Tuesday, September 07, 2004

POLLING 101. A course I obviously need to take! Republican political consultant Charley Manning explains to Media Log that "likely voters" comprise a subset of "registered voters." I had it the other way around.

So yes, according to the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, Bush leads Kerry among registered voters by just one point, 49 percent to 48 percent. But among the smaller group of registered voters deemed "likely" to vote, Bush leads by seven points, 52 percent to 45 percent.

Someone posted a comment making the same point.

Manning: "Although the reporter in USA Today didn't make it clear, all of the 'likely voters' are, of course, registered voters. 'Likely voters' is always the number I look at first when I read a poll."

File under: D'oh!

2 comments:

Diane said...

Dan, do you read Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising? http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/

Best poll analysis anywhere.

Brian McFadden said...

I don't have a link, but I have read in several places that the methodology used to determine "likely voters" is frequently suspect.