Pollster.com: Voters Don’t Change Their Mind In October
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Elections, History, McCain, Polls
Early today I shared a bunch of new swing state poll numbers and at the time I said that these were significant not only for the fact that Obama had cracked the 50% mark in most of them, but also for the fact that at this point in the election voters preferences usually don’t change that much.
Of course, for political junkies like me this is one of those historical trends we’re aware of, but I felt bad that I didn’t have a link to data proving my point.
Presently, Obama holds a 5.6% margin over McCain in the Pollster.com trend. Thus, even if you allocated every undecided voter to McCain, it still wouldn’t be enough for him to overtake Obama (though it would certainly make for a very close race).Of course, it is highly unlikely that all of the undecideds will go for McCain, so what about the second option–changing the minds of Obama voters? It turns out that in recent elections, it has been fairly difficult to change peoples’ minds in October. The National Election Study conducts a panel survey of voters for each presidential election; they interview respondents face-to-face (no cell phone only problem here) in September and October and then re-interview them after the election. This allows us to get a sense of how common it is for citizens to change their minds in the last month of a campaign. I pulled out the respondents the NES interviewed in September of 2000 and 2004 and the results are in the table below. The columns are the vote preferences expressed by respondents during the September interviews and the rows are the candidates that they actually reported voting for when they were re-interviewed after the election.
But that’s just 2000 and 2004, right? What about other presidential elections in the past few decades?
Nope, not them either…
In 1980, 2000, and 2004, there was virtually no movement in the polls during the final month of the campaign. In 1988, Bush added a little to his lead in October and in 1996 Dole gained some modest ground on Clinton, but in neither case did the October gains make a difference in the outcome. In 1992, Bush gained significantly on Clinton in October, but attracting supporters from the third party candidacy of Perot may have accounted for some of those gains. In any event, Bush still fell short.
Long story short, the combination of the economy in crisis, Palin bombing on the national scene and the “campaign suspension” stunt not paying off have all built a mountain for McCain to climb that history suggests is nearly impossible to scale.
Just FYI.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Elections, History, McCain, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 1st, 2008 at 9:48 pm
You don’t really need to go any further in analysis than saying this jump for Obama is because of the economy. He has won over the 50-64 age Boomer group which is really worried about their retirement. Before the crisis, McCain was leading that group.
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 am
I agree–it does seem unlikely that Obama will lose his lead from now until the election, unless something unexpected happens (and that’s a big “unless”).
But, there still is the question of voter turn-out. If McCain brings out voters and Obama doesn’t, McCain could still win even if he’s not polling well. It’s still not likely though, as my gut feels that it will be the opposite.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am
[...] Also, let’s not ignore the fact that Obama has been at 51% for the past three days. And for a candidate to be so far ahead this late in the game is extremely important because it’s incredibly hard to change voter’s minds in the last month, as I detailed yesterday. [...]