He’s only down by 3 nationally, while Ras’ battleground numbers still have 0bambi up by 5-10 in swing states. Since states numbers usually lack the national poll by 1-2 weeks, it means the numbers will show up nicely for McCain by Nov 4.
That's not how it works... State polls are lagging indicators, but only until a state poll is done... meaning... This Ras poll just came out... If it shows a tightening, than a state poll done a few days ago is irrelevant... If you did a state poll concurrent with the national poll, they should be roughly consistent...
The best analogy I can think of is stock prices... If you quote a price for GE stock from a week ago, and the market jumps 300 points, then the best indicator of how the market's doing is the INDEX... You can make a guess that if the market shoots up, GE probablywill as well... If you look up the price of GE, then THAT becomes more relevant than the overall market level, for that stock.
Does that make any sense?
Is there a requirement that says that a certain percentage of people from each state have to be polled in these national polls? Or can half the people in a survey be from CA, NY, NJ, MD, IL, DC and MA?
Also, if Obama is really up by so much in some of those blue states, BUT McCain is practically tied with Obama, then doesn’t that mean McCain is actually doing quite well everywhere else?
No, they don't. A poll in a particular state shows the last 3-4 days in that state just like the national polls do. For example, the LA Times/Bloomberg polls for Ohio and Florida that came out yesterday (10/28) were taken on 10/24-27.
Agreed. The MSM will shift it’s focus to the lagging state numbers to avoid reporting the more up to date national ones.
Ras also has Obama up by 27 in California, which has almost 10% of the US population. Assuming that Obama probably also has significant leads in New York and Illinois, how can he possibly lead by only three nationally and still have leads in Viginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio? Something does not compute here.