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Today's polls
Check www.fivethirtyeight.com for the breakdown. It explains why they Quinpac polls are seperated (one is post debate, I'll let you guess which) and goes into detail on some of the info.
The bottom line? Another good day for Obama.
http://www.bradblog.com/
This is the ONLY way McCain wins. I'm nervous. Obama has run such a smart campaign, surely the DNC has lawyers working on this.
Today's polls
Check www.fivethirtyeight.com for the breakdown. It explains why they Quinpac polls are seperated (one is post debate, I'll let you guess which) and goes into detail on some of the info.
The bottom line? Another good day for Obama.
30 days out there are a lot of ways McCain wins. There's a reason they call them October Surprises.
If you look at the internals of these polls, Obama gets high favorability ratings across the board, so negative attacks will not be nearly as effective. I just hope Obama and the DNC have a legal ground game as well as a GOTV ground game.
I agree with this, but an October surprise isn't a negative attack. Its Bin Laden doing something, its a sudden flare up somewhere, its a picture of Obama in women's underwear etc etc.
I'm not really worried. They've been talking about October Surprises for a long time, and the last one I can think of is Bush's DWI arrest revelation. It refers to the fear Republicans had that Carter would negotiate a successful hostage release.
Even if Osama came out with a tape, Obama could just say "I have a message for OBL. You won't be around to make a tape in 2012. GWB and McCain may not care that you are in Pakistan, but I do. Your days are numbered when I take office."
I'm just giving examples. I generally agree with you that Obama is in the best position he's been in all year and every day that goes by makes it all that more likely.
GTFO.... Obama just took the lead in NC.....
This is falling down for McCain.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/20..._carolina.html
For McCain to be losing in North Carolina is incredible and just shows how far he's fallen. NC is military country. Even my father, a gung-ho Marine 1st Sgt and Republican supporter the last 8 years has gone Democratic this year. Politically we've had some spirited arguments over the years but he finally saw the light
I am genuinely afraid for this country - there are just too many uninformed people. If Obama wins this election, it will be the media who got him elected. And it's so sad that there are so many people willing to buy into all the crap they're unloading on McCain and Palin.
But if the stupid people elect Obama - then they all deserve everything bad that will happen to them in the next 4 years - and they can't about it!
Yes, Grandpa McRage and Bible e would make for a dynamite combo!
We've seen what happens when you let the GOP run the country the past 8 years. The Democrats deserve a chance to do better.
Obama hits 50% in FL, NC!!
Barack the vote baby!!!!!
It won't be the media that gets Obama elected...it's McCain's stupidity. I've said it once and I'll say it again. If McCain is so experienced why is he running this campaign without any specifics on his policies? Why can't he simply separate himself from George Bush and say Bush did that but I'm going to do this? Why did he choose this clueless lady as his VP? That's the main thing that threw my father over the deep end
I have to agree that McCain hasn't run his campaign too wisely in the last week. He hasn't capitalized on Obama's weaknesses the way he should have. He had several opportunities during the debate to hit a knock-out punch and he didn't do it. I really think McCain is surprised how viciously his "buddies" in the MSM have turned on him.It won't be the media that gets Obama elected...it's McCain's stupidity. I've said it once and I'll say it again. If McCain is so experienced why is he running this campaign without any specifics on his policies? Why can't he simply separate himself from George Bush and say Bush did that but I'm going to do this? Why did he choose this clueless lady as his VP? That's the main thing that threw my father over the deep end
As for Sarah Palin - I think she's far more intelligent than what's been evident in the last few weeks. I think McCain's advisors have over coached her and it's made her tentative in her interviews and produced a few really bad soundbites. They need to just let her be Sarah - the woman he thought enough of to name her the VP candidate.
But there's no denying the fact that the media has given Obama and Biden a huge pass on so many issues and statements - and that has definitely shaped people's perceptions of both of them.
If McCain stands any chance at all - he has to take the gloves off and really start hitting hard WITH FACTS AND SPECIFICS.
Its so funny to listen to people wail about the medias agenda. Either the electorate is smart enough or its not, but I didn't hear anyone ing when the media's agenda included war in Iraq and getting George Bush elected.
http://www.livescience.com/culture/0...cal-polls.html
Survey Says: Polls Have ProblemsBy Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
posted: 29 September 2008 09:51 am ET
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Election polls showing John McCain ahead one day, Barack Obama the next, then some neck-and-neck results the next day, are seriously flawed, according to one pollster. Another pollster begs to differ, saying polls provide valuable information about public opinion on candidates and about which issues are pushing the electorate.
"Right now polls don't tell the truth about the electorate and they don’t tell the truth about the American public," said David Moore, founder of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and former managing editor of the Gallup Poll.
Moore's main issue involves the wording of a standard poll question, which asks who a person would vote for if elections were held today. Rather than giving voters a chance to report mixed feelings or just not knowing, polls tend to "force" a definitive answer, said Moore, author of "The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls" (Beacon Press, 2008).
Other shortcomings include the lack of cell-phone users polled as well as the natural variability that occurs in voter opinions months before the election.
To some, however, rejecting all polls seems a little extreme. "I think that's vastly overblown if it's an attempt to discredit virtually all polling because of this issue," said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "It rests on a fundamentally correct fact. Absolutely the way you word questions affects the answers that you get. But for anyone to claim there's one right way to ask the question and every other way is flawed, I think is a vast overreach."
In the end, polls can be analyzed after the fact. The truth: Polls done months before an election don't turn out to have been very predictive of real outcomes.
Track record
Though polls have occasionally failed to predict who will win an election, most notably in the 2008 Democratic primary in New Hampshire in which Hillary Clinton won, the polling track record is "very good," according to the Pew Research Center.
This is particularly true for polls taken close to an election. For example, in 2004 the average of several major national polls from the days leading up to the presidential election showed President Bush with a 1.6 percentage point advantage over Sen. John Kerry. Bush ended up winning the election by 2.4 percentage points.
Election polls taken early in a race, during the first quarter of the year prior to the presidential election, have shown a poor track record in predicting the winner, according to a review of polls between 1959 and 2003 by the Pew Research Center.
"Polls conducted early in an election season should be taken as snapshots in time, and obviously cannot capture the impact of the campaign and its events to come," according to Pew analysts.
For instance, a Pew analysis of polling done early in campaigns found that in February 1995, several early readings showed Sen. Bob Dole leading President Clinton by as many as 6 percentage points. Then, 21 months later, Clinton won by 8 percentage points.
"If you take all previous presidential elections, the polls vary a lot over time and they all end up basically where the election results are," said Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University.
So as the election gets closer the polls all tend to narrow down and point to the right candidate.
"By the time you get to the night before the election that's pretty much what the election results are going to be," he said, adding that political scientists are pretty accurate at forecasting the election outcome at the time of the conventions.
As for why the polls are so variable and possibly inaccurate months and months before the elections, King said, it's "natural variability" in part. "People don't really know who the candidates are yet. There's no reason for them to decide who they're really going to vote for months before the election. They only really have to know by November," King said during a telephone interview.
Missing cell-phone users
Natural variability is just part of the problem. Many Americans are ditching their landlines for cell phones, a trend that can wreak havoc on election polls.
While some polls are starting to include cell-phone users, others aren't.
Surveys conducted by Pew in June, July and September showed that including cell-phone interviews led to results showing more support for Obama and slightly less for McCain.
For instance, the September poll involved more than 2,500 registered voters including nearly 550 individuals reached by cell phone. The combined phone-type results showed 46 percent backed Obama and 44 percent backed McCain. Among just the landline respondents, candidates were tied each with 45 percent support.
The difference between cell-only and landline individuals is age, with the cell-only sample being younger than 30, Pew analysts suggest. Young people as a group, according to Pew, have consistently backed Obama this year.
King sees the cell-phone issue as a big problem.
"There's real reason to worry about that because of the rise in cell phones and non-response," King said, referring to the ability of the polls to predict the public sentiment on the day of polling.
In addition to cell-only individuals, the pollsters don't grab a real random sample of the American public, King said.
"Nine out of ten people that pollsters call don't answer the phone or they can't reach the person," King said. The people who are home and do decide to answer the polling call, he said, are probably not representative of the people who will vote on Election Day.
Who would you vote for today?
Moore calls for polling reforms, including measuring and reporting the percentage of undecided voters, and recognizing bias in question wording and other question features.
Other political scientists disagree about the forced-question issue.
Franklin said research has shown this "forced" type question doesn't skew the results.
"If you predict the answer to that question by your political ideology, your partisanship, how you feel abut the environment, your age, education, the usual suspects, you get the same structure for people who were pushed to give an answer as for people who were not," Franklin told LiveScience.
"If there was a serious flaw to asking the question with this push for how do you lean, then we ought to see polls consistently missing the right answer of the outcome," Franklin said. "We don't see that."
He added that individual polls can be off the mark, but on average, they get it right.
There was nothing wrong with the polls during Palin Mania, but now there's severe problems with methodology. Got it.
Many people don't pay that close of attention to it. 70% of the eligible population is registered to vote by barely over 50% of them actually vote.
A #1 reason I have a problem with the weights.
The Democrats didn't sweep into power in 2006 because of some huge turnout...they swept into power because of a lack of one.
I don't know about the Iraq War but the media damn sure didn't have an agenda to get W elected in 2004. That's the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard.but I didn't hear anyone ing when the media's agenda included war in Iraq and getting George Bush elected.
False...there was something wrong with the polls during the Palin Mania, they muted the imact she was actually having...actually is having.
And the media is riding shotgun on it.
And what do you base that on? Your intuition and gut that the electorate will side with you?
Are you still predicting a McCain victory on November 4th? Would you say he would win if the election were held today?
Voting history. Turn out at speaking appearances, totally unreported rises in Republican activism, television ratings...and oh yeah, the polls when you remove the weights.
Yes...but I am not as certain of it as I was, this Senate Bill could potentially hang McCain.Are you still predicting a McCain victory on November 4th?
If he votes for all that pork he is going to be instantly discredited, if he doesn't and the market tanks there could be a huge backlash.
Basically he's got to vote against it, due his campaign promises and all the pork inherent in that bill.
Yes.Would you say he would win if the election were held today?
Dude in my lifetime, only one time has the American Public voted for the wrong guy in the popular vote...and that was Carter/Ford. They usually do get it right...
There's nothing to Obama...except questions.
I know ya'll don't see it...ya'll became the stepford voters long ago.
Hey Findog...there's going to be an anti-Palin protest in Dallas the day after the VP debate. Will you be there?
I think it's a war for Oil protest
Enlighten us. What do you see in John McCain that you like so much?
Probably not, I'll have to work. At this point, I don't think there's anything left to protest.Hey Findog...there's going to be an anti-Palin protest in Dallas the day after the VP debate. Will you be there?
I think it's a war for Oil protest
Oh yes there will be....the new asshole she tore Joe Biden the night before.
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