Problems with the Times poll

We've already pointed to the flaws in the Gallup poll in a previous post. It now turns out, the new NY Times poll showing Bush up by 9 among registered voters has the same problem.

Ruy Teixeira has this:

Reweight their data to conform to an underlying Democratic 4 point edge (using the 39D/35R/26I distribution from the 2000 exit poll) and you get a nearly even race, 47 Bush/46 Kerry.

Nearly even. That goes along with the the 46-46 tie in the Pew Research Center poll (which gave the Democrats a 4 point edge on party ID without weighting) and the 48-48 tie in the Gallup poll (once weighted to reflect an underlying Democratic 4 point edge). Not to mention the two other recent national polls (Harris, Democracy Corps) that show the race within one point.

Perhaps all this is just a coincidence, but the pattern seems striking. Once you adjust for the apparent overrepresentation of Republican identifiers in some samples, the polls all seem to be saying the same thing: the race is a tie or very close to it.

But don't all responsible polling outfits weight their data to correspond to the expected party indentification of voters who turnout in November? Well, yes they do...sort of.

Here's the unweighted and weighted numbers of voters identified with each party from the CBS/NYT poll:

Total Republicans: 462 Weighted: 426

Total Democrats: 394 Weighted: 399

Total Independents: 431 Weighted: 462

So CBS/NYT weighted poll breakdown shows 63 more Republicans then Democrats. That means their weighted sample was 35I/33R/31D. And the exit poll in 2000 showed us a 39D/35R/26I split.

We report, you decide...