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IBD/TIPP Poll: A Narrow No On Gay Marriage

"Support For Gay Marriage Reaches A Milestone" trumpeted a new ABC News/Washington Post poll showing that for the first time a majority (53%) of Americans say it should be legal for gays and lesbians to marry vs. 44% who think not. Add a comment

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Another Painful Lesson For The GOP

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IBD/TIPP Takes Top Honors Again

Election: Now that the '08 tally is official, we note that for the second election in a row, the IBD/TIPP Poll not only came closest to the final margin, but was right on the money — tantamount to hitting a bullet with a bullet.

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More Election-Polling Scorecards

I wrote the week before the election about the struggles of one pollster to reach the elusive demographic group of 18- to 24-year-olds and measure their collective opinion. Despite those challenges, TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy & Politics, the polling arm of the market-intelligence company TechnoMetrica, came very close to predicting president-elect Barack Obama's winning margin. In its final poll for Investor's Business Daily before Election Day, TIPP gave Obama a lead of 7.2 percentage points over Sen. John McCain. Obama is leading by 6.8 percentage points in the national popular vote, with nearly all votes counted.

"I did a pretty good job," Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, told me. His method to allocate those voters who identified themselves as undecided to each candidate helped him get close to the final margin - Mayur assigned two-thirds of these voters to Obama, expanding his lead in the poll by 2.1 percentage points. Unlike other pollsters, who may split the undecideds evenly or based on the candidates' standing among decided voters, Mayur used a complex algorithm to assign each of these voters. The method uses 10 variables, such as the respondent's party, gender and 2004 vote, to predict the 2008 vote.

More than some other pollsters, when publishing his poll Mayur breaks down results by a wide range of demographic variables. Among some of these groups, he was right on target, at least compared to exit polls: Obama won by 13 percentage points among women, as Mayur predicted, and won the group of voters whose annual income ranged from $30,000 to $50,000 by 12 points, compared to the nine-point margin predicted by Mayur. Among other groups, Mayur's predictions weren't as strong. Obama did better among Catholics and young voters than predicted. Mayur said the occasional miss could be attributed to a small sample size among certain subgroups. "If you see the same pattern over three or four days, you can feel comfortable about the thing," he said.

He also predicted that candidates other than Obama and McCain would get 4.2% of the presidential vote; their actual vote share was 1.3%. Mayur explained that he names these candidates explicitly in the polls over the final days before the election, which may boost their share. He includes them "just because I want to be more careful," he said.

Like all pollsters, Mayur will face fresh challenges in 2012, including an expected increase in the proportion of households without a landline telephone. "It's a tougher economy, and people are looking at every expense," he said. Young people may also get harder to reach: "The age-group problem is nagging me all the time."

Because cellphone users can be averse to unexpected phone calls, particularly when they cost valuable minutes, Mayur said he would consider assembling an opt-in panel of cellphone-only users, and call on a portion of them in each poll. "The world is changing, and it's not anymore the days when you can rely on a random-digit sample," he said.

In other retrospectives on election polling:

• The polls in Alaska missed the mark badly on three major races, indicating a much-bigger Democratic vote share than materialized on Election Day. The Anchorage Daily News explored the polling failure. "I'm not happy how that came out," said one pollster who predicted a 22-point victory for the Democratic Senate candidate, who was declared winner only last week, and by just a percentage point. That aberrant survey didn't make it into the pollster's selected recap of his "most ACCURATE final national and state election polls."
• Nationally, as I wrote the week of the election, the pollsters did well. "While we worried about the many challenges, the telephone survey again defied the odds and delivered mostly accurate results," former pollster and Pollster.com blogger Mark Blumenthal wrote in the National Journal. He offers more context on his blog, and ends with a question about whether all post-election analysis should center on pollsters' final polls, when the vast majority of polls came earlier and helped shape coverage.

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Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote

They were wrong in 2000 and 2004.

There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.

Some polls are sponsored by reputable news organizations, others by publicity-eager universities or polling firms on the make. None have the scientific precision we imagine.

For example, academics gathered by the American Political Science Association at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington on Aug. 31, 2000, to make forecasts declared that Al Gore would be the winner. Their models told them so. Mr. Gore would receive between 53% and 60% of the two-party vote; Gov. George W. Bush would get between just 40% and 47%. Impersonal demographic and economic forces had settled the contest, they said. They were wrong.

Right now, all the polls show Barack Obama ahead of John McCain, but the margins vary widely (in part because some polls use an "expanded" definition of a likely voter, while others use a "traditional" polling model, which assumes turnout will mirror historical trends but with a higher turnout among African-Americans and young voters).

On Monday, there were seven nationwide polls, with the candidates as close as three points in the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll and as far apart as 10 points in Gallup's "expanded" model. On Tuesday, the Gallup "traditional" model poll had the candidates separated by two points and the Pew poll had them separated by 15. On Wednesday, Battleground, Rasmussen and Gallup "traditional" model polls had the candidates separated by three points while Diageo/Hotline and Gallup "expanded" model polls had the spread at seven points.

Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.

On election night in 2000 Al Hunt -- then a columnist for this newspaper and a commentator on CNN -- was the first TV talking head to erroneously declare that Florida's polls had closed, when those in the Panhandle were open for another hour. Shortly before 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Judy Woodruff said: "A big call to make. CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column."

Mr. Hunt and Ms. Woodruff were not only wrong. What they did was harmful. We know, for example, that turnout in 2000 compared to 1996 improved more in states whose polls had closed by the time Ms. Woodruff all but declared the contest over. The data suggests that as many as 500,000 people in the Midwest and West didn't bother to vote after the networks indicated Florida cinched the race for Mr. Gore.

I recall, too, the media's screwup in 2004, when exit-polling data leaked in the afternoon. It showed President Bush losing Pennsylvania by 17 points, New Hampshire by 18, behind among white males in Florida, and projected South Carolina and Colorado too close to call. It looked like the GOP would be wiped out.

Bob Shrum famously became the first to congratulate Sen. John Kerry by addressing him as "President Kerry." Commentators let the exit polls color their coverage for hours until their certainty was undone by actual vote tallies.

Polls have proliferated this year in part because it is much easier for journalists to devote the limited space in their papers or on TV to the horse-race aspect of the election rather than its substance. And I admit, I've aided and abetted this process.

In the campaign's final week, though, the candidates can offer little new substance, so attention turns to the political landscape, and there's no question Mr. McCain is in a difficult place.

The last national poll that showed Mr. McCain ahead came out Sept. 25 and the 232 polls since then have all shown Mr. Obama leading. Only one time in the past 14 presidential elections has a candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College after trailing in the Gallup Poll the week before the election: Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But the question that matters is the margin. If Mr. McCain is down by 3%, his task is doable, if difficult. If he's down by 9%, his task is essentially impossible. In truth, however, no one knows for sure what kind of polling deficit is insurmountable or even which poll is correct. All of us should act with the proper understanding that nothing is yet decided.

As for me, I've already cast my absentee ballot in Kerr County, Texas -- joyfully, enthusiastically marking the straight Republican column. I would like to have joined the line Tuesday outside the polling place in Ingram, where I've been registered the past few years. But I will be in New York, part of the vast horde analyzing exit polls, dissecting returns, and pontificating on consequences. I'll thoroughly enjoy myself that night, and probably feel guilty the next morning. But this year's 728 national polls and the thousands of state polls made me do it.

Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

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McCain and the Youngest Voters

According to most polls, Sen. Barack Obama holds a formidable lead over Sen. John McCain among the youngest voters. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, Obama leads by 32 points in the latest Gallup poll, by 36 points in the latest CBS/New York Times poll and by 39 points in the latest Pew poll. However, one daily tracking poll consistently has shown McCain leading Obama among a similar group, 18- to 24-year-olds - an anomaly that provides a lesson about the dangers of slicing polling data too thin, especially among voters who are hard to reach.

The unusual results came from a poll conducted for Investor's Business Daily by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy & Politics, the polling arm of the market-intelligence company TechnoMetrica. In the 11 daily results of the IBD/TIPP poll released between Oct. 16 and Oct. 26, Obama led McCain just once, by two points, among 18- to 24-year-olds. Nine times McCain led by eight points or more. His average lead among these young voters during that time span was 15 points. One IBD/TIPP poll last week showed McCain trailing by 1.1 points overall - generating discussion among blogs and in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial - and leading by 52 percentage points among 18- to 24-year-olds, evoking incredulity from political stats-head Nate Silver.

Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, told me he was equally surprised by the results, saying the widespread perception that Obama is leading by a large margin in that group "is my perception, too." He blamed the result on a small sample size. Each daily tracking poll includes about 1,000 interviews spread over the prior five days; each day a new set of survey respondents is added and the oldest set is discarded.

Ideally, Mayur would like to have 75 of all those respondents fall into the youngest age range. Some pollsters would have preferred more; this age group makes up 13% of the adult population, though its voting rate historically has been lower than average. His sample fell far short even of his lower goal, typically including just 25 to 30 respondents from age 18 to 24 - meaning just five or six new interviews with these young voters were being conducted each day. "We are not able to get to speak to as many as we would like to in that group," he said.

He blamed that on several factors. For one thing, nearly one-third of adults in that age range lack landline phones, and Mayur's pollsters don't dial cellphones. (He points out that when calling cellphones, the chance that the person who picks up lacks a landline and is in the relevant age range is quite low.) Furthermore, among those who do live in households with landlines, young people may be away at school or in the military, Mayur said.

This small sample size at first didn't trouble Mayur, as Obama led among these voters in the first three tracking polls. But when the results started to break McCain's way as suddenly and dramatically as they did, Mayur began to question his own methodology. On the day McCain's lead widened in this group to 52 points, Mayur added a footnote to the 18-to-24-year-old group: "Age 18-24 has much fluctuation due to small sample size." He says he didn't add a similar one to the Jewish subgroup, with just half the sample size as the young voters, because the Jews in his sample consistently stated a preference for Obama, as he expected.

This week Mayur took two steps to expand the sample size of young voters. His pollsters are asking those who answer the phone to put the youngest member of the household on. They are also dialing households expected to have young voters, found by cross-listing white-pages listings with drivers' registration data. "We have always preferred using random-digit dialing sample," Mayur said. "I am adapting to this new challenge with these modified tactics." In the two polls since the change, the trend has reversed itself: Obama now leads by double digits.

It's not unusual for a pollster to take measures to boost representation of hard-to-reach groups, but it is unusual to do so only when the results for those groups are unexpected. "I try to do the best I can," Mayur said. "I don't have an agenda."

Other pollsters may be facing similar challenges finding enough 18- to 24-year-olds, but they don't report results for this narrow age group, instead bundling them with 25- to 29-year-olds. That makes it difficult to say how far the results consistently favoring McCain missed the mark. Unless this slightly older group (25-29) favors Obama overwhelmingly, Mayur's problems appear to have extended beyond sample size to selection bias. In other words, perhaps unintentionally his original tactics disproportionately included McCain supporters.

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ELDER: In defense of 'the rich'

So what do "the rich" pay in federal income taxes? Nothing, right? That, at least, is what most people think. And Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to raise the top marginal rate for "the rich" - known in some quarters as "job creators."

A recent poll commissioned by Investor's Business Daily asked, in effect, "What share do you think the rich pay?" Their findings? Most people are completely clueless about how much the rich actually do pay.

First, the data. The top 5 percent (those making more than $153,542 - the group whose taxes Mr. Obama seeks to raise) pay 60 percent of all federal income taxes. The rich (a k a the top 1 percent of income earners, those making more than $388,806 a year), according to the Internal Revenue Service, pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 1 percent's taxes comprise 17 percent of the federal government's revenue from all sources, including corporate taxes, excise taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts.

Now, what do people think the rich pay? The IBD/TIPP poll found 36 percent of those polled thought the rich contribute 10 percent or less of all federal income taxes. Another 15 percent thought the rich pay between 10 percent and 20 percent, while another 10 percent thought the rich's share is between 20 and 30 percent. In other words, most people thought the rich pay less - far less - than they do. Only 12 percent of those polled thought the rich pay more than 40 percent.

Let's try this another way. A U.S.News & World Report blogger went to the Democratic National Convention in Denver and did an informal poll of 24 DNC delegates. He asked them, "What should 'the rich' pay in income taxes?" Half the respondents said "25 percent"; 25 percent said "20 percent"; 12 percent said "30 percent"; and another 12 percent said "35 percent." The average DNC delegate wanted the rich to pay 25.6 percent, which is lower than what the rich pay now - both by share of taxes and by tax rate!

Thirty percent of American voters pay nothing - zero, zip, nada - in federal income taxes. And, not too surprisingly, compared with taxpaying voters, they are more likely to support spending that benefits them. The majority of the 30 percent who don't pay federal income taxes agree with Mr. Obama's $65 billion plan to institute taxpayer-funded universal health coverage. But the majority of the 70 percent who pay federal income taxes oppose his health-care plan.

Non-taxpayers support Mr. Obama's plans for increased tax deductions for lower-income Americans, along with higher overall tax rates levied against middle- and upper-income households. The majority of non-taxpayers (57 percent) also favor raising the individual income-tax rate for those in the highest bracket from 35 percent to 54 percent. And the majority (59 percent) favors raising Social Security taxes by 4 percent for any individual or business that makes at least $250,000.

Mr. Obama calls increasing taxes and giving them to the needy a matter of "neighborliness." Vice presidential running mate Joe Biden calls it a matter of "patriotism."

Yet when it comes to charitable giving, neither Mr. Obama (until recently) nor Mr. Biden feels neighborly or patriotic enough to donate as much as does the average American household: 2 percent of their adjusted gross income.

Liberal families earn about 6 percent more than conservative families, yet conservative households donate about 30 percent more to charity than do liberal households. And conservatives give more than just to their own churches and other houses of worship. Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, give far more money and donate more of their time to nonreligious charitable causes than do liberals - especially secular liberals.

In 2007, President George W. Bush and his wife had an adjusted gross income of $923,807. They paid $221,635 in taxes, and donated $165,660 to charity - or 18 percent of their income. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, in 2007, had a taxable income of $3.04 million. And they paid $602,651 in taxes, and donated $166,547 to charity - or 5.5 percent of their income.

Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, earned between $200,000 and $300,000 a year between 2000 and 2004, and they donated less than 1 percent to charity. When their income soared to $4.2 million in 2007, their charitable contributions went up to 5 percent.

Joe and Jill Biden, by contrast, made $319,853 and gave $995 to charity in 2007, or 0.3 percent of their income. And that was during the year Mr. Biden ran for president. Over the last 10 years, the Bidens earned $2,450,042 and gave $3,690 to charity - or 0.1 percent of their income.

So let's sum up. The "compassionate" liberals - at least based on charitable giving - show less compassion than "hardhearted" conservatives. The rich pay more in income taxes than people think. Voters, clueless about the facts, want the rich to pay still more.

Larry Elder is a nationally syndicated columnist, radio talk show host and best-selling author.

 

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Obama Hasn't Closed the Sale

Both candidates continue to tinker with their strategies.

In the campaign's final two weeks, voters will take a last serious look at both presidential candidates. The outcome of the race isn't cast in stone yet.

Barack Obama holds a 7.3% lead in the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, but the latest Gallup tracking poll reveals that there are nearly twice as many undecided voters this year than there were in the last presidential election. The Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll (which was closest to the mark in predicting the 2004 outcome -- 0.4% off the actual result) now says this is a three-point race.

This week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.

This is seven points more than George W. Bush's highest reading in 2000 and the worst since Michael Dukakis's 56% unqualified rating in 1988. It explains why Mr. Obama has ignored Democratic giddiness and done two things to keep victory from slipping away.

First, he is using his money to try to keep John McCain from gaining traction. The Obama campaign raised $67 million in September and may be on track to raise $100 million in October. Sen. McCain opted last month for roughly $85 million in public financing, giving him less than half of Mr. Obama's funds for the campaign's final two months. Even with robust Republican National Committee fund raising to augment his spending, Mr. McCain is at a severe financial disadvantage.

So Mr. Obama is spending $35 million on TV this week versus the McCain/RNC total of $17 million. Mr. Obama is outspending Mr. McCain on TV in Virginia by a ratio of 4 to 1, in Florida by 3 to 1, and in Missouri and Nevada by better than 2 to 1. The disparity is likely to grow in the campaign's final weeks.

Money alone, however, won't decide the contest. John Kerry and the Democrats outspent Mr. Bush and the GOP in 2004 by $121 million and still lost.

Mr. Obama's other strategy is to do all he can to look presidential, including buying very expensive half-hour slots to address the country next week. He wants to give a serious, Oval-Office type address. This is smart. People appreciate Mr. Obama's empathy on the economy, but as they take a long look at what he wants to do about it, they will be less impressed, especially if Mr. McCain draws sharp contrasts with clear policy proposals.

Mr. Obama is trying to make the case that his lack of experience or record should not disqualify him. But in doing so, he seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain's health-care plan as a tax increase. It's a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate. We'll know on Election Day if he is able to get away with it.

Similarly, Mr. McCain appears to be making three important course corrections. First, he and Gov. Sarah Palin are sharpening their stump speeches so their sound bites come off well on TV. Gone are offhand remarks and awkward comments read from notes perched on a podium. In are teleprompters and carefully crafted arguments. Mr. McCain is also more at ease than before and has an ebullient, come-from-behind underdog optimism that will serve him well in the final weeks.

Second, Mr. McCain is shaping a story line that draws on well-founded concerns about Mr. Obama's lack of record or experience. Mr. McCain is also bowing to reality and devoting most of his time to the economy. His narrative is he's the conservative reformer who'll lead and work hard to get things done, while Mr. Obama is the tax-and-spend liberal who's unprepared to lead and unwilling to act.

Mr. McCain is hitting Mr. Obama for wanting to raise taxes in difficult economic times, especially on small business and for the purpose of redistributing income, and for having lavish spending plans at a time when the economy is faltering. He's criticizing Mr. Obama for lingering on the sidelines while Mr. McCain dove in to help pass a rescue plan, necessary no matter how distasteful. And he's attacking Mr. Obama for not joining the fight in 2005 when reformers like Mr. McCain tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Mr. McCain's other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP's 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It's threading the needle, but it's come to that.

This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.

Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.

Mr. Rove is a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

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KUDLOW: What about investors?

While the presidential candidates debated in Nashville Tuesday night, the Asian stock markets were selling off by 10 percent. Earlier in the day the U.S. market plunged 500 points. These were big-time drops, yet presidential debaters never talk about the stock market. Nashville was no exception.

Roughly $2 trillion in U.S. shareholder capital has been lost in the last 15 months. Stocks are down 20 percent over the last month alone. Those are nasty hits. Stock market people are very unhappy campers right now. And the bad-news financial statements for September are now either in the mail or on the kitchen table. But there were no references to investors either by Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday night. This is nuts.

The investor class is a huge voting bloc. Shareholders in recent national elections represented nearly 2 in 3 votes cast. And most surveys put the investor-class population at slightly more than 100 million. This includes direct investment through brokerage accounts, although the vast majority of investor-class members own individual retirement accounts (IRAs), 401(k)s, and defined-benefit plans, such as state and city pension funds.

So why aren't the presidential contenders trying to connect to investors? More glaringly, why isn't Mr. McCain?

After the debate I checked in with TechnoMetrica's Raghavan Mayur, who puts out the respected IBD/TIPP poll. Mr. Mayur consistently ranks among the top pollsters in terms of accuracy, including his work on investor preferences. For September, Mr. Mayur's data show Mr. McCain with a small 45-41 lead over Barack Obama among investors. That's roughly within the poll's margin of error, and for Mr. McCain it isn't enough.

Four years ago last month, George W. Bush had a 10-point lead over John Kerry among investors. In November, Mr. Bush won investors by a 53-42 margin. By this measure, Mr. McCain is now way behind. I suspect it may be a function of his reluctance to talk directly about investor taxes - especially on capital gains and dividends.

The Bush tax cuts in this area were very popular among shareholders since they reduced the cost of capital and raised after-tax investment returns. Of course, Mr. McCain has pledged to maintain President Bush's investor tax cuts at the current 15 percent rate, while Mr. Obama proposes to raise them to at least 20 percent. But Mr. McCain seldom talks specifically about cap-gains and dividends, and the polling numbers strongly suggest he is not connecting with investors.

Mr. Obama constantly bashes businesses and successful high-end earners, and one would think investors would be totally turned off by this. But Mr. Mayur's polls don't confirm it. Why? Perhaps investors sense a lack of tax-cutting passion from Mr. McCain.

For example, during the debate, Mr. McCain did mention how he and Mr. Obama differ on tax policy. At one point Mr. McCain even compared Mr. Obama to President Hoover. "My friends," he said, "the last president to raise taxes during tough economic times was Herbert Hoover, and he practiced protectionism as well." Mr. McCain later said, "I've got some news, Sen. Obama - the news is bad. So let's not raise anybody's taxes."

But Mr. McCain never got specific on capital-gains and dividends, and he failed to educate voters on just how important investment is to healthy job-creating businesses.

Ditto for Mr. McCain's proposed corporate tax cut. The senator wants to slash the business tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It's an excellent plan. But he doesn't explain how two-thirds of the benefits of a corporate tax cut go to the work force through higher wages, with the rest then going to shareholders. He also doesn't point out that ordinary folks actually pay the corporate tax, since firms pass this tax cost along in higher prices. So Mr. McCain could, in fact, call a corporate tax cut a consumer tax cut. But he is not doing so.

Mr. McCain also needs to put investors on red alert about Mr. Obama's middle-class tax cut. The Illinois senator's huge government-spending plans will overwhelm his ability to cut taxes for 95 percent of the people. In fact, Mr. McCain needs to remind voters that Bill Clinton made exactly the same promise as a candidate in 1992 before he broke it as president in 1993.

Time is running out. The investor class vote - which still looks up for grabs - has simply got to be a McCain priority if he is to win in November. Rag Mayur doesn't have his October polling results in yet, but he believes the race will be much tighter than mainstream pundits believe. Message to Sen. John McCain: The investor vote could well tip the balance.

Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's "Kudlow & Company" and is a nationally syndicated columnist.

 

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Transportation Hit Tipping Point As Gasoline Breached $4 A Gallon

When Barack Obama told environmentally conscious voters earlier this summer that "we can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times," he probably didn't realize how close he already was to the truth.

According to our latest consumer survey, Americans are already changing their ways - but not because of Obama. They are changing because they are tiring of paying so much money each time they fill up at the gas station.

According to our survey, conducted jointly by Auto Futures Group and TechnoMetrica, the vast majority of consumers (87%) say they are likely to buy a car that is more fuel- efficient than their current model the next time they're in the market for a new vehicle.

What's more, four out of five (80%) Americans are bundling errands into fewer trips than before, almost three of four (71%) are using their family's most fuel- efficient vehicle and two of three (66%) are driving less than they used to.

Looking three years down the road, Americans expect the average price of a gallon of gasoline to reach $6.14.

One in four think it will be above $7 per gallon and one in eight expect to be paying more than $8 a gallon.

If Americans are already making significant changes with gasoline at $4 a gallon, we can only imagine the sort of changes that consumers will accept if gasoline were to hit $6, $7 or even $8.

It's even conceivable that U.S. roads will begin to look a lot more like Europe's, where super-cheap gas has never been available.

Europe lacks the suburban sprawl and far-flung shopping centers found in America and, on per-capita basis, has fewer taxi-moms ferrying their kids everywhere. Public transportation is an efficient alternative and awareness of global warming and the need to reduce fossil-fuel consumption is widespread.

As a result, the SUV, light truck, minivan and automobile lifestyles are all relative strangers.

According to our survey, the likelihood of Americans purchasing a SUV falls as gasoline prices rise.

About 30% of American consumers now own a SUV. We asked them how likely they'd be to buy another SUV at current gasoline prices, at $6 per gallon and at $8 per gallon.

At current prices, 15% would consider another SUV, but that drops to 7% at $6 a gallon and 6% at $8.

On the flip side, the likelihood of their purchasing a compact or subcompact car increases steadily with increasing gasoline prices. Current ownership of subcompacts is 8%, and 11% will consider buying one the next time they're in the market for a new vehicle. If gas prices were to hit $6 a gallon, 22% of Americans would consider a subcompact, and at $8 a gallon 30% would consider one.

Compact cars go from 26% at current prices to 34% at $8 a gallon.

So with far fewer SUVs on the road and a drastic increase in the number of compact and subcompact cars, it's safe to say that American roads will, indeed, look a lot more like their European counterparts.

While it's premature to say that gasoline engines are going to become extinct, Americans are beginning to give them a cold shoulder.

For the past six quarters, we've been asking Americans how likely they are to consider various engine types the next time they are in the market to purchase or lease a new vehicle.

Over the first five quarters, a stable 91% to 93% said that they'd likely consider a gasoline engine. But that was before gas broke $4 a gallon. This time around, just 76% answered "gasoline." Statistically this is a huge drop.

Our latest study shows that 80% of Americans say they will consider at least one type of alternative-fuel vehicle the next time they are ready to buy a new vehicle. That's good for alternative-fuel vehicles, and perhaps the beginning of a long goodbye to gasoline's dominance of the passenger vehicle market.

Next: Where did Detroit's Big Three go wrong?

Kambanis is a senior analyst and Mayur is president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, IBD's polling partner. Holland is a senior partner with the Auto Futures Group.

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