Mitt Romney lead hidden by doubly skewed New York Times/CBS News poll
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns at Van Dyck Park September 13, 2012 in Fairfax, Virginia. Romney and U.S. President Barack Obama are spending significant time competing in Virginia, one of the primary battleground states.
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Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
The latest New York Times/CBS News pollof the presidential race released today is yet another doctored poll that shows President Obama leading when its data indicates a Mitt Romney lead. The survey of 1170 registered voters, polled between September 8-12, has Obama leading over Romney by a 49 percent to 46 percent margin. Unskewing the dataindicates a Romney lead over Obama by 51 percent to 44 percent. By doubling skewing the sample, over-sampling Democrats and under-sampling independent voters, the survey reports the three percent Obama lead rather than a seven point Romney lead.
The New York Times/CBS News poll data on the percentages of Democrats, Republicans and independents that support Romney or Obama along with the over all results are used to calculate the partisan make up of the sample, since that information was not reported in the internals of the poll. That calculation, which is sufficiently accurate for the purpose of this analysis, show the survey sample included approximately 44 percent Democrats, 39 percent Republicans and 18 percent independent voters.
While the New York Times/CBS News poll reported Obama leading by a margin of 49 percent to 46 percent over Romney, the survey reported Democrats supporting Obama by a 93 percent to five percent ratio while Republicans supported Romney by a 90 percent to seven percent margin. Similar to most other such national polls of the presidential race, this one has independent voters going for Romney by a 51 percent to 40 percent margin.
The Rasmussen Reports partisan data measured from hundreds of thousands of voters by Rasmussen Reports, which measures the partisan percentages at 37.6 percent Republicans, 33.3 percent Democrats and 29.2 percent independents. The difference means the New York Times/CBS News poll over-sampled Democratic voters by seven percent and under-sampled independent voters by 11.2 percent.
When the data from the New York Times/CBS News poll is unskewed by weighting their reported percentages between Romney and Obama to the partisan affiliations showed by Rasmussen's extensive data results on that issue, the overall picture of Obama's approval to disapproval rating is different. With Republicans weighted 37.6 percent, Democrats at 33.3 percent and Independents at 29.2 percent, the results calculate to a Romney lead of 51 percent to 44 percent.
This survey is not the only such poll recently to be skewed by over-sampling Democrats to skew the results in favor of Barack Obama. Earlier this week, the latest CNN/ORC poll was similarly skewed. Last month on the Fox News segment “Campaign Insiders” today, Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen both confirmed their belief that major polls are skewed in favor of the Democrats by over-sampling of Democratic voters when the surveys are conducted.
