Unlikely Voter

Attacks on Rick Perry, new Presidential candidate and sudden poll leader, have begun to mount. He will soon take the stage in a debate against the other candidates. His opponents in both parties are determined to leave a mark on him.

Let’s take a look at where he’s at as the pressure grows.

Earlier this week we caught an Iowa poll showing Rick Perry as a new leader in that state’s Republican Presidential race. Yesterday Public Policy Polling came out with a new Iowa poll as well.

Judge for yourself, but I’d say the broad strokes of the We Ask America poll are confirmed, at least when it comes to the big three candidates, though maybe not with Sarah Palin.

This week Gallup polled four Republican candidates against Barack Obama. For the three leading Republicans the results are typical, and do more to show the difference between polls of adults and polls of registered voters (Gallup polled both).

But oddly enough, Ron Paul was different.

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.