Exposed: The American Research Group’s Anti-Giuliani, Pro-McCain Bias
For the longest time, New Hampshire-based ARG refused to even add Giuliani to its polls, using the flimsy excuse that he hadn’t visited
Then, when did another round of polling of other early primary states, they continued to exclude Giuliani, to the obvious benefit of McCain. I’m not sure what his not visiting
In their latest rounds of polls, ARG seemingly bit the bullet and included him – but on a second question, after a first non-Giuliani ballot test. Odd, I thought. Most other polls included Rudy straight-away, and if they wanted to gauge the impact of his departure from the race, would ask a second non-Rudy question. And a bell went off: studies have shown that question order matters in polls. Ask the Bush approval question early in the poll, as opposed to last, after twenty or thirty leading questions, and you get a more favorable result. I wondered if the same could be true of ARG’s unorthodox practice of including Rudy on the second rather than the first ballot. More importantly, how to prove it?
And then a second bell went off: Condi.
Numerous pollsters have asked the 2008 primary question with and without Condi included. Was there any impact in those polls that added Condi to a second ballot, as opposed to taking her off after the first?
There was. On average, Condi’s support was 40% lower when she was added as an afterthought and not included right away.
Condi on First Ballot | Condi Added to Ballot | ||
WNBC/Marist 2/06 | 22% | SV Wisconsin 6/06 | 10% |
WNBC/Marist 10/05 | 21% | SV Florida 5/06 | 10% |
WNBC/Marist 2/05 | 14% | SV Michigan 5/06 | 10% |
CNN/USAT/Gall 12/05 | 18% | SV Washington 5/06 | 12% |
Zogby* 12/05 | 12% | SV New | 18% |
Diageo/Hotline 11/05 | 22% | SV Pennsylvania 5/06 | 10% |
Fox News/OD 9/05 | 19% | SV Georgia 5/06 | 10% |
| | SV | 11% |
| | | |
Average with Condi on 1st Ballot | 18.3% | Average with Condi Added on 2nd Ballot | 11.4% |
* Low numbers for candidates across the board, high undecideds | |
This isn’t a perfect comparison of course. All the polls to the left are national polls. And all the polls to the right are state polls from Strategic Vision – because they were the only other ones I could find who added candidates to a second ballot. No national pollster did this – perhaps because a more experienced pollster would know that this technique raises a huge red flag. A one-to-one comparison assumes the race has remained fairly static (a safe assumption given the Giuliani-McCain numbers haven’t moved) and that SV’s states are representative overall (eyeballing it, they sure seem to be).
Looking at the evidence, it’s fairly clear that adding Rudy to the ballot is depressing his numbers. What happens if you give him the same 60% boost Condi gets with first ballot treatment? His numbers across the eight ARG states rise to 26% -- right in line with his national numbers. Mystery solved.
ARG's polling on the 2008 Republican primary is extremely unreliable. Here at Giuliani Blog, we will not report on the result of another ARG poll until ARG responds adequately to questions raised about its methodology and impartiality.
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