We are pleased to announce the return of the FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™. We'll have more details about the poll later, as well as it's own page. But in brief, it is an effort to make sense of the many polls and their often divergent results. You may see a CNN - USAToday - Gallup poll showing your guy up by 8, while Zogby has him down by 1. So, who's right? The FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™ is a statistical effort to weight the polls based on various criteria, including margin of error and whether the poll includes all adults, registered voters or likely voters. If we are lucky, the FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL™ will have the effect of reducing that pesky margin of error.
Our initial effort includes polls from NBC/The Wall Street Journal, CNN-USAToday-Gallup, CBS-New York Times, FoxNews-Opinion Dynamics and ABC-Washington Post. We also factor in the recent closing price of shares traded on the Iowa Electronic Markets, where voters are speaking with real money.
For the week ended March 8, 2004 (the most recent date for which multiple polls are available), the The Federal Review Composite Poll™ shows a 1.0% lead for the Democrats.
Week ended March 8, 2004. 3,889 Deemed Likely Voters.
Bush 45.5
Kerry 46.5
Other/Undec. 8.0
UPDATE: Revised since first posted to eliminate a more recent poll that should not have been included.
