Incumbent Races: Closer than they appear. Why * needs 50% or better

[mzmolly]

in the polls:

How will undecideds vote on election day? Traditionally, there have been two schools of thought about how undecideds in trial heat match-ups will divide up at the ballot box. One is that they will break equally; the other, that they will split in proportion to poll respondents who stated a candidate preference.

But our analysis of 155 polls reveals that, in races that include an incumbent, the traditional answers are wrong. Over 80% of the time, most or all of the undecideds voted for the challenger.

The 155 polls we collected and analyzed were the final polls conducted in each particular race; most were completed within two weeks of election day. They cover both general and primary elections, and Democratic and Republican incumbents. They are predominantly from statewide races, with a few U.S. House, mayoral and countywide contests thrown in. Most are from the 1986 and 1988 elections, although a few stretch back to the 1970s.

The polls we studied included our own surveys, polls provided to us directly by CBS, Gallup, Gordon S. Black Corp., Market Opinion Research, Tarrance Associates, and Mason-Dixon Opinion Research, as well as polls that appeared in The Polling Report.

http://www.pollingreport.com/incumbent.htm

More analysis here:

Democrats are basing their hopes in the final weeks less on the difference at any given moment between Bush and Kerry than those surveys showing the president still below 50 percent in support. "This is a very well-known incumbent where people have strong views," said Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, a Kerry adviser. "His number (in the last polls) I believe is his number (on Election Day)."

Even some senior Republican strategists privately agree that the experience of the past half-century supports that argument.

In the history of modern polling dating to 1952, no incumbent president has run even 1 percentage point better on Election Day than he did in the final Gallup Poll before the vote.

http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10164

:shrug:

[mzmolly]

1. * is in trouble in battleground states if history is any indicator.

;)

http://electoral-vote.com

http://www.electoral-vote.com/pred/index.html