Traditionally the most pro-Republican of all the major polls, Republicans are also losing in the new Fox News poll. I would have to imagine right now that an irate Roger Ailes is demanding wholesale changes – more leading questions, more wacky samples – we gotta get those GOP numbers up!!
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton now holds a slight lead over top Republican Rudy Giuliani for the first time in a hypothetical 2008 presidential matchup. In fact, to varying degrees, Clinton and fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama beat every Republican candidate they are tested against in the latest FOX News Poll.
Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from July 17 to July 18. The poll has a 3-point error margin.
President Bush can do little to give Republicans a boost as his own ratings remain dismal. Today, 32 percent of Americans say they approve of the job Bush is doing and 61 percent disapprove. His current approval is just 1 point higher than his record-low 31 percent approval received last month (June 26-27).
Another hurdle for Republican hopefuls is the perception that Democrats in Congress (38 percent) are more optimistic than Republicans in Congress (31 percent) about the direction of the country.
I mentioned this in another thread. Zogby’s polls give the same results. Unless something changes, it will be a bad election cycle for the Republicans.
Time and time again I have asked you to provide evidence that Fox polls are somehow skewed and you’ve never been able to do so other than to say that their polls seems to favor the GOP by a couple of points from time to time.
That of course means nothing, as 2-3 points is within the margin of error for most other polls. All it takes is a couple of clicks on Pollingreport.com to see that Fox’s poll results are pretty much in line with all of the others, so to say “Republicans are losing in the Fox poll” as if it some kind of shock is absurd.
Jay,
Go look at Pollkatz, http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/, which graphically shows all of the major poll results for Bush’s entire presidency. The Fox poll, along with Gallup, is consistently at the top of the range of all of the polls, for the past 6 years. Only once, in January 2001, has Fox had the “low poll.” It has been the “high poll” many times.
The difference of the Fox poll from the average is statistically very significant. Like all of the other polls, Fox has roughly a 3 point random error –meaning 19 times out of 20, it will be within 3 points either way of the “true” value for its sample. But is ALSO has a 2-3 point systematic error — it is always 3 points higher, with the random error added on top of this systematic difference.
So, no, you are not correct. The difference in the Fox poll is real, and it means something.