Why the polls are incorrect: Is Mc Cain actually in the lead? (Vanity)

Hoosiermama | Vanity

[Lady Heron]

MCCain is probably ahead. 5 friends of mine who have voted d there whole life are not voting for odumbo and they live in bucks county pa. How many others are out there? Just ask puma

If you go and talk to all the dems you know, you find a huge number are not voting or voting McCain. I have never seen this before. He only has 3 dems I know voting for him out of all the dems I know who voted Clinton, Gore and Kerry. He does not have his base in flyover country and is relying on the youth vote, and voter fraud to win. That is if he can make up the votes in his base he lost.

Those that need to rely on the youth vote are called losers.

[Dasaji]

Let me just say that there is no way Obama is going to win Hillary’s 18 million voters. I’d guess half of them voted for Hillary because they saw her as the lesser of two evils.

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This is what I keep wondering...what about Hillary’s 18 million?

On a side note, while driving through the next town over from me which is heavily dem, there are *very few* Obama/Biden signs. However, in 2000 and 2004, the town was *full* of Gore/Lieberman and Kerry/Edwards signs. . .

[justlurking]

I think it depends on your state.

In mine, you don't register with a particular party unless you vote in the party's primary. It only prevents you from voting in ANOTHER party's primary.

Your party affiliation is of no consequence on Election Day. And you are free to vote in another party's primary (but again, not more than one) during the next election cycle.

[arichtaxpayer]

Does anyone know what Caller ID says when a pollster calls? I never answer anything I don’t recognize. I’m sure many others do the same thing.

[hoosiermama]

Forgot about the autism vote. One out of six children in our schools have been diagnosed with the disease. McCain/ Palin have stated they will be hairdressing the problem....Enough said.

[sgtyork]

-—And yes, Dems are oversampled, but for the simple reason there are more dems than Republicans.

If you know anything about statistical sampling, you would know that your statement is self-contradictory.

[1curiousmind]

“The PUMAs have their own operation chaos going - telling the pollsters they are voting Obama.”

_________________________________________

Yeah. Check out the http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/

My guess is that at least 3-5 million of the Hillary voters will go with McCain over Obama.

Also, as a little anecdotal evidence, I have caller ID on my phone. I’ve been getting calls every day from a Baltimore area code. I never answer, assuming its a telemarketer. Yesterday I finally answered just to see which company. It was a polling company.

I have no proof, but my hunch is that part of the oversampling is due to this...do more conservatives have caller ID then libs? are they less likely to answer and not immediately hang up?

again, no proof. but I think the answer is yes.

[Cheetahcat]

Pray for W, McCuda and Our Troops

Amen.

[Scotswife]

I think republicans are more likely to ignore those calls because they have better things to do.

Libs love to b*tch and whine - more libs would love to receive that call - more repubs would love to ignore it.

[HerrBlucher]

I don’t know I haven’t looked at the internals, and of course, those are different situations. With OStalin, we have many factors to weigh.....oversampling, bradley effect, puma’s etc. If these polls are the same a few days before the election I will give them more credibility (but not much more), right now its all push poll all the time.

In any case, none of us can know for sure if the polls are correct until election day.

[The Fop]

I live in New York, and was a registered Democrat for many years. I became a conservative after 9/11, but didn’t feel the need to change my party registration. I actually liked the idea of crossing party lines. Then I moved to another neighborhood two years ago. I sent in a form to the board of elections giving them my change of address and switching my party affiliation from D to R. They sent me a new voting card with my new address, but they didn’t change my party affiliation.

An oversight, or something more sinister?

[Tribune7]

If Repubs registered as RATS for Operation Chaos in the primary, when would they switch back? Election day?

I suspect most wouldn't do it until after Election Day simply to avoid complicating things. There is no reason for them to switch. OTOH, you would also think that the polling would indicate a greater dissatisfaction with Obama among Dems if Operation Chaos was a factor.

With that said, I think the polls are inaccurate and McCain will win.

[tuffie1]

I heard a McCain spokesperson on Brian and the Judge this morning and she said their internal polling was much tighter and they fairly easily had 260 EV and it was the remaining 10 they were needing.

[Harry Wurzbach]

They’re mostly young kids. Young kids tend to be more liberal of course, and can taint the results with their own bias.

Right. I've seen some funky internals in the national polls, like the race being tied between men and Obama far ahead among all women. Or more self-described Republicans defecting to Obama than Democrats defecting to McCain.

I think the pollsters are going to be off because, other than their biases, they don't know how to handle cell phone users. Plus, I would argue that Republicans/conservatives are generally going to be less available to pollsters during the day than Democrats/liberals. We'd rather talk with our families and with our friends than with some random stranger on the phone. But we're old-fashioned like that.

Yes, "youth" operate primarily on cells too. But try as lefty campaigns might, they don't show up.

Yeah, turnout will be higher this year, but I don't see Obama getting a net gain in votes over Kerry's total in '04. And finally, there is my highly scientific observation that most Americans would rather hang with John McCain at a BBQ, bar, restaurant, football game, etc...than Obama. That is, they could see themselves kicking back and listening to Johnny Mac's war stories over a cold one than talking to The Cold One for more than 15 seconds in a social setting.

I think my theory holds with a little backtesting. GWB over Kerry and Gore? Check. Clinton over Dole and GHWB? Check. GHWB over Dukaka? You bet. Reagan over Mondale and Carter? Hells yeah.

[i_dont_chat]

I believe McCain will win.

Basing it entirely on the crowds showing up to listen to Govenor Palin, and comparing the small crowds coming to listen to Obama and Biden.

The GOP base is fired up. Prayers are going up. People are talking about the socialist leanings of Obama.

And the media is being trashed EVERYWHERE.

I don’t think people believe the polls. The Dems are just going along, hoping the polls are right. But deep down, I don’t think the Dems believe the media any more than we do!

[Scotswife]

“That is, they could see themselves kicking back and listening to Johnny Mac’s war stories over a cold one than talking to The Cold One for more than 15 seconds in a social setting.”

An evening with Obama. I wonder what the topics would be?
Global warming? MalcolmX? Jesus was a black man?

Sounds fun.

[HerrBlucher]

Powell did contribute to the McCain campaign—not Obama’s for whatever that is worth.

If that contribution was after the pubbie primaries, then Powell will endorse Mac over bambi. But if it was to advance Mac in the primaries then all bets are off.

[OKSooner]

Here's a theory that hasn't gotten much play around here.

It's all a great game show, and its outcome is predicted if not fixed.

The poll-taking and planning is such a refined science these days that the puppet-masters of the State and the media know exactly what they're doing with each news event, each rally and each editorial comment.

When all the electoral votes are added up, somebody(s), somewhere, will say, "exactly".

[Bob J]

All this discussion about hanging up on pollsters affecting the result is incorrect. If the poll wants 1000 responses they will keep calling numbers until they get that many in the box. Hanging up means only that YOU’RE opinion will not be included in the poll.

The central issue here is the weighting. If they poll 1000 and get 500 dems and 500 pubs, they will throw out a certain number of the pub opinions until they reach the magic number they assume will be the % of the total vote coming from each party during that election.

This magic number is only a guess, but they base it on information they receive about registration efforts since the last election. In this case they have been swayed by the ACORN people who have been calling the pollsters and telling them their registrations are far ahead of the pubs and that they need to weight the polls that way.

But as we all know those numbers are bunk. But that’s why we see polls including more dem than pub opinions by as much as 12% even though in the 2004 election the dem/pub vote was almost 50/50.

[Andy from Chapel Hill]

Here in NC, Operation Chaos has been running for 35-40 years.

Prior to allowing independents to vote in primaries, it was necessary to register D in order to influence the outcome.
(the R’s only put up one candidate — and that was determined by the party behind closed doors) Jesse Helms used this to great advantage when we JesseCrats voted for the weakest D candidate, Harvey Gantt, and Jesse creamed him in the GE.

Proud JesseCrat for 33 years!