Posted on 09/08/2008 3:22:53 PM PDT by Norman Bates
Rasmussen Reports conducted five state telephone surveys in partnership with Fox News Channel on September 7, 2008. The surveys were conducted in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A total of 500 Likely Voters were interviewed in each state using the Rasmussen Reports automated telephone survey methodology (see www.RasmussenReports.com for details).
The margin of sampling error for the full sample in each state poll is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Caution should be used in interpreting subsets of the data as such results will have an even larger margin of sampling error. It is anticipated that larger sample sizes will be used later in the election season which will allow for a more detailed examination of demographic distinctions.
(snip)
Additionally, there were state specific timing issues in three of the five states. In Colorado, the city of Denver hosted the Democratic National Convention Colorado less than two weeks before the survey was conducted. In Florida, the survey was conducted as Hurricane Ike was approaching. In Virginia, the survey was conducted the day after Tropical Storm Hanna raced through the state.
It is not clear what, if any, impact these state-specific timing issues may have on the data.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.com ...
Hillary won Florida primaries and the GOP is strong over there. No doubt we will win those EVs.
We need NV and CO to win.
That’s pretty much the way I see it.
My wife just drove though and area very much known around here as an elitist area , it is called ponte vedra.
Many rich rich rich north east liberals have moved there especially Jewish voters in the last 4 years.
My wife said that yesterday there were 3 houses with yard sign s for obama yesterday and this morning there were now 5 houses all next door to each other.
My wife has to deal with their kids and heard them talking about how they want to get the whole street saying obama.
My wife said the were talking and acting like little school kids and she never thought that grown ups could actually act like they did this morning.
It is about time for the working class Dems to realise that the party of DEms is not for the working class but a party of elitist yuppie starbuck, show off liberals.
Question is why do these people move to a state with good employment, good low taxes, affordable to live, decent school,s , good roads, etc etc and then they come here and want to change everything to how their state looked
Seems for some school does not teach these people common sense.
I’ll be honest I wish they would just go back to their hell hole elitist liberal states and live in pot hole, depressing, stuck up expensive, high tax, homo friendly anti Jewish states
I am not the only one who feels like this either
Around here, many of us are fed up of these people trying to change our area and demand that we should adapt to their way of thinking
They then wonder why they are not wanted and say many southerners are still fighting the war between the states
If things stay the same McCain/Palin win.
If things go as I predict, McCain/Palin get stronger and potentially win HUGE.
really
I would expect that MI would go for Palin and McCain but it is the Detroit area where voter fraud and the black community will vote for Obama
Side not why do many in the black community need a person they have to follow, why can’t they just have their own mind and realise who people are..
Also I bet that there is more than 20% of blacks voting for Obama because they think he is black, I would’;t be surprised if it was more like 80% as I have not met one black person who knows anything about Obama but will be voting for him.
“GWB won by 5 when some polls had him favored by 1 or 2 and some polls had Kerry favored.”
Rasmussen had Bush favored to win by 5 in Florida.
“Sarcasm will get you nowhere.”
I’m not trying to “get anywhere” and your friend is right. The ideal MoE is 3% or less, but very little state polling is done with that much precision this long before an election. Which is why telling you to add and subtract 4.5% wasn’t sarcasm, it was a statistically valid way of looking at these polls. Polls have a margin of error which can be added or subtracted to either candidate’s numbers and a confidence level which allows for a complete screwup 5% of the time. Read Ras’ commentary and he points out the MoE as a reason to not read too much into these polls.
I suggested earlier that the FL poll may be an outlier. Yet here are Freepers, jumping on each other, namecalling and impugning each other’s motives over a couple of 4.5% MoE polls. If the polls still look like this in October, which would surprise me, JimRob’s going to have to post the suicide hotline number. People need to realize that we have almost two months to go, which is approximately forever in political time, and chill out.
As for one night polling, some pollsters poll over several nights because it’s easier that way. It gives them more time to gather data. But there is nothing inherently error-inducing in completing a poll in one night. And ALL polls are snapshots, regardless of time frame conducted and MoE. Which is why you will never see me predicting a win or loss based on a poll, especially months before the actual vote, and I get a good chuckle out of those who do. Polls tell us the state of the race RIGHT NOW, not on November 4th.
The main point I’ve made and continue to make regarding Florida is that those Freepers who consider Florida a slam dunk for McCain are wrong. It is a swing state that leans Republican, but there are economic and demographic forces that may help Obama this time around. McCain will have to work to win.
I appreciate your previous post. I am definitely not someone who rants and raves about polls two months out, I’m also not someone who dwells constantly on the negative, and there are members of both camps on this Forum. I want to acknowledge good news when it appears, and acknowledge bad news when that unfortunately appears. But if there is a definite trend and all of the sudden an oulier pops up, then I’m going to call that an outlier. That said, this new Democratic poll is good news and is more in line with trends in many battleground States showing Mac with small and growing leads. I think Scott hurt his credibility and the credibility of his polls when he admitted the other day on FOX that his latest FL poll could very well be an outlier. In my mind that calls into question his Daily Tracking Poll, but time will tell. Here’s the poll I was talking about, interesting that it comes from a partisan organization:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2078270/posts
“I think Scott hurt his credibility and the credibility of his polls when he admitted the other day on FOX that his latest FL poll could very well be an outlier. In my mind that calls into question his Daily Tracking Poll...”
Better he should publicly admit that his model inputs could be wrong than try to hide it. Very few people know that Zogby made two final calls in 2004, one with the race dead even and one with Kerry winning handily, and then removed the Kerry winning handily one as soon as it became clear Kerry had lost. That kind of shenanigans should undermine a pollster’s credibility, yet people still give Zogby credence. Other people, not me.
Ras is the only pollster I know of who will publicly admit when he thinks he has an outlier. He also admitted in the discussion of his daily tracking poll yesterday that, because of his party weighting, it was not catching the wave for McCain/Palin that was evident in the raw numbers. My guess is he’ll tweak his model, probably October 1st when June’s numbers are due to roll off anyway. Right now he’s averaging June, July and August party identification numbers. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that he will use only September’s numbers in his October polling. Another thing he could do is project a trendline out to November 4th, but that runs the risk of overstating McCain’s final support since he is probably at the peak of his convention bump right now.
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