Wide gap among poll results mystifies campaigns, pundits

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BOSTON -- Two things are clear from the wildly divergent polls in this year's presidential election -- President Bush is ahead, but nobody knows by how much.

The swirl of surveys over the last week has shown the race anywhere from a 13 percentage point lead for Mr. Bush to a dead heat between him and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. That gap, which pollsters said is unusually wide, has prompted debate inside and outside of the campaigns over where the race really stands.

"If I had to make a guess today, it would be Bush," said Harry W. O'Neill, who polled for Roper and before that for Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. "Even if it's only a point, he's the one who's ahead, and the internals and all those other questions are in favor of Bush, except the economy."

The most discussed result may be last week's Gallup poll, which showed a 13-point lead for Mr. Bush among likely voters, an improvement even over the seven-point lead the same poll showed the president held after the Republican National Convention. A CBS-New York Times poll released late Friday showed Mr. Bush with a nine percentage point lead among likely voters surveyed.

That compares with the poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which showed Mr. Bush with only a one point lead among likely voters. And a Harris poll released last week even showed Mr. Kerry holding a one point lead among likely voters.

Pollsters, politicians and the campaigns are flummoxed.

"I can't explain the huge variance," said Adam Clymer, political director for the Annenberg Election Survey. "I don't understand why Pew and Harris are at one place and Gallup and the New York Times-CBS are at another, and I'm not sure that if I had complete access to all their data and their methods I would, either."

Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, said the variance is particularly curious because the polls in question are all done by reputable organizations. "The first thing I look for is who's done it. These are well-known people who have a history," he said.

Pollsters said when looking at polls, in addition to the source, to keep in mind whether the survey included enough respondents; whether it covers too many days, during which opinion could have shifted, or too few, which could leave a skewed count of who was home; and how the questions were posed.

But in the case of recent major surveys, those factors were all similar. One potential culprit, Mr. O'Neill said, is the way the surveys identify likely voters.