Tag Archives: CBS/YouGov

A Polling Trifecta in 3 Key Races:
Indiana, Florida, Arizona

By Jim Ellis

CBS-YouGov-polling-senate-racesOct. 30, 2018 — CBS News/YouGov just published new numbers from three key Senate races, all conducted late last week during the Oct. 23-26 period, that largely confirm recent trends.

The Indiana race has seemingly turned toward Republican challenger Mike Braun in recent days, and the CBS/YouGov poll confirms the new direction. According to their poll (975 likely voters, online), Braun holds a 46-43 percent lead over Sen. Joe Donnelly (D). This is wholly consistent with other polling conducted since Oct. 14.

As we reported last week, Mason Strategies (Oct. 15-20; 600 likely Indiana voters) finds Braun up by an almost identical 47-43 percent margin, while American Viewpoint in polling for the Braun campaign (Oct. 14-17; 800 likely Indiana voters) sees a 44-40 percent spread.

CBS/YouGov then surveyed, as so many others have done recently, the Florida Senate race. After Sen. Bill Nelson (D) went ahead beyond the margin of error over Gov. Rick Scott (R) in a pair of polls, two more studies turned in the latter man’s favor. Then, St. Leo University (Oct. 16-22; 698 likely Florida voters), Strategic Research Associates (Oct. 16-23; 800 likely Florida voters), and Gravis Marketing (Oct. 22-23; 773 likely Florida voters) all saw Sen. Nelson rebounding with an advantage of nine, one, and four points, respectively.

But, CBS/YouGov finds the race returning to parity. Their results, from a pool of 991 randomly selected and weighted online respondents, peg the race as a flat tie, at 46 percent apiece.

The national media/polling partnership also tested the tight Arizona Senate race. Here, CBS/YouGov (972 likely voters) finds US Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) re-claiming an edge over Rep. Martha McSally (R-Tucson) by a 47-44 percent clip.

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Obstacles Overcome;
New Polls Again Close

By Jim Ellis

July 20, 2016 — A final last-gasp effort at denying Donald Trump the Republican nomination was easily slapped down the other day. The Never Trump forces were dealt a crushing loss last week in the Convention Rules Committee (only hitting the 20 percent mark in one vote), but returned to make a move against adopting the rules on the convention floor. This motion, too, was easily defeated on a voice vote.

The Never Trump group was never large enough to become a major threat, and went the way of all such challenges when supported by only a small minority. Therefore, the delegates will nominate Donald Trump and Mike Pence on Wednesday night, with the presidential acceptance speech on Thursday night in accordance with normal national convention procedure.

Midwest Polls

CBS/YouGov has conducted panel back Internet-based surveys of more than 24,017 registered voters in 19 states since September 2015. The July 15-16 edition covered voters in the swing Midwestern domains of Iowa (998 previously questioned registered voters), Michigan (1,201 PQRVs), and Ohio (1,104 PQRVs).

Once again, we continue to see data producing very tight margins in the swing states and the CBS/YouGov data is no exception. Michigan is normally not a politically marginal state in presidential elections, going for the Democratic nominee in the last six national campaigns, but voters have elected Republican governors, a majority of the congressional delegation, and given the GOP substantial advantages in both houses of the state legislature in several elections during this same time period.

The new CBS/YouGov data finds Trump leading Hillary Clinton 40-39 percent in Iowa, but trailing 39-42 percent, and 40-44 percent in Michigan and Ohio, respectively. All of these numbers suggest virtual ties between the two candidates because the results fall within the polling margin of error.

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Tuesday Tells the Tale

March 15, 2016 — It’s very likely that today’s results from the all-important Ohio and Florida Winner-Take-All Republican contests will determine whether Donald Trump wins the GOP presidential nomination, or whether the campaign descends into a contested convention.

While Trump appears to be well ahead in Florida, and is the odds-on favorite to capture that state’s 99 delegates, the Ohio race is very much in doubt.

FOR MORE INSIGHT, READ MY LATEST FLOOR FIGHT COLUMN: FLOOR FIGHT

Though Trump is approaching a mid 40s support range in the last three Sunshine State polls, and appears 20-plus points ahead of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), it is important to remember that only registered Republicans can vote in tomorrow’s closed primary. Therefore, Trump’s polling numbers may be a bit inflated if the pollsters were not properly screening solely for registered Republican voters.

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Justice Scalia and the Presidential Election; Latest South Carolina Polls

Feb. 16, 2016 — The sudden death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia over the weekend will have a major effect upon the 2016 presidential elections. Both sides will now emphasize base issues such as abortion and 2nd Amendment rights in order to energize their respective constituencies. The heightened political atmosphere could lead to the largest electoral turnout in United States history.

Expect the Supreme Court vacancy to dominate the political coverage for the rest of the year. The high court situation not only changes the open presidential campaign, but it puts new importance upon the US Senate campaigns because the Scalia replacement confirmation battle could possibly be delayed to 2017. Since neither party will have close to the 60 seats needed to invoke cloture, we can expect this contentious situation to be unresolved for months.

South Carolina

Two new polls were released over the weekend, from the American Research Group (Feb. 12-13; 400 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters) and CBS/YouGov (Feb. 10-12; 744 likely South Carolina Republican primary voters). GOP voters cast their ballots in the party-run primary this coming Saturday, Feb. 20, while their Democratic Party counterparts will vote a week later on Feb. 27.

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Iowa Democrat Candidates:
The Polls Can’t Predict

Jan. 27, 2016 — Now less than a week before the Iowa Caucuses, five new polls of the Democratic presidential contest, all conducted within the same time period, arrive at very different conclusions. Three of the surveys find Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-D/VT) leading former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while two arrive at the opposite result.

All five polls — from CNN, the Emerson College Polling Society, CBS/YouGov, Fox News, and the American Research Group (ARG) — studied the Iowa Democratic electorate from Jan. 15-24. The sampling universes ranged from 258 likely Democratic Caucus attenders to 490 projected participants.

The Emerson College Polling Society, which is a group of students from Emerson College in Massachusetts who have established such a record of accuracy that the American Association of Public Opinion Research has granted them membership, employs the smallest sample size at 258 self-identified Democratic voters, while CBS/YouGov’s 490-person polling universe was the largest.

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Re-setting the Republicans

Jan. 5, 2015 — We’re now within one month of the first votes being cast in the 2016 presidential campaign, and though there is disagreement about just how important the “February Four” states will be in determining the ultimate Republican winner, the early entities, at a minimum, are of clear significance. Today, we cover the Republicans; tomorrow, we reset the Democrats.

The voting calendar begins with the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 1, followed by the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9. Eleven days later, South Carolina Republicans vote in their party run primary. On Tuesday, Feb. 23, both parties will conduct the Nevada Caucuses.

The four states, for the hotly contested Republicans, are assigned an aggregate of just 133 delegates. The February results will serve as a prelude to Super Tuesday voting, which will occur this year on March 1. Fourteen entities will host either primaries or caucuses on that day.

The latest 10 published polls from Iowa, taken from Nov. 16 through Dec. 21, either find businessman Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) holding the lead. Five surveys, from Monmouth University, the Des Moines Register, Loras College, Fox News, and CBS/YouGov post Cruz to an advantage. Four give Trump a slight edge: Quinnipiac University (twice), CNN, and Public Policy Polling. One pollster, Gravis Marketing, has the two tied at 31 percent in the latest released poll (Dec. 18-21/15). Cruz’s average lead is 8.6 percent. Trump’s average advantage is a much smaller 4.7 percent.

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Sanders, Trump Gaining Strength

Sept. 16, 2015 — Two new major media polls were released yesterday that show Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders opening up a lead in Iowa as well as New Hampshire, while Donald Trump is expanding his Republican advantage virtually everywhere.

The ABC News/Washington Post national survey (Sept. 7-10; 1,003 adults; 821 registered voters; 356 registered or leaning Democrats; 342 registered or leaning Republicans in combined telephone and online contact) finds former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading Sen. Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden 42-24-21 percent, respectively. These numbers confirm almost to the digit the figures Monmouth University reported last week in their national survey.

The most troubling finding for Clinton in this study is her declining support among women. Compared to the July ABC/Washington Post poll, her allegiance among females has fallen 29 percentage points.

For the Republicans, again similar to the Monmouth findings in the previous week, Trump leads Dr. Ben Carson 33-20 percent, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in third place with a small eight percent preference. Again, the three Republicans who have never held an elective office, Trump, Carson, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, together command 55 percent of the Republican electorate.

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