Cooking the Books

Much blogging about polls with bad news for Bush, including today's Bush's Popularity Reaches New Low by Richard Morin and Dan Balz. Unlike past polls, I couldn't find demographic data for this one, but somebody else did. Protein Wisdom cites The New Editor:

The ABC/Washington Post poll, which shows that Bush's approval rating is at 39%, saw its respondents break down thusly: 52% said they leaned toward the Dems, and 41% leaned toward the Repubs. That represents a 14-point swing since last year's elections.

Will someone explain how the demographic breakdowns in these polls represent accurate pictures of the electorate, given what we know about the 2004 election (and the 2002 mid-terms)?

The blogger, Tom Elias, finds similar demographic patterns in other major polls. Things that make you go hmmmm.

Update: Hard to say whether the books are cooked, or merely simmering. If you look at the data, there are three ways the poll measures party affiliation:

• Generally, do you think of yourself as...(Dem., Rep., Independent, Other)
• Which way do you lean ("Leaned Party")
• Would you say your views on most political matters are liberal, moderate, or conservative

And this poll follows a pattern I've seen in every one I've examined at the Post: The "leaned party" category favors Democrats, but the "your views are mostly what?" category leans conservative, with a big mushy middle. As in this poll, where 23% say their views are mostly liberal, 32% say conservative, and 44% say moderate.

(In category one, Democrats are often favored but by a slight degree--in this poll, by 31%-27%)

The bottom line is that I'm sure a pollster defending this data, say Richard Morin if he answered my emails any more, would say it's a wash. At 1:36 on a Friday afternoon, with a nice salmon cooking for a late lunch, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. Basically, I'm just hungry.

Sometimes it's hard to know what's really going on in a poll without climbing into somebody else's head.