CNN Poll puts Obama in the lead by sampling Democrats +9

CNN/Time Poll Has Turnout at Democrats +9 in Ohio, which naturally shows Obama Leading.

By Benjamin Gaul

The new CNN/Time poll has very little basis in reality. The top-line of the article about the poll reads “Obama leads by 5, 49 to 44” but everything you read after that shoots the whole idea of polling in the foot. Unfortunately for those of us who want to see the country steered back in the direction of balanced budgets and solvency, the people who haunt the left-centered blogosphere will only read the headline.

The party ID in this poll was D +9 (Dem 37, Rep 28, Ind 29). The pollsters can justify this wild assumption of greater volumes of Democrat voters, by comparing it to CNN exit polling of Election results of D +8 in 2008 (Dem 39, Rep 31, Ind 30) and R +5 in 2004 (Dem 35, Rep 40, Ind 25).

There is no chance the Democrat turnout advantage will exceed Obama’s 2008 “best in a generation” voter turnout, which is expressed as D +8, based on the CNN party ID generally used. This is even though the actual 2008 party ID was really only D +5 , making the CNN/Time poll using D +9 that much more insane.

The CNN/Time Poll ignores the massive Republican turnout in the 2010 elections.

Republicans gained enough seats in Congress to regain the Majority in 2010. They gained Governor seats and state assemblies all over America, as well. I might also mention the “Chik-Fil-A Day” lines, all filled with values voters out to make a political statement about the individual American’s right to speak in support of traditional marriage.

Add to that, the whole nation has now had an opportunity to really see who this Barack Hussein Obama truly is. In 2008, he was a blank slate onto which we all wrote out hopes and dreams for smaller deficits and less “Washington” in Washington. Now that we’ve all seen him in action for the past four years, we know unequivocally that the reality does NOT meet the dream. So, why is there any chance that more Democrats will turn out to vote in 2012, than did in 2008? Madness.

In 2008, candidate Obama won Ohio by 5 percentage points, through winning Independents by 8 points. In today’s CNN/Time poll, Mitt Romney leads with Independents by an incredible 13-points! But, the poll also assumes he is down overall, by 5-points. How is that even plausible?

Early voting is skewing the polls for Obama, too.

Early voting is creating a unique problem for polling organizations this year. Since Democrats tend to vote early, you see the Democrat candidate typically leading by wide margins in early voting. However, according to the CNN survey “respondents who say they have already voted, Obama holds a two-to-one lead over Romney, 60% to 30%.” So we know clearly that in early voting, there are overwhelming numbers of Democrats.

When it comes to polls, all voters who said they already voted make it through the likely voter screen and end up in the final results. Approximately 17% of the respondents were early voters while 83% had yet to vote. This means a 17% segment of those polled are guaranteed to make it through the likely voter screen. We already know that group supported President Obama, by a 2-to-1 margin. This inherently over-samples Democrats, which practically guarantees a favorable result for Obama, in the poll.

The problem with early voting and polling ahead of election day is that the results will skew in favor of the party with the higher early turnout (in this case, the Democrats). That’s one of the ways you end up with a party ID of D +9, when there is no chance of that turnout actually occurring, come election day.

I think this poll did more than just give false hope to Democrats. It is part of the run-up for lawsuits when Mitt Romney wins, Tuesday night.