I understand your trepidation, but consider this: It’s possible that the reason even gold-standard pollsters like Rasmussen are oversampling Dems is that they are using 2008 turnout models. If so, the polling isn’t intentionally inaccurate, but would have inaccurate results. Remember that almost all pollsters got Wisconsin wrong because they used a turnout model that didn’t come close to accounting for the righteous anger among conservatives and independents over the scummy tactics by the Left.
The bottom line is that these polls are dicey at this point in the race no matter what they show, whether by “this point in the race” we mean right after the convention or mid-September. In mid-September 1980 Carter was on track to victory. In the week after the Dem convention in 1984 Mondale was up by five. I’m not sure any pollster would have predicted a 49 state landslide where the defeated candidate came within a quarter of a point of losing his home state to boot. In mid-September 2000 Bush was being declared “toast” by some analysts. The last polls in October had him winning the popular vote by several points.
And remember President Dukakis? After all, how could a guy who was up 17% over a mushy liberal Republican businessman fail to close the deal in November, right?
I may be wrong, but the big problem with comparing the polls in 2008 to now is enthusiasm. Polls in 2008 oversampled Dems to reflect the gap in enthusiasm. Now they’re oversampling Dems despite an enthusiasm gap that runs the exact opposite way. When the convention bounce showed up, a big part of it was that Dems in blue states were fired up by a convention aimed mainly at bolstering them. That’s why the national numbers moved significantly and the battleground state numbers didn’t.
In 2004, I predicted a solid Bush win by analyzing where the campaigns were running ads and sending the Prez and VP candidates. It was more reliable than the polls of the time, to the point that, when I heard about the “Kerry landslide” exit polls in the early afternoon, I rejected them in the same way I would reject a report that Abe Vigoda won the Olympic decathalon.
Thanks Mr. Silverback for rational reasoning. I for some reason always took polls with a grain of salt and truthfully have pretty well been spot on through the years. Obama threw me, I honestly never felt he had a chance, especially when McCain was up in many polls as high as 9 points.
Then, of course, the orchestrated “financial collapse”. Obama will win again primarily because this nation is comprised of too many different minorities, when melded together, become the majority. He has played every group like a fiddle and they will come out for him, again.