Real Clear Politics has generally been a good source of polling data for presidential, senate and congressional elections and I have frequently linked to them in many of my threads and comments. However, the integrity of RCP’s composite presidential poll has become compromised by the dishonest and biased polling samples of the mainstream polling houses. As noted by several of our bloggers, Quinnipiac, Pew, and PPP consistently poll more democrats than republicans by as much as 10%. We expect his of the MSM hacks at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC so there are no surprises there. Even Fox’s most recent poll over samples democrats by 9%. The current current RCP average gives Obama a 4.4% lead over Romney. But given the dem bias exhibited in most of the listed polls, Romney is probably tied with Obama or perhaps has a slight lead.
Today’s RCP average shows Obama with a 4.4 point lead nationally. The average is based on 9 recently released polls. 5 of these, 4 of which show outsized leads for Obama, have serious partisan skews favoring Democrats. The Pew “poll,” which shows Obama up 10, has a D+19 skew. FoxNews Poll is D+9, NBC is D+9 and CBS is D+7. The CNN poll, which I discussed today, seems to have a D+10 skew. None of these partisan breakdowns is an accurate prediction of what the electorate will look like in November, yet they do impact the current RCP Average.
The 4 polls with more reasonable assumptions of partisan breakdown show a much closer race. Still, only two of these poll “likely voters”–Rasmussen and Democracy Corps. Registered voter polls inherently give Democrats a 2-3 point edge in results. Factor all these variables in and the race is probably a wash, with the probability of a slight Romney edge.
