Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama: The race tied in the latest Battleground poll
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to a crowd at Shawnee State University October 13, 2012 in Portsmouth, Ohio.
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Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images
The overall result of the Battleground poll released today shows the race tied, with President Obama and Mitt Romney at 49 percent. Officially reported as the Politico/George Washington University/Battleground poll, the survey is conducted weekly by Republican pollster Ed Goeas of The Tarrance Group and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners.
The Battleground poll shows that if the election were held today, 44 percent will definitely vote for Romney while 43 percent will vote for Obama. Additionally, four percent will probably vote for Romney while five percent will probably vote for Obama. Each candidate gets an additional one percent from independents who lean toward voting for them. This adds up to a total of 49 percent for each candidate that are definitely or probably or leaning toward voting for that candidate.
The data from the Battleground poll shows the sample of 1000 likely voters was made up of 32 percent Republicans and eight percent independents-leaning Republican while it included 36 percent Democrats and seven percent independents-leaning Democrat. That is a ratio of 43 percent Democrats/independent leaning Democrat to 40 percent Republicans/independent leaning Republican. The sample included 15 percent independent that do not lean in the direction of either party.
Given the reported result of a 49 percent to 49 percent lead for Obama with three percent undecided, predicting that three-fourths of the undecided will vote for Romney leads to a likely popular vote victory of 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent.
A re-weighting of the survey data based on a prediction that Republicans and Democrats will each make up 35 percent of the electorate on election day suggests a Romney lead of 51 percent to 46 percent. This is based on the analysis or “unskewing” of a poll to calculate the results if the sample had weighted Democrats and Republicans at 35 percent of the electorate each. With the undecided votes allocated, this would suggest a 53 percent to 47 percent margin the popular vote for Mitt Romney.
The Battleground poll has had a history of being quite accurate in measuring public opinion and predicting election results. The result of this poll, tied at 49 percent, clearly differs by other current surveys by a percentage that is within this survey's 3.1 percent margin of error.
Several other polls have been found recently to be skewed by over-sampling Democrats to skew the results in favor of Barack Obama. Last month, the previous CNN/ORC poll was similarly skewed. In August 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.
So many of these skewed polls have been unskewed here in this column they are now averaged, in unskewed form, in the new UnskewedPolls.com UnSkewed Average of Polls that today shows Romney leading by 3.8 percent.
The polls got UnSkewed, now the media gets it too -- UnSkewedMedia.com.
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