(Actualización) "undecided/refuse to respond voters"

Se ha desatado una pequeña batalla sobre el estado de la elección entre Bill McInturff, el encuestador de John McCain, y Stan Greenberg, el afamado encuestador demócrata que trabajó para Bill Clinton, Al Gore y John Kerry. Después de darse a conocer el memorandum interno enviado por McInturff al equipo de estrategia de McCain, Greenberg publicó una carta dirigida a McInturff en la que ponía en cuestión su análisis sobre cómo romperían los votantes indecisos a última hora:

(...) -The memo reports that Obama is already getting virtually 100 percent of the African American vote in McCain's polls. That is not true in our combined database of the presidential battleground states where Obama is polling 89 to 6 percent. On that basis alone, one would expect Obama's overall vote to rise a point.

-Note that the same is true of Latino voters. In special surveys of Hispanics, using special lists, Obama is polling close to 70 percent, but in the combined battleground polls where Hispanic respondents are more acculturated and English-speaking, we have Obama's vote at 56 percent to 36 percent for McCain. That too can produce another point of Obama support.

-The memo says that the "undecided" and "refused" voters "will break decisively in our direction, adding a "net three plus points to our margin." That is pretty amazing. Using the combined database, we looked at the "undecided," "refused" and the undecided "leaning" to a candidate - 7 percent of the electorate. Using their stated leanings to the candidates and feelings toward the parties, this undecided vote broke near evenly between Obama and McCain. In our latest presidential battleground poll, they broke near evenly as well. To get a 3-point net gain, the undecided would have to break 5 to 2 for McCain. There is no evidence to indicate such an impending break against Obama. Instead, the undecided could push Obama's vote up at least another point. (...)

A lo que Bill McInturff ha respondido vía e-mail:

(...) I went on Real Clear Politics tonight to find these two headlines back-to-back.

CBS/NYT: Obama up comfortably
FOX: Race tightens significantly

No wonder people can be confused about the status of this campaign.

I am weighting African Americans to census +1%. I am weighting young voters to be at least 16% of the turn-out. With those weights, I have seen the race tighten since last week.

If we were betting on the spread of a football game, I will let Stan take the CBS/NYT's poll's margins.

I believe we live in a world much closer to the Fox results.

While Stan knows the outcome of Tuesday's election, my point is simple: I believe it is not yet determined. In fact, unlike Stan, I believe the race could still change -- either by moving back in Senator Obama's direction or continuing to tighten between now and election day.

It won't take long now to find out which one is the closer representation of this election --- Stan and the CBS/NYT's or a much tighter campaign like the one we are watching develop in the Fox data released today.

Stan and I are good friends and cohorts and our friendship will certainly withstand this disagreement, but, finally, having had the great good fortune of working for John McCain on three Senate campaigns and now two presidential campaigns, here are two things I ALSO know for sure: 1) John McCain is a hard man to kill and I am the least surprised guy in the country that with even the smallest window of opportunity--as the focus on the financial crisis faded a bit--that he could make up ground and 2) the difference between these two candidates in terms of their preparation and capacity to serve as Commander-in-Chief is profound, to McCain's considerable advantage, and that matters to the remaining voters here in the last few days of this election.

Bill (...)