Super Tuesday is now in the rear-view mirror, ushering in a few minutes of relative calm before Kansas holds its caucuses this weekend, and "Deep South Tuesday" pops off next week with the Alabama/Mississippi primaries.
That calm is reflected in today's data load, which is as light as Mondays was hefty. Just about a half dozen polls grace the Wrap tonight, including two sets of general election numbers in states that almost no one has on their target lists come November (and the polls are a good indicator for why that is the case).
GOP PRIMARY:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 37, Santorum 23, Gingrich 14, Paul 11
NATIONAL (YouGov): Romney 31, Santorum 22, Gingrich 19, Paul 11
NEW YORK (Siena): Romney 38, Santorum 23, Gingrich 13, Paul 11
GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (49-42); Obama d. Santorum (49-40)
NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Paul (48-41); Obama d. Romney (49-41); Obama d. Santorum (50-42); Obama d. Gingrich (50-39)
NEBRASKA (Rasmussen): Romney d. Obama (52-35); Santorum d. Obama (49-37)
NEW YORK (Siena): Obama d. Romney (60-34); Obama d. Paul (62-29); Obama d. Santorum (64-30); Obama d. Gingrich (66-27)
Follow past the fold for the well-deserved plaudits, and a small tweak of the nose, to boot.
As most regular readers of Daily Kos/Daily Kos Elections already know, when we contract to do polls, we do so with our friends over at PPP. And, in the wake of Super Tuesday, it has to be noted their pre-election surveys in three different key states earlier this week were right on the freaking screws.
They had Mitt Romney winning 37-36 in Ohio. Romney won 38-37. They had Newt Gingrich winning 47-24 in Georgia, with Rick Santorum at 19 percent. Gingrich won 47-26, with Rick Santorum at … wait for it … 19 percent. Finally, they had Rick Santorum holding onto Tennessee by a 34-29 margin. Santorum beat the spread here by a little bit, but the actual margin was 37-26.
The irony there is that PPP's polls will still not be covered by a number of media outlets, because of the automated nature of their service.
Yet, a comparison cannot help but be made: one of those networks employed a traditional pollster that had Rick Santorum winning Ohio. Now, in a one-point race, that can be forgiven (the net "error" of three percent is pretty decent, on balance). But... that same pollster also had Mitt Romney winning Virginia by a ginormous 43 percent. In the final analysis, the actual margin was 19 percent (59.5-40.5).
In their defense, their pollster (Marist College) didn't have a bad 2010 at all, only missing the fairway badly in Colorado (and a lot of people did that), and also in New York, to a lesser extent (picking the Democrats to win, but underselling the margin by quite a bit).
But it raises the question, yet again, of how many times automated pollsters (especially PPP) have to hit results right on the sweet spot before the traditional political media evolves enough to realize their value.