-destroying, money-limited Fiorina performing better against Boxer than the more moderate, more-acclaimed CEO, more-money-than-God Whitman against Brown. Well, all we can do is throw it on the pile with the rest of the polls; if nothing else, it'll smooth out that PPP poll that was +9 Boxer a couple weeks ago, which may have been a little too optimistic.

They also include some downballot issues, where Dems seem to be at an advantage (which makes the pro-Fiorina tilt of this poll seem even weirder). Gavin Newsom narrowly leads GOP incumbent Abel Maldonado 43-42 in the Lt. Governor race, and they find Proposition 19, which would legalize and tax the use of marijuana, passing by a fairly broad 50-40 margin.
Crisitunity :: CA-Gov, CA-Sen: SurveyUSA Sees Small GOP Leads
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CA-Gov, CA-Sen: SurveyUSA Sees Small GOP Leads | 45 comments
How has SUSA's track record
been for the last few months?
In Colorado
in their last poll they said Romanoff would win by 3 (lost by 6) and Buck would win by 9 (won by 4). And in Minnesota they said Dayton would win by I believe 17 (won by 1). So, uh, let's just say I don't know how much longer they'll be in Nate Silver's number-one slot.
[ Parent ]
When a good pollster gets a series of strange results
they'll take another look at their methodologies, and adjust if/as needed.

What are they doing that's different from a Gallup, a PPP, an Ipsos, or a Mason-Dixon? (Perhaps it's time they do a bit of benchmarking.)

We'll see in the future whether SUSA adjusts what they do.  

[ Parent ]
So, uh, let's just say I don't know how much longer they'll be in Nate Silver's number-one slot.
I don't think it will be much longer given the fact there polling has been all over the place (MN-Gov as a great example) they pegged Dayton winning by over 10 over MAK whrn he won by 1 and that was late in the night when most of the Iron Range csme in and CO-Gov Dem where Romanoff by 3 it wasn't even close since Bennet won by 6. Weird because there a good polling company, they were very good last cycle. Don't see what's going on with them.

22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.
[ Parent ]
SUSA always has an R house effect in Minnesota
They had Coleman by 5 in their final '08 Senate poll, Obama by 3 (he won by 10), and were the only pollster to give McCain a lead there after the primaries. I'd say they just don't know how to poll that state.

In California, they had Obama by 24 (he won by 21) and Prop 8 failing by 3 (it passed by 4.5). Back in 2006, they had Feinstein by 29 (won by 24) and Ahnold by 15 (won by 17). Averaging those out, that's a Democratic lean by a few points, albeit in mostly non-competitve races.

SUSA did nail VA-Gov, NJ-Gov, and CA-10 last November. So I'm still inclined to believe both these races are close, although Fiorina may not be up by that much.

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08

[ Parent ]
SUSA did nail VA-Gov, NJ-Gov, and CA-10 last November. So I'm still inclined to believe both these races are close, although Fiorina may not be up by that much.
Right and no one was doubting there polling last year because it was spot on like you said. It's 2010 where were questioning there polling. Regarding SUSA MN polling, I know they have a R house effect there, that'a been stated on here many times but it dosen't make up for there quirky polling there and even with the R house effect they still dropped the pooch in the Gov race there when they had Dayton by 17 and won by one and that came late after the bulk of the Iron Range votes came in.

I agree that these races are close like you said and I can see Whitman up by one over Brown but no way Fiorina is up at all againiat Boxer, let alone 5.

22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.

[ Parent ]
But maybe it's not an R House effect
Maybe they just have poor methodology when it comes to polling Minnesota (they could be over-polling some regions or demographics of the state while underpolling others). In general elections, whatever they're doing wrong benefits Republicans, but maybe in a primary devoid of Republicans the faulty methodology caused them to oversample Dayton's strongholds.

Or, as you said, they could just be having a lousy year!

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08

[ Parent ]
It could be methology
In MN and other states or they very well could be having a bad year because usually there spot on and very reliable. This year, there all over the place.

22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.
[ Parent ]
I dont remember any polls showing any thing close to the results
in MN-Gov.  And that has simply to do with MAK having a ground game and Dayton not having one.  She made up 10% because of having the DFL endorsement and having the whole apparatus helping her do field work.
[ Parent ]
Which is why
When Dayton won by 1 we were suprised, espically afterit came late when the bulk of the Iron Range votes came into put him over the top (MAK had a advsntage for most of the night because of the big advantages she put up in Hennepin and Ramsey county).

22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.
[ Parent ]
even though MAK led most of the night
it was pretty clear that Dayton was going to turn that around, especially considering how many outstanding precincts there were in Duluth where his margin only kept growing.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
I always knew that
I knew MAK area was the Twin Cities area (which reports the quickest)while Dayton's strghenth was pretty much the rest of the state (core was the Iron Range, espically St. Louis County which has the City of Duluth) which reported the slowest.


22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.
[ Parent ]
This poll
is a joke. Fiorina wins young voters by 4 points? She's gets 1/4 of African Americans? Boxer is only up six with Latinos? In 2004, she got 86% of African Americans, and 73% of Latinos. Yes, Fiorina is stronger than Jones, but obviously those results don't make sense. None of the crosstabs make any sense.

It's harder to find problems when looking at the numbers for governor though.

28, Liberal Democrat, CA-26

Never put too much faith in crosstabs
Never ever.  

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  
[ Parent ]
Yeah, just kind of odd.
Some will (or already have) shout "bias!" but their Whitman and downballot numbers disagree.
Nobody is shouting bias
It is just odd.
[ Parent ]
Summer polling is garbage
I mean no pollster is really doing anything well now.  Everyone on here has their favorites, but at this point calling races has beeen at best a C-minus effort (Bennet-Romanoff, Lamont-Malloy, Dayton-Kelliher, Handel-Deal and those were just in the last week).

I don't even know why pollster rankings matter any more.  Polling of primaries has been all over the place, and polling of GE matchups has been crazy.  

However, the most perplexing item I keep finding is that pollsters release GE matchups 1-2 days after a primary, and the polls were taken before the primary.  This has got to be the most pointless polling of all.  Most recent example is PPP in the CO-Gov race.  Why did they even waste their money on a pre-primary poll?

PPP just released a baffling gay marriage poll
They have Americans opposing gay marriage 57-33. They acknowledge the gross disparity with the CNN poll but write that it may be due to the disparities between live and automatic polling.

All that is fair enough. But what's truly baffling is the polling for under 30s - they have under 30s opposed to gay marriage 52-44, which flies in the face of virtually every poll that has been conducted on the issue.  

[ Parent ]
Well
The article mentions that people might react different because they do not want to offend someone over the phone or whatever.

So maybe that's got something to do with the disparity?

The next part of that post says it all though:

"Dark blue states like California and Maine voted against it just in the last two years. Obama states like Wisconsin and Virginia rejected it by 14 and 18 points margins in 2006 and red states like South Carolina and Tennessee did so by 56 and 62 point margins. The actual votes we have had on same sex marriage in many states across the country are a more dependable barometer of opinion on the issue than any polling and they tell the story of an American public pretty still pretty opposed to it."

[ Parent ]
The last paragraph
Is actually a very poignant point.  The very blue-est states have rejected gay marriage equality, so the overall national support would have to be well below 50%.

CNN's poll is probably the more unlikely of the 2.

[ Parent ]
The weird thing is the under-30 bracket
Virtually every poll has them in support, usually by a hefty margin. PPP's poll has even under 30s opposing gay marriage but a moderate amount. So that seems odd.  
[ Parent ]
I wonder the reality of that bias though
How do we know its real?  I mean with Southern states voting it down so resoundingly, moderate states voting it down by decent amounts, and even blue states voting it down, why do we think there is an age group that "has" to support it.

If I think about large to semi-large states, I kind of think that the under-30 crowd would not be in support in Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Missourri, and maybe not even in Pennsylvania or Florida.

I just don't think we can assume the under 30 crowd is in support of marriage equality.  If it were, then I guess I'd wonder what the trigger is for people turning 30 and being against it would be?

[ Parent ]
Um
your last sentence is a bit misleading, it's a little more nuanced than that.

I'm 20 years old. I go to college with people from all over the country (and the world for that matter). I can promise you that among people my age there is majority support for gay marriage. maybe not in Oklahoma or whatever but in the country as a whole, yes. Do you question those studies that show that people who have openly gay family/friends/coworkers/whatever are more likely to support gay marriage? Because it's almost impossible to be my age and not be at least fairly close with an openly gay person.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/

[ Parent ]
and for that matter
it's not just a "liberal" thing either. I know plenty of people who consider themselves conservatives but are socially moderate or liberal. they're just pro-free market.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
Yes and Yes
The "I know a lot of people argument" just isn't a solid one.  Never has been, never will.

Just because you know someone with a choice of lifestyle does not mean you will vote to legalize that lifestyle.  More likely maybe, but its not like homsexuality is new.  I knew people in college who did cocaine, but I wouldn't vote to legalize it.  I know people in college who stole stuff, but I wouldn't legalize theft.  Its not statistically significant.

The CNN exit poll on Prop 8 shoed 18-29 with a 61-39 edge in voting agains tthe gay marriage ban.  And this is California, which is a fiarly liberal state.  So I don't think projecting an overall national bias for the age-group can even remotely be considered fact.

Alas, we're far off topic.  Perhaps our weekend open thread will open soon.

[ Parent ]
Research completely contradicts you
The "I know a lot of people argument" just isn't a solid one.  Never has been, never will

I wont even bother looking up a study because Ive read news articles pertaining to so many about knowing a gay person makes you more likely to support gay marriage that Im sure you can google it in five minutes yourself.  The problem is you're thinking of the connection as one-direction way, it isnt strictly anymore I am friends with someone who is gay so I support gay marriage but a mixture of that and I support gay marriage and thus have gay friends.

My generation doesn't care about sexual preference and after going to a Catholic conservative/moderate univ., I know plenty of die-hard Catholic pro-life Republicans who just find the whole anti-gay thing silly.

And that's why the poll should probably have 4% or so dolloped off the anti-gay and added to the pro-gay, at the least.  

[ Parent ]
They said the same thing about my generation
And your parents generation too.

Free love came from the 60's-70's.  Yet whenever you hear people trying to get abstinence only education put into schools, which subset of the population is it.  

[ Parent ]
thing is
just because Baby Boomers aren't liberal overall they remain more liberal than the generation before on civil rights. It's impossible to deny attitudes about race, etc. nowadays are better than they were in the 60s.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
I don't deny that
Younger people are more likely than older people to support gay marriage.  I do deny the conclusion that younger people support gay marriage at a 50.1% level or more.
[ Parent ]
look for my response in the open thread.


21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
I half-agree
The majority of my friends and classmates, Republicans and Democrats, favor gay marriage, and everyone knows a handful of gay people. But you and I are both from New England and go to intellectual schools in liberal cities. We're seeing the demographic that is most gay-friendly: young, educated, urban, and northeastern (politically, Chicago can be considered part of the northeast.) I'd bet that under-30's who live in the South or in rural parts of the country and are not college-educated have less exposure to LGBT people, and are more likely to oppose gay marriage, which keeps the margins down in our age demographic nationally.

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08
[ Parent ]
Whoa, just realized way off topic
I thought this was the open thread for some reason. My apologies for contributing to the derail.

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08
[ Parent ]
I'll agree with that
that being said, even most of the people I've met from more socially conservative areas are socially liberal. For instance one of my best friends is from small-town Missouri (and before that lived in Oklahoma and East Texas) but you wouldn't know that from her cultural attitudes (although then again she is a minority too so maybe that affects it). Another one of my friends is from Kansas (KS-03, but still), is Baptist, and even he supports gay rights. I will concede that part of it is being college-educated, but in most of the country, among our generation, it's a majority position, especially since going to college is more common now than it used to be. I'm sure 18-29 year olds in Tennessee oppose it but I wouldn't say the same in states like Iowa or Ohio, and definitely not New York or Illinois.

While California is more liberal than the country as a whole, I doubt it's 22 points more liberal. And especially since in the two years between now and Prop 8 support for gay marriage has probably grown even more. I'm sorry, but if we're talking about the country as a whole, PPP's crosstabs are sketchy.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/

[ Parent ]
blah, sorry
I'm going to repost this in the open thread when it comes out.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
However, going back to CA
wasn't it PPP that found attitudes in California about gay marriage little moved from the Prop 8 numbers?  

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
The reason people say support for gay marriage has grown in CA since Prop. 8
is because polls show that a slight majority of Californians support gay marriage, and they assume that's an improvement against Prop. 8 - when 52% of Californians supported Prop. 8.

But the thing is that before Prop. 8 polls also showed the majority of Californians supporting gay marriage. I don't remember a single pre-election poll actually showing a majority in favor of Proposition 8 - which was what actually happened. There's actually been little change in the polls.

It's just that the polls don't reflect the reality - polls consistently, election after election, understate true support for issues like Prop. 8.  

http://mypolitikal.com/

[ Parent ]
This is true
but with demographic currents as well as Prop 8's galvanization of the gay rights movement I'd expect majority support as soon as 2012.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
No, because at least for CA and ME
the polling difference in results was pretty much within the margin of error.  I dont remember polling from WI or VA, but VA is clearly an awful example for their point by tying the state to an Obama win.  WI may have had closer polls then the 14% blow-out but nothing like a completely flipped result and I havent seen a poll with that large of a difference in forever.

And of course, Nate is up with something great about it.  No poll since 2006 has shown that wide a margin, and he gets into marijuana laws and such with robo vs live and does a decent job showing how it could be bs.  A live poller found 41% of people favoring legalizing pot while with a robo-caller, 34% said it should be legalized.  That's backwards, more people would want to show support for something pretty criminalized to a robo-caller, not a live-caller.

I also agree with him saying that they could just both be outliers.  That seems most likely to me.  I'd actually just flip the CNN numbers and think that's about right.

[ Parent ]
w/r/t Primary Polling
I wonder about the effect of GOTV -- for example, I think the DFL establishment endorsement of MAK helped her.

I wonder if GOTV can have a bigger effect in primaries, where more candidates may have "scrubs" calling/knocking on doors.  

[ Parent ]
I'm Sure it does
Of course I think had anyone done predictions on voter turnout in Georgia, I'd have to think the relatively higher than expected turnout, given Handel's popularity, would have favored Handel.  Which of course it didn't.

I'd love to see more polling on such things.  Maybe not limit the screen to anything more than Reg Voters and try and predict turnout with the polling (registered voters as likely voters being a proxy for "turnout").  Then pollsters would at least have that to fall back on.

As for polling, I'd love to see more publicly available polling on message testing, the impact of ads, etc.  Predicting the races has been an absolute craphsoot

[ Parent ]
How to measure the effects of GOTV w/r/t
likely and unlikely voters -- I don't have a clue.

GOTV certainly captures some proportion of unlikely voters -- and ensures that some higher proportion of likely voters go to the polls. How can that be measured?

While what you say about message testing makes sense, it's also a characteristic of a "push poll," which leads to skewed results. Nevertheless, that kind of "push" can help GOTV effectiveness.

Higher turnout probably would have helped Handel -- if the GOTV were equal (unless Deal had momentum, which might have been the case).

[ Parent ]
Take a look at the break downs of Prop 19
I think the partisan break down of prop 19 to legalize marijuana is really interesting.

Dems 60 to 30 in favor, Indy 53 to 33 in favor and GOP 36 to 57 against.

At a time of hyper partisanship this is one issue that splits both parties.

Gun owners are 54 to 39 yes while pro lifers are 27 to 63 against.

Tea Party supports favor break 35% yes vs 56% no. Men are 55% to 38% yes while Women are only 45% to 43% yes. Under $40K and over $80k in income are 54% to 35% and  57% to 35% yeas while $40k to $80k are 44% to 48% no.

Whites and Black support it while Asias and latinos break against it.

Has anyone else seen an issue break in such a fractured way with the electorate?

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Interesting
I saw on Politico that both Fiorina and Whitman are against the big GOP push to change the 14th amendment.

I do not believe Fiorina or Whitman are ahead, but it seems like they're staking out a middle ground.

Boxer and Brown will win though.

Ridiculous numbers
46-40 among Latinos when I don't think Boxer hasn't gotten less than 2/3 in her races?  27% AA support for Fiorina?  Give me a break.
Give me a break
That's what most of us think of this poll. I can believe Whitman has a 1 point lead over Brown and most here (including Cristunity) but Fiorina over Boxer by five I don't believe for a nano second when most pollsters have given Boxer the lead. The breakdown on demographics also makes me believe how ridiclous the numbers of CA-Sen is in this poll.

As for the downballot races they polled, can't give a opinion on them as I have seen much polling on them.

22, Male, Democrat, PA-18.

[ Parent ]
CA-Gov, CA-Sen: SurveyUSA Sees Small GOP Leads | 45 comments

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