Their partisan leaning is infused into their numbers. Unfortunately, that is not a choice you have at RCP. The spin is a side dish, which you can choose to consume or ignore. But what I can promise you is that we’ll keep the spin separate from our metrics. I am a Democrat, and I see the world through a Democratic lens. Look - I’m not going to tell you that my site is completely devoid of spin.
Why, a week or so ago, did RCP include a poll from the Marketing Resource Group of Lansing, Michigan, which the Detroit News describes as a “Republican consulting firm”, while excluding a Nevada poll that came out on the same day from Project New West, a Democratic strategy firm? Might it have had anything to do with the fact that the Michigan poll showed McCain ahead - and the Nevada poll showed him behind? Why is one of Mitch McConnell’s internal polls included in their Kentucky Senate averages? But they didn’t bother to include more recent polls from Elon and Civitas, which show the race essentially tied. Or how about North Carolina Senate? RCP presently includes two weeks-old polls from SurveyUSA and Research 2000, whch had shown Elizabeth Dole with a solid lead in her race against Kay Hagan. But then last month, when the same firm released a fresh poll showing the profound effect that Sarah Palin had on the race (McCain +19), RCP decided they were a worthy pollster. We included it, included it, and RCP did not. The Star-Tribune poll, which shows a tie, is included the SurveyUSA poll, which showed Obama ahead by 2, is not.Īs long as we’re having fun with this, how about Alaska? Anchorage-based pollster Ivan Moore had released a poll in July, then showing just a 3-point race between McCain and Obama. The Star-Tribune conducted polling from September 10th through September 12th SurveyUSA conducted polling from September 10th to September 11th. Guess which one had the strongest numbers for Obama?Ī similar example from Minnesota. And yet, the Mason-Dixon and ABC/Post polls are included in its average whereas SurveyUSA is not. The ABC/Post poll was in the field from the 18th to the 21st, Mason-Dixon from the 17th to the 22nd, and SurveyUSA from the 19th to the 21st. You’ll see three polls - SurveyUSA, Mason-Dixon, and ABC/Post - that were conducted at essentially the same time. Take a look, for example, at which polls they presently include in their averages for Virginia: This is not RCP’s sole problem with consistency. Only when ARG released this gravity-defying set of polling in Virginia and North Carolina and Nevada did RCP suddenly have a change of heart. RCP did not feel any compulsion to include ARG’s numbers when ARG cycled through all 50 states a couple of weeks ago (including many where there has been very little polling). In each of those states - North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada - ARG is presently the outlier on the John McCain side (tied with Mason-Dixon in the case of Virginia).
The only thing that changed is that ARG released a set of three polls yesterday that had considerably more favorable numbers for John McCain than other contemporaneous polls of those states. Did their polls suddenly become more accurate? How could they, when we haven’t had any elections to evaluate them.
Did ARG suddenly improve its level of disclosure? No. What I do know, however, is that whatever RCP’s reasons were for excluding ARG from its averages, none of those reasons should have changed over the past 48 hours.
However, while ARG ranks toward the back end of our pollster ratings, so do a lot of other pollsters that RCP has no problems with. Why didn’t RCP include ARG’s polls in its averages? Presumably because they had an exceptionally erratic performance during this year’s primaries, a performance that - when coupled with ARG’s relative lack of disclosure about its methodology - had led RCP to conclude that their polls were not credible.Īs you may know, I am not much of a fan of ARG myself. Sometimes RCP listed ARG polls with an asterisk and did not include them in their averages more often they didn’t list them at all. Specifically, it was their decision to re-include polls from American Research Group (ARG) in their state-by-state averages.ĪRG had been effectively “banned” from RCP for several months now, going back to the Democratic primaries. RCP made a decision yesterday that convinces me I should have trusted my gut.
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