When Pew released its poll last week showing a 4-point lead for Romney most folks here consoled themselves that it was either an outdated poll or that its party ID sample was absurdly pro-Republican (at +3R). There was plenty of truth to this as the poll was mostly conducted on the dreaded Thursday and Friday after the first debate. But the party ID complaints, which suggested that the poll was inaccurate because it showed a more Republican electorate than has ever existed in modern history, were not very convincing.
Party ID tends to shift depending on the mood of the electorate.
Alas, the Washington Post/ABC poll this morning showing Obama up by 3 but with a +9D sample is drawing both relief and disbelief from those unconvinced that the electorate could be more Democratic than 2008, which was + 7D.
Is it even possible for Pew and WaPo to have interviewed the same electorate?
The answer is yes.
Both are reputable pollsters and both made consistent assumptions about the demographics of the electorate, including race, age, income, region, education and religion. Those demographic factors tend to be static over time.
But party ID is not as static. I don't mean that people suddenly wake up one day and declare themselves to be a Democrat and then wake up the next and wear their elephant pins for the GOP. I'm talking about drifting between Independent status and one of the major parties.
When voters are proud and excited to associate themselves with a party they tell pollsters that they are Democrats or Republicans. When they are nonplussed, embarrassed or just generally reluctant to wave the party flag, they declare themselves to be Independents...even though they still plan to vote the same way as before. We know who was proud to affiliate with a party the days after the debate and who was not. As the party standard-bearer, Presidential nominees do a lot for party identification in the electorate. Not for huge chunks of voters, mind you, but for enough "soft" Democrats and Republicans to show up in polls as partisans or Independents, depending on mood.
Add to this the willingness to answer pollsters' phone calls - who wanted to answer a 15- minute political poll with Pew the day after the debate? Not me! Who wanted to tell a Pew pollster how much the Dems were gonna crush the Rethugs and their 47% jerk at the helm in late September? I sure did! Some of these polls take a long time to complete and dispirited voters might just hang up in the middle. That almost certainly counts for both the party movement AND the top line result.
The party ID will often move alongside the top line result as excited Democrats wave the donkey flag inside of hiding in the Independent cave. Romney pulled the R-leaning Independents out of teabaggerland and back under the elephant's hoof. Thus, the party ID screen of Pew looked very Republican. But it was a reflection of real energy change.
Most pollsters do not control for party ID for a good reason then. It swings around. Ironically, pollsters that control for party ID end up with a perverse squashing effect where the remaining Independents actually lean the direction away from the leader. After all, a rallying effect on one side will usually demoralize the other side a bit. When Obama was crushing Romney in mid-September and polls showed +10 Dem advantages, the Indies kept coming up strong for Romney. Why? Because the teabaggers were calling themselves Independent and the left-leaning Independents were calling themselves Democrats. Rasmussen and other party ID weighers artificially inflated Romney votes by throwing in extra Republicans and by giving constant weight to Independents as if they were the same group of people who called themselves Independent in the past.
Now, what is it that could have spiked Democratic engagement in the last several days - enough to cause Democrats to fly the party flag again? Oh yeah - it was Joe Biden! He channeled our anger at the lying GOP and his "disrespectful" gestures reflected exactly how we feel. He made us proud to be Democrats again, fighting for our values. He encouraged us to crawl out of the Independent cave again. The tracking polls have picked this up too - Dems are re-engaging again, just as happened after the DNC.
This is great news down the stretch, especially as our ground game tends to make the final numbers look more like RV numbers than LV.
BUT, Obama must deliver tomorrow night to keep us engaged. Contra Andrew Sullivan, Obama does not need to destroy Romney or humiliate the guy. He just needs to show that he is fighting for us and that he really wants this. He needs to make us proud to support him and wave the flag for him. He has more data on his behalf than he had on October 3 - the job report in particular - so he can be more celebratory of his accomplishments and can mock Romney's criticisms the way Biden did to Ryan. And he can prepare himself for "compassionate Etch-a-Sketch Man" by asking Romney, in front of town hall voters, why his sudden concern was missing when speaking in front of donors. We'll FEEL it then, and we will put Obama on top. But we need him to show the fight and Democrats will proudly call themselves Democrats to pollsters, and will show up on Election Day for Obama.