Unlikely Voter

By request, we have a somewhat unusual poll: We Ask America asked Iowa Republicans which candidate they don’t want as the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.

As is usual this time of year, the poll is skewed by the inclusion of non-candidates. This time, overwhelmingly so.

By request I’m taking a look at a new poll of California Republicans by Probolsky Research. It shares problems I’m seeing in many early Presidential polls, but I am surprised at one finding that may be bad news for Mitt Romney.

Yesterday CBS put out a poll on the debt ceiling. As with most issue polling in the heat of debate, everyone’s eager to hype the poll or to discredit it, depending on results. I even get asked to join in.

I’m skeptical of all issue polling to begin with, I tend to dismiss the polls entirely. But this poll has a serious weighting problem, and I want to call it out as worthless.

So Fox News put out a new poll of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. It’s a typical poll in many ways, but Fox’s bit of analysis got me to thinking: Polls like this favor frontrunners and likely skew the race.

Here are a couple of quick hits of races we’ve covered recently: The Republican primary for the New Hampshire Senate race, and California general election for Governor.

I wanted to see how my single-poll model looks when I apply it to the history of a race, and selected the Florida Republican Senate primary between former Speaker Marco Rubio and Governor Charlie Crist.