“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