Posted on 09/22/2012 6:00:35 AM PDT by markomalley
The war of the polls gets a little wearisome for non-wonks, but well keep this short and sweet. The mainstream media are rigging the polls. No headliner there, but just how bad is it? It could mean that Romney has as much as a double-digit lead of 54-44 in Realityville. How, you ask? Because the Democrats are fooling themselves in terms of likely voter party identification and voter enthusiasm.
An Ipsos/Reuters poll trumpets a five point lead for Barack Obama, and since the rest of the media keeps tight as a herd of cows before a thunderstorm, millions believe it. Such rainmaking, or using polls to make results instead of report them, is common in the pro-Democrat mainstream media.
But these polls are bogus, to put it mildly. Simply put, the mainstream media are mixing in registered voters (which skews Democrat, even though many might not vote), and playing games with the Republican-Democrat-Independent breakdown.
Rasmussen has this breakdown as about 37.6% Republican (and a record number since November 2002), 33.3% Democrat, and 29.2% Other. As the Examiner reports, the Reuters/Ipsos poll has 52.5 percent Democrats, 37.6 percent Republicans and 9.2 independents among the 2,078 registered voters and 1,437 likely voters.
Thus, Reuters/Ipsos is oversampling Democrats by about 15% and undersampling and misrepresenting Independents. Independents are favoring Romney, not leaning Democrat, so it is dishonest to lump together Independents and Democrats.
Many more strongly disapprove of the presidents job in office than strongly approve, the majority dislike big government policies, and most believe the country is on the wrong track. More trust Mitt Romney on the economy, which is overwhelmingly this elections most important issue, and the presidents lead on foreign policy is shriveling.
If anything, the presidential polling should be neck-in-neck. The only landslide here is the mainstream medias reputation crumbling and their continued slide into irrelevance.
Sorry, you are right that he is using a +3D model, which I agree with 100%. No argument there.
Which shows things have gotten bad for 0 since 2008 which was a +7 year.
But mid-terms are very different, different dynamics, different cross-section of the population voting, etc. So it is hard to correlate to 2010 which was a +1.3R year.
I don't know exactly how things will be in terms of party ID gap, but +3R is not realistic. It is probably anywhere from even to +4D.
Good. He’s due for a big fall then. The guys in CO say Romney will win and they’ve never been wrong. Streaks are made to be broken, so one of these “perfect” records will blow up.
Here ya go. Funny AND so sad it will make you laugh and cry at the same time.
In fact, the turnout model from 2010 could be exactly the same, in that a lot of Republicans who stay home in non-presidential years also come out---just like more Dems do.
I worked for a company during the 2008 election and we did political polling for the presidency. One question was, do you think this country is going in the right direction or the wrong direction. We also asked who they would vote for. I knew that Obama was going to win based on the numbers of people I polled. The economy question was a dead give away.
No he did not. That is his self proclaimed propaganda but Fordham University non partisan study of pollsters in 2008 did not even name him as being in the top 20. It did name Rassumussen, who Silver calls a partisan pollster, number 1
Hope your right. Can’t say I am a fan of Romney. Both campaigns sure acting like Obama is ahead. Damn near every swing state poll is bad. I am not optimistic. Thing about silver it is based on math not opinion. Now if all the polls are wrong then he will be wrong. Somehow that does not seem like a good bet. Speaking of bets Intrade is moving huge in the last week.
Meow.
Silver guessed that Obama would do better then expected in 2008 because that is what he wanted to happens. When reality happened to fit his opinion he was hailed as this great genius.
No, like Zogby in 2000 he just got lucky.
Baseball statistical analysis is completely different then political polling. Baseball is hard data. You either hit the ball or you do not. Political polling is much more subjective. Pollsters have to build their poling sample on trying to guess who is going to show up and who will not.
Silver is basing his analysis on polling assuming Obama will do better in 2012 then he did in 2008 in turning out voters. He is basing that on an assumption that cell phone use is more prevalent now then 2008 and pollsters do not accurately reflect that change. Like Conservatives looking for a mythical “Bradley effect” in the 2008 polls to explain McCain worse then expected showing, Silver is looking for a mythical “cell phone effect” to explain Obama poorer then expected polling numbers now.
You see any evidence to back up either of Silver's assumption?
Silver is not a pollster
Exactly which is why calming he hit 2008 and 2010 right on the nose is nonsense
I think this is a case of sexual politics trumping objective analysis. Either Silver is going to have to massively walk back his analysis before the election or he is going to become a punch line to a joke.
Please bear in mind the linked Gallup enthusiasm data is old. The latest data actually shows greater Dem enthusiasm at least in swing states, but nothing that should really be of great concern, as some of that probably is due to Obama’s constant ad campaign this summer and the DNC.
But, let’s not pretend the GOP has a 20-point enthusiasm advantage anymore either.
Intrade is funny. It had Obamacare being overturned in the USSC by 90%. The CO guys are also based on math. Im not going to give you details, but a fellow Freeper just sent me an e-mail about absentee ballots in three southern OH counties and the Rs are CRUSHING it. If these numbers hold up even in Montgomery (Dayton) and the REDDER counties, Obama is toast.
I'm not sure what your picture says as it isn't showing up for me, but I agree with your statement.
Personally, I think Romney is running a weak campaign. Others here may disagree, but that's the way I see it at this point. Hope he can gain some ground in the debates.
With all the supposed gaffes and missteps by Romney being portrayed in the media every day. Zero should be way ahead of Romney in the polls...yet that’s not the case. I wonder why.
I bet Cuyahoga Co. will go for 0bama.
The pain you feel today is the strength you'll have tomorrow.
My daughter works in a highly democratic bastion in NJ in an inner city school. The dems in that city are freaking out about what they see as a loss to their stronghold locally, as a result of O possibly losing this. They have started to use the schools to promote the O agenda, get out the vote, etc. It’s outrageous, but I can smell the fear. Even they know what we know, , , the polls are not reflecting reality.
Duh. Just as Cincy and Warren County will overwhelmingly go for Romney. That’s why those two really don’t matter-—they offset each other. The battleground in OH is the big middle swath from Dayton up through about Akron, then the SE, which is oil heavy and has shifted away from the Dems. How much? We’ll see. But for Franklin and Hamilton counties to have these kinds of R advantages is, I think, significant and this was the kind of warning sign we saw in 08 (i.e., early voting disadvantages) and dismissed. Well, it’s the Dems’ turn to dismiss these now.
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