Steve VancoreThe poll aggregating website, Real Clear Politics, shows a half-dozen polls released in the past three days alone. Additionally, Associated Industries of Florida has released a series of polls and a detailed analysis of their findings.
If you’re paying even the slightest bit of attention, you are probably scratching your head over the differences – the WIDE differences – in Donald Trump’s lead. Some polls have his lead over Marco Rubio at more than 20 points, while others have the race down to single digits.
So why the differences?
For the most part, polls with a looser sampling model tend to give Trump a larger lead than those polls using techniques that increase the likelihood the respondent is an actual voter and has a verified history of voting in primaries. To put it in very simple terms: tighter screen = tighter race, looser screen = larger lead for Trump.
So who’s right?
If you are a super-geek and read Ryan Tyson’s analysis closely you probably know the answer. Trump seems to be doing well (and I know this is a shock) among nontraditional voters or even nonvoters. So polls that pull in self-identifying frequent GOP voters (“you betcha I’m gonna vote” and “yeah, sure, I’m a Republican”), even if they are not registered Republicans, tend to give Trump a lift.
This isn’t an editorial comment, it’s an observation of the data and Tyson explained it perfectly – in fact, his analysis is the first we have ever seen where he gives his own methodology a grain of salt. How cool was that?
Then here’s where that gets interesting. As of Thursday, about 17 percent of those who have cast ballots have not voted in a recent primary. While there are always first-time voters in each cycle, the fact that about one in six voters are the above-referenced nontraditional voters might suggest that the looser polls may be closer to the mark than we would expect.
Not so fast.
Trump appears to be doing well among that group (at about 40 percent) but that is just not enough to pull his numbers by that large of a margin – keep in mind that 60 percent of those new voters are picking someone other than Trump. It likely only affects his actual lead by about a point or two.
So what’s the bottom line?
With about half of the election already in the can and with Trump solidly and consistently in the lead, irrespective of the methodology of the poll, the safe odds are that come Wednesday morning most of the conversation will center on Marco Rubio postmortems.
Oh, and about the salt shakers.
Take all of these polls – ALL OF THEM – with a grain of salt. Nobody knows what the final turnout will look like because this election is unlike any we’ve ever witnessed. In the final analysis, some will be correct and some will be wrong. But if you like to bet, the safe money is on another bad night for the junior U.S. senator from Florida.
At least that’s what the polls say.
Key for the Salt Shaker test:
- No salt needed: Solid pollster, solid methodology, and the sample appears to be nicely balanced.
- A grain of salt: The poll has one or two noncritical problems and should be taken with a grain of salt.
- A few grains: There are several concerns with how the poll was conducted, but not enough to throw it out entirely.
- A half shaker: There are enough problems with the methodology to warrant serious concerns, and the poll should not be taken seriously.
- A full shaker: The poll has so many problems it should not only be completely disregarded but pollsters receiving multiple “full shakers” will no longer have their polls covered by FloridaPolitics.com/SaintPetersBlog.
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Steven J. Vancore is the president of Clearview Research. He has nearly 30 years’ experience conducting polls and focus groups throughout the state. He’s an adjunct instructor in the Masters of Applied American Policy and Politics program at FSU and can be reached at [email protected].
