Yesterday we put out a poll showing Mel Martinez with a 23% approval rating, today Strategic Vision put one out showing him with a 47% approval rating.
Who's right? One thing worth noting is that in addition to showing Martinez with a 24% higher approval rating than we did, they also showed Democratic Senator Bill Nelson with a 12% higher approval rating than we did. I have a feeling folks who consent to a long live interview might be more charitable in their assessments of politicians than those who can quickly take one of our automated surveys and get off the phone.
They also had a lot fewer people offer up the 'no opinion/not sure' option than we did, another variable that could be impacted by survey length and medium.
Strategic Vision has a good track record, but unlike us they did not release any of their demographic information or crosstabs on this poll. Without that information it's hard to see why the polls would come out so different. I thought our party breakdown with an even split of Democrats and Republicans was pretty reasonable- theirs must have been much more Republican (Update: it was not, see the comments.) But unless they put out that extra stuff about their poll we really can't have much of an idea what explains the differences.
Could be a function of response options offered or not offered (assuming don't know/no opinion wasn't offered in SV poll) or position of question in poll. Doubtful that it is a result of "charitable assessments", which I've never heard of.
ReplyDeleteNope. Their party breakdown was 41% D, 39% R, and 20% I.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/docs/SV_FL_July08.html
Interesting. I'd still be interested to see the race breakdown. Black Democrats, particularly in the south, have very different response patterns from white Democrats.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone really knows what the deal is in Florida.