Final Dispatch Poll Has Obama at +6; Poll’s Past Record Means It’s Officially a ‘Who Knows?’ Race

The final Columbus Dispatch mail-in poll results were published early Sunday morning (crosstabs, sort of, here).

It surveyed 2,164 likely Ohio voters from Oct. 22-31. It shows Obama up 52-46.

Team Obama should be very nervous, because besides the obvious factor of turnout, the Dispatch poll’s value as a predictor hinges on at least four other things:

1. How much momentum McCain-Palin has picked up as a result of Joe the Plumber (original incident Oct. 13), backlash from Obama’s mockery of him and the unauthorized investigations into him (ongoing); the 2001 audio confirmation that Obama has been a long-term, hard-core wealth and income redistributionist (Oct. 27; confirmed as existing back in 1996 in a speech to an honest-to-goodness socialist group on Oct. 29); and the discovery early today, in Obama’s own words, that his proposed 100% cap-and-trade system would bankrupt new coal-powered plants (and, eventually, coal companies) if anyone might be foolish enough to try and build one.
2. How much potential accuracy the Dispatch may have lost by having 25% fewer responses this year compared to 2004, which had 2,880 responses. I think disgust with pollsters runs deeper on the right, indicating that most of the drop-off might be in that direction.
3. Working in their favor, how successful Team Obama and the Brunner-ACORN Team (Maggie Thurber has proven that they ARE a team) is in stuffing the ballot box with multiple votes by the same real person, or with bogus votes by people who are truly out-of-state residents.
4. Most important, whether Obama-McCain’s actual variance will reflect Bush-Kerry 2004 (the Dispatch poll had a dead heat, showing only an 8-vote difference, while Bush won the state by 2.1%), or over a dozen races in 2005 and 2006, when the Dispatch poll almost always missed by double digits, sometimes hugely.

The Dispatch’s November 2005, May 2006, and November 2006 poll findings vs. actual results were atrocious.

In 2005, here’s how the George Soros-funded Reform Ohio Now issues performed (link is to a 2006 post that allocated undecideds):

Issue 2 (Unlimited Absentee Balloting) –
Predicted: Pass by 28
Actual: Failed by 28
Difference: 56 points
Direction: Conservative

Issue 3 (Restrictive Campaign Contributions Regulations) –
Predicted: Pass by 42
Actual: Failed by 34
Difference: 76 points
Direction: Conservative

Issue 4 (Convoluted Redistricting) –
Predicted: Fail by 16
Actual: Failed by 40
Difference: 24 points
Direction: Conservative

Issue 5 (Remove Secy. of State from Election Responsibility) –
Predicted: Fail by 2
Actual: Failed by 40
Difference: 38 points
Direction: Conservative

Average Error: 48.5 points, in the conservative (most would say in this case “sane”) direction.

Ready-made excuse: Those were issue votes, not candidate votes.

Well, okay. But here’s how the May 2006 major statewide primary candidate votes went:

Governor (Democrat) –
Predicted Strickland Margin: 72
Actual: 58
Difference: 14 points
Direction: Conservative (OK, Flanney was “less liberal”)

Governor (Republican) –
Predicted Blackwell Margin: 12
Actual: 12
Difference: None
Direction: Despite the acrimony, the differences between the two were not huge, which probably explains the accuracy.

US Senate (Democrat) —
Predicted Brown Margin: 74
Actual: 56
Difference: 18 points
Direction: “Conservative” (Brown’s opponent was really just not liberal, and had no real conservative core)

US Senate (GOP) –
Predicted Dewine Margin: 66
Actual: 48
Difference: 18 points
Direction: Conservative

Average Error: 16.7 points in the three races where there were marked differences between the opponents, in the conservative direction. Sure that’s improvement, but not anything a pollster would be proud of.

It didn’t get much better in the November 2006 statewide races:

Governor –
Predicted Strickland Margin: 36
Actual: 23.5
Difference: 12.5 points
Direction: Conservative

US Senate –
Predicted Brown Margin: 24
Actual: 12
Difference: 12 points
Direction: Conservative

Attorney General –
Predicted Dann Margin: 24
Actual: 5
Difference: 19 points
Direction: Conservative

Secretary of State –
Predicted Brunner Margin: 21
Actual: 14
Difference: 7 points
Direction: Conservative

Auditor –
Predicted Sykes Margin: 10
Actual Taylor Victory Margin: 2
Difference: 12 points
Direction: Conservative

Treasurer –
Predicted Cordray Margin: 28
Actual: 15
Difference: 13 points
Direction: Conservative

Average Error: 13.7 points, all consistently in the conservative direction. That’s not much of an improvement over the primaries.

Ignoring the 2005 issues races, The Dispatch’s poll margins have differed from actual results by an average of just over 15 points in nine statewide races where there was a meaningful difference between the candidates’ positions, always in the conservative direction.

So what will it be:

• Will Obama prevail by as much as the Dispatch poll margin? That seems highly unlikely. Even if it gauged sentiment perfectly at the time the envelopes came in, the other relevant factors mentioned earlier, which except for the great unknown (vote fraud) are clearly giving McCain, not Obama, the “Righteous Wind,” which I’ll call the Right-eous Wind, make it very hard to believe that Obama wins by 6%.
• Will Obama prevail by the Dispatch poll margin minus the Bush-Kerry variance, which would leave Obama at +4? That’s only barely more plausible, given the Righte-ous Wind.
• Or will the results vary by their 15-point average in 2006? If so, it’s McCain by 9.
• Or any point in between?

Sleep tight, everybody. :–>