Use caution when reading poll numbers!

Last week, after George W. Bush was certified as the winner of
Florida's 25 electoral votes, many surveys came out showing that roughly
six out of 10 voters thought it was time for Al Gore to concede the
election.

At Rasmussen Research, we found that 75 percent thought George W.
Bush would take office as our next president. In a series of interviews,
I was asked several times why our number was so much more positive for
Bush than the other polls. Every time I heard that, I just shook my
head.

We got a different answer because we asked a different question.
Nobody else asked about which candidate they thought would take office
(or at least they didn't release the data if they did). Unfortunately,
people were reading the headlines and not focusing on what the headline
was about.

A look at the details of our survey makes the 75 percent number even
more interesting. Like others, our survey found that 58 percent thought
Gore should concede. We also found that 57 percent thought Bush actually
won the election. So, the really interesting question is how to explain
the difference between these numbers and the 75 percent who think Bush
will take office.

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The answer is that we still have a very partisan split between voters
concerning this election. Bush voters think their man won and 88 percent
also believe that he will be named as the new president. Those who voted
for third party candidates also tend to believe Bush won and
overwhelmingly believe that he will be our next president.

Gore voters, on the other hand, think that the vice president
actually won on November 7. However, most of them now believe that Bush
will be given the presidency. These are the voters who make up the
difference between the 58 percent who think Gore should concede and the
75 percent who think Bush will take office.

If Gov. Bush does become our next president, he is going to have to
figure out how to address these voters. Some are hard-core Democrats who
will never give him any credit, support, or acknowledgement of
legitimacy. That hard-core group includes the 36 percent of Gore voters
who, as I write this, believe that Bush should concede the election and
step aside. Other Gore voters, however, may be reachable by an effective
Bush presidency.

What troubles me as a pollster is the fact that many consumers of
polling data don't use enough caution when evaluating that data. Anybody
who saw our poll showing that 75 percent think Bush will be president
should have instantly realized that we were addressing a totally
different question than whether or not the vice president should
concede.

When consuming polling data, use caution. Always check out the
question wording and other questions that were asked on the same survey.