New Ap Poll Claiming Obama/Mccain Tie Employed Biased Sampling

It at first appears that AP-Gfk‘s poll is properly scientific –but the poll’s sampling of the American electorate clearly is not. New AP Poll Claiming Obama/McCain Tie Employed Biased SamplingBy Cliff Montgomery – Oct. 23rd, 2008The Associated Press (AP) recently released a poll which claims a much closer presidential race than just about any other major tally.According to the AP-GfK poll–taken between Oct. 16th-20th–Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama is in a tight, neck-and-neck race with a surging GOP Presidential Nominee, John McCain, with 44% of voters choosing Obama, and 43% supposedly choosing McCain. The remaining 13% are considered undecided voters.The problem with that result? The finding of every other scientific poll conducted over the very same period.All polls have some margin of error, so it’s only reasonable for different polls to produce slightly different results. But those results must fall within the average of reliable polls, or at least within the small margin of error for scientific polling. Yet the AP-GfK poll falls well outside that margin.Simply stated, the AP-GfK poll just doesn’t ring true. Practically every other major poll taken over the same period has Obama beating McCain by at least 5 points. A few examples:Polls                                           Date                 McCain     Obama                Difference               Big Ten Battleground              10/19-22           43               52                         9FOX/Opinion Dynamics           10/20-21           40              49                          9American Research Group     10/18-20           45              49                          4NBC/Wall Street Journal         10/17-20           42               52                         10       Ipsos/McClatchy                       10/16-20           42              50                          8CNN/Opinion Research           10/17-19           46              51                          5Pew                                             10/16-19          39               53                         14Democracy Corps (D)              10/15-19           44              49                          5Taken together, these polls average a difference of 8 points between the two nominees.  If one decides to throw out the Pew poll because of the especially high difference between the nominees, Obama still leads McCain by just over 7 points.So how did AP-GfK come up with their mathematically improbable result, which so clearly does not agree with every other major poll out there? To be fair, it appears that AP-Gfk’s poll is properly scientific–but that the poll’s sampling of the American electorate is not.For instance: 45% of AP‘s respondents identify themselves as evangelicals, or “born-again” Christians.But according to 2004 exit polls, evangelical Christians make up only 23% of U.S. voters. And that number has not changed much. In the recent Pew poll, voters were asked if they would consider themselves evangelical Protestant Christians: only 21% of voters said, “yes”.Yet evangelicals make up a whopping 45% of voters in AP‘s recent poll. That’s twice the national average, according to other polls.Regardless, evangelicals are one of McCain’s strongest voting blocs. A full 67% of them plan to vote for the Republican in 2008; that number jumps to 74% if they attend church weekly, according to the Pew tally.With such an obvious error in sampling, one wonders why AP decided to release this poll.Perhaps we should remember that AP‘s Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, rather likes John McCain.In October 2006, he happily interviewed for a McCain presidential campaign post.”Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007,” pointed out a July article from Politico, “the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain’s presidential campaign.””In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks,” continued Politico.”In the months that followed…Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis,” stated the article.”Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for ‘a senior advisory role’ in communications,” according to the article.A suggestion: Perhaps if Fournier and others at AP stopped deliberately employing biased samples of the American electorate in their research, their results would better match those of every other major poll taken over the exact same period.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now! Wait, why does an independent news source run advertising? The Spark answers in its advertising policy. * Please check out our ads–they help keep this news site running. Thanks!