About that CBS/NYTimes Poll

Even though the RealClearPolitics polling average has shown consistent results towards Governor Mitt Romney, there always seems to be an outlier. That was shown today by the joint CBS News/New York Times poll.

The top numbers were kind to the President:

Obama: 48%
Romney: 47%

However, as we look deeper into the numbers, we can see that this was due to reweighting that helped the President. The poll took out unlikely voters to achieve their screen, but before reweighting the registered voters looked like this:

R: 29%
D: 33%
I: 38%

When reweighted, the numbers looked more like this:

R: 31%
D: 36%
I: 33%

As you can see, the Democratic edge bumped up from a +4 to a +5, while the share of independents dropped precipitously. While CBS may be basing this off of a voter model based on the 2008 race, it does not seem very realistic considering the enthusiasm gap.

When you plug in the reweighted numbers, you get a small lead for the President.

However, using the original ratio, you get a different story:


Republican Sample: 257 Split: O 6%- R 91% Total numerical split: 015-234
Democrat Sample: 297 Split: O 93%- R 5% Total numerical split: 273-015
Independent Sample: 344 Split: O 39%- R 51% Total numerical split: 134-175


And when you add up the numbers?

Obama 422 -- 46.99% 
Romney 424 -- 47.21%

Even with a reweighted sample biased towards the Democrats and the 2008 model, Romney still leads.

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