The following is from the Post.com's Maryland Moment politics blog. It attempts to explain the difference in the results of recent Sun and Post polls.
OK, so The Washington Post poll comes out Sunday showing the governor's race at a 10-point margin for Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley in his race against Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. And The Baltimore Sun poll today puts it at only a 1-point advantage for O'Malley, well within the margin of error.
What gives?
The timing is a little different (The Post was in the field last Sunday through Thursday and the Sun on Saturday through Monday). And there are doubtless many differences in the methodology each pollster used.
But the most dramatic departure is in the percentage of likely voters who are African American. Because this voting bloc overwhelmingly favors Democrats and, in this race, O'Malley, a small change can mean a big difference in the numbers.
The Sun said its poll is based on a model predicting black turnout will be about 19 percent. The Post did not use a model to predict turnout, but set up questions to screen who is likely to vote Nov. 7. About 25 percent of the 1,003 respondents in the Post poll who screened as likely voters were African American.By comparison, African Americans comprised 24 percent of Maryland's turnout in the 2004 presidential election, 22 percent in the 2002 governor's election and 21 percent in the 1998 governor's race, according to exit polls.
Ehrlich's campaign this weekend said the Post's poll was "demographically skewed" because there were few undecided voters and released internal poll results similar to what the Sun found.
"We are on the offensive and are closing the gap," Ehrlich's campaign proclaimed in an e-mail to supporters this morning.
O'Malley campaign released its own poll, done on the same days as the Sun's, which shows a 6-percent margin for the mayor.
O'Malley played down the results of the poll this morning as he prepared to board a hulking green bus that will take him to all corners of the state in coming days.Standing outside his home in Baltimore, O'Malley noted two other recent polls, one the Post's and another for The Wall Street Journal with a 6-point margin.
"We suspect it's probably somewhere around the average of those three," O'Malley said.
