August 26, 2012 - 7:27 am
The closest Dispatch Poll in modern history shows the races for president and U.S. Senate in a dead heat in battleground Ohio.
For the record, Republican Mitt Romney holds a “lead” of 0.22 percentage point over President Barack Obama. That’s a mere 2 votes out of more than 1,730 cast for president in the mail poll.
By comparison, Sen. Sherrod Brown has a landslide going over GOP state Treasurer Josh Mandel with a margin of 0.87 point. That’s a whopping 15-ballot bulge.
The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points, so the takeaway is that the presidential matchup is tied at 45 percent and the Senate struggle at 44 percent among likely voters.
Looking at the breakdown, it is OK as far as D -v- R, but it understates Independents. It is roughly 40D-40R-20I; when in reality it should be about 31D-33R-36I plus or minus a couple of points either way. Independents seem to be breaking slightly for Romney. And while there is no qualification for likely voters, it seems 82% voted in an election last November. So the closest this can be considered is a “Registered voter” poll. They break about 5% more Democrat than actual results, so raise Romney 2 1/2% and drop Obama 2 1/2% and you get 47 1/2% Romney and 42 1/2% Obama plus or minus the margin of error. The undercounting of Independents would tend to reinforce Romney, but cannot be quantified. When you look at the internals, it comes out a slight Romney lead, and not a miniscule Romney lead, and probably outside the margin of error.
At least that is how I see it. YMMV
Subotai Bahadur