A worthless survey from Newsweek

By Richard Baehr

Newsweek is out with a new poll on the presidential race, with head to head ratings among leading Democrats and Republican candidates.

The survey shows Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all beating Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. But when one looks at the breakdown of results by party identification for each head to head race, one finds a different story. Guliani wins by a bigger margin among Republicans than Clinton or Obama do among Democrats. And Giuliani also wins among independents. So how does Rudy wind up behind Obama and Clinton overall?

The answer is easy: interview very few Republicans, and lots of Democrats (questions 26 and 27 in the survey). This long has been a problem with Newsweek surveys- sampling mix favoring Democrats. This survey has 50% more Democrats than Republicans in the survey population (36% of sample versus 24%). It is, like most Newsweek surveys, worthless.