Say what?
We’ll get to the issue in the headline in a moment. First, though, let’s note that the overall result from the latest CBS/YouGov tracking poll — presumably the last for this cycle — suddenly moved significantly toward Republicans. A week earlier, the same polling series showed Democrats up 49/45 over Republicans, practically the only pollster in the field not showing a GOP lead in October. (The only other pollster with a Democrat advantage is Politico/Morning Consult, still reporting on registered rather than likely voters.)
Yesterday, however, the gap in CBS/YouGov’s polling suddenly shifted six points to the right, giving Republicans a 47/45 advantage. Oddly, though, CBS never even mentions that result or the comparison to the previous week’s result. Readers have to find that out for themselves:
Unless one checks out RealClearPolitics, the big six-point swing would go unnoticed. And unless readers peruse the crosstabs as well as the topline report, they wouldn’t notice something else strange about the YouGov survey. According to the data, independent voters give Republicans not a two-point lead, not a six-point lead, but a sixteen-point lead:
INDEPENDENTS: CBS/YouGov Poll
2022 Generic Congressional Ballot
GOP — 49% (+16)
Dem — 33%Biden Job Approval
Approve 32%
Disapprove 68%Biden Job Approval: Intensity
Strongly Approve 12%
Strongly Disapprove 52%⛽ Prices with Democrats in Control
Go Up — 57%
Go Down — 8% pic.twitter.com/ZEXlPdjZnK— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) October 30, 2022
In what kind of a poll does a sixteen-point advantage among independent voters only show up as a two-point advantage for the party who wins them? The data screencapped by Interactive Polls doesn’t show any reason for that disparity. In raw numbers, independents make up roughly 25% of the sample, with the rest evenly split among Republicans and Democrats. Both parties hold almost all of their own voters, with just 4% of Republicans crossing over and 2% of Democrats.
Now, add to that some of the other demos in this question, and that topline really begins to look weird. Imagine an election in which Republicans win 40% of the Hispanic vote and 14% of black voters, and win 60/32 among non-college-degree voters while Democrats only win college graduates by five points (50/45). That sounds like a Republican landslide, doesn’t it?
Somehow, though, CBS/YouGov only comes up with an R+2 out of all of this. Hmmm. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that CBS/YouGov has weighted its polling on the basis of a heavy Democrat turnout. And I’d suspect that even more if I’d been a keen observer of the polling at RCP and noticed that CBS/YouGov has been an outlier to the upside for Joe Biden and Democrats pretty much all year. Which, indeed, I have been, which is why I smell a narrative-journalism rat.
Small wonder CBS News doesn’t want to talk about the actual results of their polling, at least in terms of the congressional-ballot question. What CBS does cover is bad enough, though.
Republicans have been focusing on issues like the economy and inflation – which remain voters' top priorities — and the party holds a 6-point edge among likely voters on whose economic policies would help you more. https://t.co/Bv59KZuIQU pic.twitter.com/9YgXdqdkxz
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 30, 2022
Yeah, what about that last question? It turns out that Republicans have a twenty-seven point advantage among independents on that one, too:
Please notice that the demos look worse for Democrats on this question, which is likely the main issue in the midterms for all voters. Even in this poll, which allows multiple responses on top issues, “economy” and “inflation” are the only issues to score in the 70s, and “crime” comes in third at 65%. Republicans even win the college-grad demo on economic policies (47/43) and get a virtual tie among women (42/43).
Again, take a look at these results and explain how YouGov ends up with an R+2 for its overall result. Good luck with that assignment.
Even with this outlier and the risible Politico/Morning Consult RV result, the RCP track looks like a red wave warning with eight days left to go:
That massive red spike over the last few weeks is no accident, either. These pollsters are starting to get a dose of reality, especially media-commissioned pollsters. They’re setting up their claims for final-iteration accuracy, and that’s why that red line has exploded back to year-long highs. It’s not sudden GOP momentum; it’s recognition that GOP momentum never stopped in the first place.
Don’t forget that the generic ballot has a built-in advantage for Democrats already. Generally speaking, anything smaller than a four-point Democratic advantage usually means Republicans have an edge. An R+3 environment suggests a large advantage — and if we could screen out the YouGov and Politico/MC outliers, it would look even larger than this.
Does that make Duane’s case that the Senate is about to flip stronger? I think it does, but it’s still somewhat short of that shocking 2014 wave that blew up the polling industry. I suspect, however, that pollsters still aren’t calculating for the historically bad political context of the moment — which Duane called the three-legged stool — in part because we haven’t seen this kind of sustained and corrosive economic condition in and election for 40-plus years. Pollsters haven’t got a modern model for what this electorate actually looks like, and I suspect that we will be in for another 2014-esque polling meltdown at the end of this cycle … again. And YouGov will have more to answer for that some other pollsters.
