Mitt Romney and Barack Obama close in Washington Post/ABC News poll
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) debates with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University on October 22, 2012 in Boca Raton, Florida.
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Photo by Rick Wilking-Pool/Getty Images
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll released today shows the race betweenPresident Obama at 49 percent and Mitt Romney at 48 percent. The poll of 1376 likely voters, surveyed between October 18-21, has a margin of error of 3.0 percent. Over-sampling of Democrats by five percent, the survey sample included 34 percent Democrats, 29 percent Republicans and 33 percent independent voters. Unskewed, the data indicates that Mitt Romney would lead 51.37 percent to 48.63 percent using more balanced weighting of the sample.
The sampling of the Washington Post/ABC News poll differs with the data from the latestQStarNews poll, the expected partisan make up of the electorate expected for this year's election is 34.8 percent Republicans, 35.2 percent Democrats and 30.0 independents. This indicates a degree of over-sampling of Democrats by nine percent in this poll's sample.
The Washington Post/ABC News poll has Democrats favoring Obama by a 94 percent to six percent margin while Republicans surveyed in the poll favor Romney by a 95 percent to five percent margin. The survey found independent voters to support Romney by a 52 percent to 44 percent edge.
If this data is weighted for the appropriate percentage of independents as shown by the QStarNews poll data, the survey indicates a far larger and growing lead for Mitt Romney. Analysis of the data by those criteria would lead to a result showing Romney leading with a 51.37 percent to 48.63 percent margin over President Obama. This results in a small Romney lead rather than a one percent Obama lead.
Most of the previous Washington Post/ABC News polls analyzed earlier this year have been skewed and showed a small lead for Obama. The July 10 Washington Post/ABC News pollwas skewed by 11 percent and showed the race tied at 47 percent. The August 27 Washington Post/ABC News poll was skewed by 10 percent and showed Obama leading 47 percent to 46 percent. The September 11 Washington Post/ABC News poll was skewed by 10 percent and showed Obama leading 49 percent to 48 percent. The October 1 Washington Post/ABC News poll was skewed by three percent and showed Obama leading 49 percent to 47 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.
The Gallup tracking poll of the presidential race was shown here to also be skewed by over-sampling of Democratic voters. Allegations recently came out that David Alexrod tried to intimidate Gallup into changing their sampling and polling methods. Apparently in reaction to a Gallup poll in April of this year showing Romney leading 48 percent to 43 percent over Obama, Axelrod and others raised issues with Gallup's methodology. At some point later than that, Gallup's surveys have resorted to over-sampling Democrats and producing results more favorable to President Obama.
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.
Let your voice be heard, take the QStarNews Daily Tracking Poll, just a few quick questions, and the full QStarNews Poll with many interesting questions.
Featured in The Blaze, the Drudge Report and mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh Show and others, everyone is visiting UnSkewedPolls.com to check out the UnSkewedPolls.com average of unskewed polls. Check out the new Obama Humor pages atUnSkewedPolls.com.
