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A new poll from California’s PPIC has Prop 19 down, 49% to 44%. Our Jon Walker analyzed the results this morning, suggesting that the wild swing from PPIC’s last poll is suspect.
The previous PPIC poll, from September, was the best poll to date for Prop 19, reporting it ahead 52-41, yet this most recent poll is one of the worst. Given how little change there has been in SurveyUSA polling, I find it hard to believe there really was a 16-point change in only a few weeks. Much of the decline in support found by the poll was among independents (from 65 percent to 40 percent) and Hispanics (from 63 percent to 40 percent).
It’s easy to get caught up in poll after poll as the newest snapshot, so it’s always important to look at the trends from all the polling on the topic. No matter what, though, the bottom line is: turnout, turnout, turnout. But let’s take a closer look at what’s happening.
Just Say Now has been working with Talking Points Memo to document Prop 19 polls since the beginning of the summer. TPM’s Poll Tracker shows the helpful context for understanding the up and down of pot polls.
It’s clear the race is tightening, with Yes on 19 responses dropping slightly, while undecided voters falling towards voting “no” – none of which is surprising. A closer look at the polling, thanks to TPM’s excellent widget, reveals the gap first identified by Just Say Now’s Jon Walker that shows a difference in responses between telephone and automatic polling when it comes to marijuana, particularly with African American voters being less likely to tell a live person they support legalization.
Live telephone responses show the race neck-and-neck:
While auto polling shows Prop 19 clearly ahead, with no votes closing in:
What’s all this mean? It’s all about turnout. The more people we can get to the polls, the more young people who turn out to vote for Prop 19 who aren’t being counted by pollsters, the better chance we have to pull off victory for Prop 19.
UPDATE: Tom Angell, spokesperson for Yes on 19, agrees that it’s going to come down to turnout. From the LA Times:
Tom Angell, a spokesman for Yes on 19, said the poll indicates that the race is close. “We’ll be doing everything we can to get our message out, including working with a team of hundreds of committed volunteers who are spending their free time calling undecided voters,” he said. “I don’t think the other side can match that.”
Just Say Now is right there with them – we’ve already made more then 7,000 calls to voters for Prop 19, and will make thousands more in these final two weeks. You can help: start calling voters for Prop 19 right now.
15 Comments
Cell phone only bias leans Dem and leans toward younger voters was this figured in?
I’ve noticed similar behaviors in the Gallup tracking poll for generic congressional votes. Sometimes polls do this, and then the important thing to do is look at other polls for a similar change. If it’s not there, then the poll’s an anomaly.
Top of the ticket bias or which candidate gets the news coverage and why. We have a reason to vote Pot. Plus we don’t want SS cut, unemployment cut we want homes and jobs.
The GOPers however have people running who are against every issue the majority of people care about this election the most.
Sure you maybe a Tea Bagger but if your on SS, Unemployment, worried about losing your home or job can even a GOPer afford to vote GOP this year?
When they most likely have with 10% unemployment family and friends hitting them up for cash and asking to move in with them or go out into the street?
Can any GOPer vote for the party of Witchcraft, sex with horses, and illegal immigrant Nannies and brag about it at church?
If you can’t brag for voting for your candidates then why bother to vote?
For the reasons listed above I don’t trust any polling. People who had a job and lost it recently will vote. People who had a job and are not counted anymore as unemployed unless they are homeless will vote.
The People friends and relatives taking these people in will vote.
But they won’t be voting for the Party that for decades has ran on cutting SS, Unemployment etc why because thats like asking to stay forever sleeping on someone else’s couch.
Prop 19 does not violate the supremacy clause. It is not unconstitutional.
[Mod Note: Please limit blog whoring comments to one per day - not one per comment thread]
I do like your post but I find the Media meme that Dems are going to lose to be way overstated. Every home owner who has lost a job or home has or will make calls to all their friends and relatives to borrow money and or ask if they can stay with them.
Every renter who has lost a job and can’t make rent is doing the samething. Every Parent living off of SS who gets a call from their kids asking can we move back in is old enough to remember Reagan SS cuts.
If older voters are just making it now just how can they afford to stretch their check to help their kids?
How can they afford to vote GOP?
I love the internet.
“Excellent widget” is one of those phrases it’s so nice to have in polite company now.
Most polling organizations do not make calls to mobile phones. Many young voters have only mobile phones and hence are not polled. This skews the data.
Voting-by-mail is so weird.
It’s like my election is over, and the rest of you are going through the motions of a process I don’t have anything to do with. I only wish the ads weren’t on my teevee!
Just go vote, folks, and get some like-minded people to the polls too!
When you look at things like this, and this, it’s pretty clear that there’s a significant chunk of voters who couldn’t manage to vote their self-interest if their lives depended on it. I’ll believe the polls before I’ll believe they’ll vote in their self-interest this time.
Family and Friends a personal appeal that hits their wallet and their home just who wants their unemployed friends and relatives coming to stay with them for months can work work wonders even 24 hrs of Fox News and a Meth habit to increase the paranoid can.
The Unemployed and homeless/soon to be homeless are working on voters like the Grass Roots model we try to create here but its not getting noticed by the media.
They are using Personal appeals to the issues voters care most about Homes, Jobs/Cash SS, Unemployment etc and most of all they are making these personal appeals to friends and family.
Personal Appeals backed by if you don’t help us we go out in the street, your grandson eats Ramen Noodles for a month etc.
The Emotion of these appeals beats anything we do here. Plus lets remember Emotional Choice voters/Lizard brains are more susceptible to emotional appeals.
Plus Family and Friends are a closer ingroup circle for most of them than their Fox and Friends circle of friends.
Tax cuts for the rich create jobs is the same line Bush used 8 years ago its getting old. Immigrants are taking our jobs? Poor folks don’t even want to be farm workers in this economy.
Tax Cuts for the rich give the rich the money they need to move American jobs overseas?
We could win this election with that line!
OT I need a job and I’m obviously better with campaign ideas than anyone Obama gots now hint:)
Come on you get bragging rights by voting by mail we don’t get plus your vote helps give Dems a win as the early votes get counted on election day.
How many voters do not bother to show if by the time they get off work their guy or cause is behind 10, 20 points?
Early voting helps us put the other guy away. Early voting with Dems leading I think will make all the pollsters have egg on their face this election.
Me unless I get a job voting day is Pizza and Beer right after I vote in the morning all day and all night.
Only way we lose is if the GOP steals the election and scares off minority voters please tell me Obama has holder sending in U.S Marshalls to the voting booth. After all the GOP is sooo concerned about voter fraud Obama would not be doing his job if he did nothing about those concerns.
I want U.S Marshalls facing down GOP poll watchers and Sheriff Joe in AZ!
My suspicions are that somebody is getting ready to falsify the voting results and so skewing the poll results now will make it seem legitimate, and yes, I am that cynical :)
Working with TPM??
Isn’t that almost as bad as working with Grover Norquist? [Given their undying support for Obama. Although I admit, I haven't gone over there in quite a while, since I got so sick of their rah-rah. Perhaps they've changed?]