Help me understand why Mitt is slipping in Rasmussen Polls (Vanity)

Me

[meadsjn]

If you look at the sampling in the polls that show Obama ahead, you'll see an over-sampling of Democrats by 10% to 30%, just to show Obama up by a few points.

Some of this is push-polling, designed to manipulate opinion in Obama's favor, rather than reflect the actual opinion of the population.

Others, I suspect, are to maintain the appearance of a tight horse race up through the conventions. Democrats have a long history of replacing candidates who fall behind in the polls, with a wide variety of methods.

Obama took the Independent vote with an 8-point lead in 2008. Recent polls have showed him lagging among Independents by as much as 11 points.

One poll showed Obama down to 80% among Black voters. No Democrat can win with less than 90% of the Black vote.

In 2008, Obama took 9% of voters who self-identified as Republicans. Baffling then; unthinkable now.

Several states are clamping down on voter fraud. Democrats will still cheat, but probably not enough for Obama to win.

2008		Group	Obama	McCain
All Voters		Pct.	53%	45%
SEX	Men	47	49	48
Women		53	56	43
RACE	White	74	43	55
Black		13	95	4
Hispanic		9	67	31
Asian		2	62	35
Other		3	66	31
AGE	18-29	18	66	32
30-44		29	52	46
45-64		37	50	49
65 & over		16	45	53
INCOME	<$15,000	6	73	25
$15,000-29,999		12	60	37
$30-49,999		19	55	43
$50-74,999		21	48	49
$75-99,999		15	51	48
$100,000 & over		26	49	49
UNION HOUSEHOLD	Yes	21	59	39
No		79	51	47
REGION	East	21	59	40
Midwest		24	54	44
South		32	45	54
West		23	57	40
PARTY	Democrat	39	89	10
Republican		32	9	93
Independent		29	52	44
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY	Liberal	22	89	10
Moderate		44	60	39
Conservative		34	20	78
GAY/LESBIAN/BISEXUAL	Yes	4	70	27
No		96	53	45
Notes: Survey by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, NBC News).  Sample of 18,018 voters consisted of 15,640 voters as they left the voting booths on Election Day November 4, 2008 and a telephone absentee/early voters survey of 2,378 respondents conducted October 24-November 2, 2008.

[CaptainK]

Thank goodness election day falls on a Tuesday.

[muawiyah]

John Kennedy won with 70% of the black vote.

BTW, the reason you get the Democrat overhang is that they do the random selection poll first.

In the course of wrapping up the poll they find out your age, race, religion, political affiliation, income ~ etc. ~ whatever the person paying for the poll thinks is relevant.

So you end up with more Democrats than Republicans ~ them's the facts ~ there ARE more Democrats than Republicans.

It's when you get a poll and it ends up having more Republicans than Democrats that you'd get excited.

There are other polls where the polling company has folks on call. So they can pre-select Republicans, or Democrats, or Greenies to call up and pass questions by them. We don't see to many of them because they are more expensive ~ imagine a job where they can call you for a stupid opinion about an obnoxious product ~ any time they want.

Then there are FOCUS GROUPS (or as i used to call them "Fork us groups'). They can be pre-selected, or just random. You will never know. These groups are used as a rough guide for a trendline idea. You wouldn't want to use them to predict the results of a forthcoming election.

Free Republic works just like a Focus Group ~ if you follow it regularly you can figure out the trendlines in Conservative thought ~ which is useful for many purposes. On the other hand we get infiltrated by people like the Obama Truth Squad who seek to drag us off topic, or simply cease discussing certain things. More recently the Mittbots have gotten into suggesting that we should discuss anything critical of Romney.

Of course that's just crazy talk ~ Freepers come down on both sides of the Bible so whose this Romney guy that we ought to be careful around his holy eminence and sweaty body.

Today I heard the purest of Freeper Talk come through a couple of the TV talking head shows ~ it was on here yesterday, and it's on there today. Usually somebody comes up with some soundbytes that will confuse and confound the MSM folks and their Democrat toadies they bring in to back up the network.

Remember, one righteous man can stop armies.

[Artcore]

Nice try, but the primaries are over...got it? Unless you have a viable candidate to provide us, Romney is the guy who will face the Marxist.

“Romney just won’t work.”

No, Obama just won't work. Where have you been the past 3+ years? Here's a clue for you: Obama is the enemy who has wreaked havoc on our nation, not Romney.

[Eye of Unk]

I do not believe Romney will be available for the election.

Its just a gut feeling.

Maybe you eat a different diet or you are a stronger believer.

[Artcore]

“Available”?

[Eye of Unk]

I’ll rephrase it and state I think Romney will be “unavailable” for the election. No facts, no figures, no buzz from anyone else, just what my “Unk Vision” tells me.

[Artcore]

OK, I'll help interpret your “Unk Vision” for you...it really is quite simple: This isn't a gut feeling for you, as much as it is your HOPE. Let me guess, you're not going to vote for Romney? Let me further guess; you're perhaps going to write Palins name in?

Nope, nothing mysterious or mystic about your “Unk Vision.”

[meadsjn]

John Kennedy won with 70% of the black vote.

It is surprizing the JFK even got that many. That was before LBJ's War on Poverty Act, when he said, "We'll have the Negroes eating out of our hands and voting Democrat for the next 200 years."

Before FDR's Great Depression, few Blacks had any reason to vote Democrat, the party of slavery, Jim Crow, and the KKK.

Anyhow, after the conventions, all the pollsters will have to move closer to reality, or risk their sterling reputations.

[muawiyah]

Pollsters do more complex and extensive surveys a couple of weeks before an election ~ these things are expensive.

Everybody has a little trick to do it differently than the other guys. Sometimes they get closer than the others ~ which makes them feel good because that means they can raise the prices on their market research.

BTW, after spending 4 decades screwing around with statistical methodologies at work (USPS is, after all, so huge it is fueled by statistical analysis) I think i'm going to give up on this stuff and focus on DATA MINING. Friend of ours was starting out with his own marketing research operation just before the capital collapse, but he ought to be getting back in the game soon. Whole bunch of people in the DC area are into it.

Seems to me that we need to find some correlations with political opinion ~ at the moment I'm thinking of facebook entries ~ randomly checking every n'th user, or maybe setting up a sampling universe populated with facebook volunteers.

[Vermont Lt]

People who have jobs are on vacation. And down south, people are going back to school.

The roads were empty last week around here.

[Patton@Bastogne]

.

No ... I want a genuine Conservative to win ... Obama to lose ...

Isn't your "Mittbott Script" running a bit too long ?

.

[Kansas58]

Name one single conservative leader who agrees with you.

Alan Keyes is a nut and a con artist, he does not count.

You are on the fringe, you are not helping anyone but Obama.

[wolfman23601]

And as I figured, 0 had a good result on Thursday, skewing the poll for 3 days.

[o2bfree]

Don't be concerned, it's just an early poll!