I have not seen enough evidence yet to say I've made a firm conclusion on this issue, but I think there may be a divide in the approval ratings pollsters are finding for President Obama depending on whether they're using IVR or live callers.
A few things have put this on my radar screen:
-If you look at Obama's national approval on Pollster.com's chart, most of the lower approval levels are coming from Rasmussen.
-While Civitas found Obama's North Carolina approval this week at 65/16, we only had it at 52/41 last week.
-The other places we've asked poll questions about Obama this month were New Hampshire and Texas. We'll release the Texas result later this week, but we found a net negative approval for him there. I haven't seen any live operator approval ratings for him there yet.
In New Hampshire we did not ask an approval question, but one about the stimulus. 50% said they supported it and 40% were opposed. I think that's a pretty good surrogate for Obama's approval since we found the exact same +11 for both the stimulus and his approval in North Carolina. Those are much more modest numbers than the Granite State poll, which found 66% approval and 21% disapproval for Obama in the state.
Is the Bradley Effect finally showing up? I doubt it. My guess is that if this really does prove to be a trend it's that Republicans are more likely to want to seem bipartisan to a live caller than on an automated poll. Our NC poll last week found a very strong partisan divide on Obama that does not seem to have been as pronounced on the Civitas poll.
Again the body of evidence is limited at this point but it's certainly something to watch.
Rasmussen actually had Obama at 60% in Texas but that was quite some time ago when Obama was 69/28 in Janaury. Since then, Obama has fallen a lot in Rasmussen, so I would gather his Texas numbers have fallen dramatically as well because Obama is holding up fairly well in certain states.
ReplyDeleteI trust Rasmussen for national presdiential polling given his record the last two election cycles but he's spotty on state-by-state polling. How else do you explain Obama being at 60/39 nationally but at 58% in Georgia? Wouldn't you expect Georgia's approval to be significantly lower than his national approva numbers?
Can you give a clue as to his net negative? Is it fairly significant? If he's starting off this badly in Texas during his honeymoon period, he may not have a chance in 2012 unless the economy actually recovers or the immigration wave starts again. That's good news for me as a conservative considering that Texas is supposed to get a boatload of electoral college votes.
Tom, don't you think yesterday's Limbaugh numbers were too high considering how relatively well Limbaugh polled among minorities? You would think Limbaugh was the most popular Republican for minorities, heh heh, though they probably agree with Limbaugh on the social issues.
ReplyDeleteYour state-by-state stuff is pretty solid as evidenced by your record but I remain skeptical of things such as Limbaugh showing 46/43 of your national polling ability. Are Palin, Romney, Sanford next in line for national polling?
It is just a slight net negative in Texas
ReplyDeletepolls suggest kay hutchison is ahead of the current Texas governor but that is not what will happen at election time. polls showed kerry way ahead of bush in that election and bush won hands down! perry is more experienced in getting things done and kay, functioning as a senator is not equivalent to running a state. i'm all for females breaking the glass ceiling except in this case she will lose. i foresee election outcomes and foresaw hillary's popularity in national race but also foresaw "the boys club" as i call them would kick her out and they did though she managed "a comeback" as key role in obama administration.
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