Election polls: filling in the blank
It’s a familiar phenomenon that a party leader can be more popular, or less popular, than the party they represent. For example, Labour is currently more popular than Phil Goff.
The problem is especially difficult to handle in the US elections. At the moment, we pretty much know that Barack Obama will be the Democrats’ presidential candidate next year. We don’t know who the Republicans will pick. You could run a poll asking “Would you vote for Obama or for a Republican opponent”, or you could pick one of the current candidates for the Republican nomination and ask “Obama vs Cain” or “Obama vs Romney”. It turns out to matter.
In the current polls, President Obama loses to Generic Republic Opponent by about 3%, but beats everyone in the current Republican field. The only actual Republican who comes close in current support to Fill In The Blank is Mitt Romney, who is about 2% behind Obama. We’ll have to wait until February to see what happens when the Republican nominee is chosen.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »