PPP Poll in Ohio Showing an Obama Lead is Junk
Published June 18th, 2008 @ 9:25 am. Tags: barack obama, john mccain, pollingJim Geraghty has an interesting post at NRO about a recent poll in Ohio which shows Barry Obama with a solid lead over John McCain in Ohio. However, the breakdown of the polls shows the party ID breakdown to be Democrats 55, Republicans 30, and Other 15. One would expect Republican numbers to be lower than they were in 2004 (40%), but not by 10 points.
In their defense, the polling firm used Survey USA, another questionable polling serivce, to defend their numbers.
Jim’s assumption that the registration of Ohio voters does automatically change when they vote in a primary, so the numbers may be comparable to “Operation Chaos” operatives who switched over to vote Democrat in the primary. But that is different than what party voters identify with, and that number is more difficult for pollsters to properly measure.
Quinnipiac got similiar results:
Obama 47, McCain 43
The economy is horrible. Gas is $4.00/gal and rising. We are in an unpopular war. The Republican President has 30% approval at the end of two terms. Democrats beat Republicans by 18 points on a generic ballot.
…and John McCain is only down 4 points in a swing state. I’m screwed.
The PPP is trash, look at some of the internals (23% African American support for McCain, huh?). However, the Quinnipiac poll is likely a real measure of where things stand.