While I believe the polls are significantly in Obama favors, I’m still not going to count on a McCain victory.
The world looks to be heading towards a depression. Sometimes, these days, I feel that if life’s going to stink anyway, might as well as taint Obama with it. Of course, this is the completely wrong strategy—Bush was facing the dotcom bust, but then 9/11 happened.
As someone who deals daily in statistics, I have to wonder: if this is a TRACKING poll, how on earth can you change your baselines and report the set as representing reality with a straight face?
The internals (for statistics’ sake) should remain constant. Otherwise, there is no way to factually discern a trend. The data points aren’t based on the same baseline!
Why would Raz (and for that matter Gallup) do this? Anyone with a background in polling, can you explain this to me? I’m coming at it from a computer programmer, statistician point of view.
But what I believe will happen regardless is that Capitalism will be the fall guy. Just like FDR gets credit for ending the depression the same socialist or worse solutions will perceived as the answer instead of what they really are, the cause.