Posted on 09/25/2008 10:06:04 AM PDT by Chet 99
Gallup: McCain 46%, Obama 46% (+3% !!!)
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
These polls are making me absolutely nuts; can’t help watching them but the results are so baffling. I believe I will just have to wait until November 4.....
The differences between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palen could not be more stark.
Something isn’t right about these polls.
I submit that the margin of error may be a lot larger, by factors of two or three or more, than the statisticians say they are.
Gallup's polls fluctuate a bit more because it comes closest to using a scientifically reliable methodology. The truth is that the sample sizes that pollsters use are too small to avoid such fluctuations. Most other pollsters attempt to hide this fact by playing games with the raw numbers (e.g. weighting by party affiliation, which usually means oversampling Democrats -- the favorite Jedi mind trick of media polls in order to inflate Obama's numbers). Gallup weights its polls only by general population demographics, although it does ask respondents questions regarding their ideology as well and publishes this information on a weekly basis at its website.
As for who is actually ahead, these Gallup polls are of registered voters. Gallup has recently posted an article noting that its likely voter samples tend to be about 4 points more GOP than its registered voter samples. This was certainly true four years ago, in what was historically one of the highest turnout elections on record.
That does seem to be the case. I guess the way to prove it would be to watch in 4-5 days if the numbers from Rass are comparable to the numbers gallop released today.
Yes, even if they used the DEM+3 that was the final result of the awful 2006 elections, McCain would be up 2 or 3.
Insane! There is no way!
I’m not a poll wonk, but I do think we tend to judge pollsters by their last showing. The truth is, though, unless an election is a blowout, there’s enough wiggle room in the margins of error for most pollsters to come within a few points of being right in a close race, even if they pick the loser. One of them, by sheer luck, will be more right than the others.
If pollster X says Smith will beat Jones by 2 points in his final poll, and pollster Y says Jones will beat Smith by one point in his final poll, both would likely be within the margin of error if Smith did indeed beat Jones by 2. But we’d remember that X was exactly right, and that Y picked the loser four years later at the next election. But it may just have been luck that X was right. When dealing with a close election, where most of the possible outcomes are off the table (i.e., someone winning 63-37 or 58-42), there are only a few possible point spreads and someone’s bound to hit it just about right just by coincidence. The other pollsters, who missed it by a point or two, look worse by comparison, especially if they predicted the loser to win 51-49 and instead the other guy won 51-49.
I think Rasmussen got close to being right in 2004. But that probably doesn’t mean he’s better, just that he lucked out. Someone else may luck out this time.
I believe a significant number of people who have in the past voted Democrat are not telling pollsters the truth when surveyed. Given the attempt by their own party to label them racists, they are currently saying they will vote for Obama but may well vote for McCain come November. We’ll see but, I’m getting the feeling that this won’t be as close as 2000 and 2004.
McCain’s lead in Independents and his competitiveness amongst women are major differences for Republicans this cycle and the big question is those Reagan Democrats and, as I said before, they may well break for McCain in the privacy of the voting booth. Given the unbroken string of insults Mr. Obama, his campaign and the DNC have hurled at them both lately and in the primary season, they may feel little to no party loyalty at this point.
I could be wrong (wouldn’t be the first time) but, I don’t think I am. We’ll see in November.
That poll DID NOT have 20% blacks in it’s sample. They sampled extra blacks and did not include them in the horse race poll.
I had a post about this earlier. Here is what I wrote:
By my calculation, in Rasmussen Obama had an extremely good polling day (of outlier proportions by Rasmussen standards) on Tuesday and a good day yesterday (but not of outlier proportions). Rasmussen further commented that he finished most of his polling before the President’s speech last night.
If you disregard the outlier day and look at Monday and Wednesday, I calculate that Rasmussen has it 47-46 Obama, which is squarely in the ballpark of where he has been the last week or so. It’s the outlier day (Tuesday) that is throwing these numbers out of whack. That day drops off of Saturday morning’s result.
LOL. Not to mention crushing my sales.
Re: “In 1988, Dukaka was ahead of Bush1 by 17% nationwide. But in the election, Dukaka lost to Bush who won 40 states! LOL”
You’re correct, of course. Many of us tend to forget how things went in past elections — thanks for reminding us to keep calm and stay the course.
Rush is talking about this and other good polls now!
Man I love the ad saying Obama voted PRESENT on the economy!
This can only get better folks!!!
Probably so.
But I still like Rasmussen and Battleground better than the rest mostly because they don't jerk us up and down as fast as most of the polls. Part of that is methodology I'm sure but some of it is, I'm hoping, a reluctance to play politics with their data which is common in many of the polls that we read daily.
you forgot NYC Republican.
I like it.
That's not saying that the ABC/WaPo poll wasn't biased in any number of ways. Just that oversampling blacks doesn't show bias (unless the oversample wasn't factored out in the final results — which would be an egregious error, or blatant bias).
I don’t get how these effing polls could move up down up down like this. Who are these people that could change to Obama then McCain just like that? It’s just crazy!!!!
If Gallup has it tied with this economic crisis then we are looking good. People still won’t go with Obama with everything going for the dems this year.
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