Posted on 10/30/2008 9:50:54 PM PDT by Chet 99
As the date of the US election grows closer, opinion polls are showing Democratic candidate Barack Obama is still on track to become America's first black president.
Several new opinion polls are released each day - dozens each week.
But Republican nominee John McCain's campaign says its internal figures suggest that the result on election day may be much closer than the independent polls are suggesting.
At each of his campaign rallies, Senator McCain loves to mention that he is behind in the polls but that he is going to fool the pundits and pull off an upset win on election day. It is a line he repeated in an interview with Larry King.
"I know we're still the underdog. We're now two or three or four points down and we've got six days to go to make that up but it's not a matter of worry. You and I have been together long enough, you know, I love the underdog status. I just want to leave that status by the time the polls close," he said.
The opinion polls show that not only is he behind nationally, he is trailing Senator Obama in key battleground states, including those won by President George W Bush in 2004.
But there are so many polls it is hard to know which one to believe.
Karl Rove is a former adviser to Mr Bush, who is credited with orchestrating his two election victories. Even he cannot believe how many opinion polls are being released.
"We're all getting pollitis here. In the first 24 days of October this year, there have been 177 national polls. By comparison in 2004, during the first 24 days of October, there were 55. We've had 300 per cent more polls in 2008," he said.
Senator McCain's lead pollster, Bill McInturff, has released a memo saying that next week's election may easily be too close to call.
He writes "the McCain campaign has made impressive strides over the last weeks of tracking. The campaign is functionally tied across the battleground states, with our numbers improving sharply over the last four tracks".
Functionally tied, as Mr McInturff explains, "means as a pollster that you're within margin of error".
"If you're in two or three points it means that on any given day you're going to see some fluctuation variation. So one day we could be a point ahead, the next day you're two points down," Mr McInturff said.
"Functionally tied was my way as a pollster of saying that I believe that we are within margin of error across these incredibly important battleground states."
Mr McInturff also says his polling shows that about 8 per cent of voters are either undecided or will not tell the pollster who they will vote for.
"We did a special study where we looked at that 8 per cent and we looked at who they were," he said.
"Who they were are older voters who live in rural America who are somewhat downscale, not college graduates.
"In the past they tell us that in 2004 they voted for George Bush by a two to one margin. And given their partisan roots, given their Bush over Carey split ... I believe they're going to break very heavily towards John McCain and I think that's roughly an additional thee plus points that will shift to McCain as all the votes are counted."
"If you take a functionally tied race and you add three or four points as these people break, guess what? The race is tied."
Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she studies public opinion, says it is difficult to decipher the opinion polls.
"The polls have certainly proliferated. I sometimes wonder whether they're a little like paper money in Argentina; a currency with less value than they've had in the past because of the vast number of them," she said.
Some of the opinion polls are saying that Senator Obama has a very big lead over Senator McCain, up to double digits. Others are saying that his lead has narrowed to just a couple of points.
But Ms Bowman says while "there is some significant variation in the polls ... in some ways most of the major polls have actually been pretty stable".
"Recently in [pollster] Mark Blumenthal's compilation he argues that the Obama lead has narrowed ever so slightly in recent days, it's now at about 6.7 points in their overall estimate of the national trends," Ms Bowman said.
"And you see a little bit more movement in the Republican direction in some of the daily tracking polls, but still a picture of stability in some ways if you look at one individual poll and then compare it to that pollster's results a few days later."
Ms Bowman says she expects the gap between Senator Obama and Senator McCain to close, but the race is "Obama's to lose".
"I mean, certainly the McCain [camp] wants to suggest that we still have a race in order to get Republicans out to the polls but most of the other national polls, non-proprietary data, the kind that McCain's pollster's conducting, have it within a pretty similar range, again all suggesting an Obama lead," she said.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
And that he will....spectacularly!
The polls can go hang, what I want to know is:
Who won the Hollaween Mask sales race!
I read that Gov Palin was the most popular on Yahoo!, but that is not the same, we won the cookie contest, we need the 3rd grade vote contest and *gulp* the Redskins to defeat the Steelers on Monday Night Football..
We should also keep in mind the “feedback loop” effect of polls and 24-hour news stations/sites, as well as the subtle and not so subtle effects of the fact that the majority of pollsters are likely Obama voters. See http://www.zombietime.com/lefts_big_blunder/ for more info.
That Redskins streak ended in ‘04.
Sorry but the Weekly Reader kids picked Obama by a huge margin:
This was released Wednesday.
Hopefully when McCain and Sarah get into the Non-Blackhouse they will make some changes and laws concerning future polling.
The Obamedia runs the polls. The Obamedia is in the tank all the way for their “messiah.” Why would anyone in their right mind believe what they are saying? Honesty and truth are things that the Obamedia no longer believes in. Media types all have their own agenda and they’ve all developed a “whatever it takes” mentality to push their agenda to the people.
We still have the Lakers streak!
And what about the mask sales?
OOPS..that link isn’t working.
Here:
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-weeklyreader1029.artoct29,0,3918633.story
It's so obvious that the polls are crooked once you look at the internals...if they actually publish them.
Indeed, your link leads to a 404 error Snarkyt.
True, they aren’t worth a hill of beans. Just a bunch of balogna.
thanks..I think.
1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2008...
I know, I know, but we should have seen this one coming.
Obama has been in the media like a celebrity for MONTHS, and on RS, and US Weekly, and on MTV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.