A Primer in framing. Hillary was +6 in the ABC poll not the -4 reported in the press release
Disclaimer: I'm a statistical analyst. I do support Hillary, but I do these for more of an educational purposes than a partisan one. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
So, just a little while ago I lost it with the superPAC sponsored PPP debate poll for being nothing more than advertising for Clinton. I hope that has earned me a little leeway with some here, as I am about to go negative on a reported piece of very good news for Bernie from the pollster responsible for the Washington Post/ABC poll. Simply put, the pollster pulled a pretty shady trick in the press release to sell the story that Clinton lost 13 points of spread since the October poll. You can see it here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sanders-gop-steady-terrorism-worries-back-poll/story?id=35337895
And the money quote is this:
At 60-34 percent, Hillary Clinton is 26 percentage points ahead of Sanders, down from 39 points in October. He has gained significantly among registered Democrats and Democrat leaners under age 50, runs closely with Clinton among liberals and has closed the margin, to some extent, among nonwhites and women -- results that may give Clinton pause, if not palpitations.
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Funny thing, though, those numbers, as reported by the pollster itself, weren't the actual poll numbers in October. What is reported in the press release is that Clinton was ahead 64 to 25 in October. However, in the actual poll from October she was ahead 54 to 23.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-rebounds-democratic-race-gaining-sanders-biden-alike/story?id=34580456
Yes, the pollster flipped a 6 point bump from October to November for Clinton into a four point loss.
But how did the pollster manage to get his own numbers wrong? He went back and reallocated Biden's supporters to their second choices. He also did that without stating in his November press release that he was doing so. I had to go into the October press release to figure out what he did.
This is not the correct way to report trending, at all. Second choice application may be fun for discussion purposes, but it cannot be used as a valid step in if someone drops out. There are many issues with why you can't just ignore your actual reported poll results by retconning what you previously showed. Let's touch on just one. In polling, the expectation is that people put very little thought into their second choices. As a result, second choice can actually benefit tremendously from name recognition. In other words, second choice answers tend to be, well, meaningless.
So why would the pollster decide to issue the press release with this framing (the actual poll for November uses the 54 not the 64 to report October results, by the way)? That is easy, to create a story--in this case by turning a positive poll for both candidates into a surge by one in particular. It is, in effect, dishonest.
The actual poll results tell the real story. Sanders picked up 11 points in a month by moving from 23 to 34, which is great. Hillary crested 60 for the first time by moving up 6 points from 54, herself. That is also great. The net change in spread is +5 to Sanders, but it didn't come at any expense to Hillary, who actually gained, as well.
Very different story than Hillary falling 4 points back to 60 while Sanders gained 9 for a net change of 13.
The poll is fine. The press release carried an agenda, which was achieved by some pretty dubious means.
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