A Bunch Of Dip Sticks

There's a lot of hue and cry going up about the latest ABC/Washington Post poll that proclaims that gas prices are now the only thing that matters to voters and that Obama is once again doomed.  Deaniac83 over at The People's View easily points out why "voters have turned on the President" over economic news:  they stacked their polls with Republicans.

From the last poll to this one, there is a net 7 point gain for GOP identified voters as opposed to Democratic ones, and there is a net 8 point loss in the President's approval rating. Hmm, looks like an awfully close correlation to me. If we assume that independents lean roughly the same way as the party ID numbers (really, very few voters are truly independent), GOP and GOP lean voters get a representation bump another 3 percentage points net, moving the GOP party ID vs. Democrats to a net +10 points as compared to the last poll. Given that about 80% of GOP and GOP-leaning voters oppose President Obama, the entire 8 point swing in the poll can be accounted for by the additional representation of Republican and Republican leaning voters.

But what are the real numbers on voter registration in this country? From the most current data from states that allow registration by party, Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 12 point margin, 43% to 31%, with independents coming in at 24%. Granted, only 29 states and DC allow registration by party, so take that data with that caveat, but I will note that the February poll had a much closer party ID difference (D +11) to the known actual national data (D +12). In this poll, that has dwindled down to a D +4, which is obviously a significant over-representation Republican and GOP-leaning voters, and an equally significant under-representation of Democratic voter registration advantage.

It is important to note here that the analysis above is not meant to show that ABC News and Washington Post pollsters somehow "cooked" the numbers. These variations - 3 points here and 4 points there, especially given the poll's margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points - are normal statistical anomalies. But it is intellectually dishonest to point to this poll and find a gas price related "dip" for the president's approval without looking at the very obvious factor of over-representation of GOP voters in the poll.

So yes, the poll oversampled Republicans.  Surprise!  Republicans hate the President.  So yes, we get a record 50% of Americans strongly disapprove of the President on the economy right now...when the economy has been improving significantly.

Either that, or the FOX news lies that the Department of Labor is lying to 310 million Americans and the world is so effective, there's really nothing the President can do.  I rather believe the former explanation.