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Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast t

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by JD88, Oct 30, 2012.

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  1. SuperBeeKay

    SuperBeeKay Member

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    lol rest of the world must be laughing. romney appears to be in contention
     
  2. DFWRocket

    DFWRocket Member

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    no real surprise. I would think that generally conservatives would be more likely than liberals to vote early. Election day voters will by much much closer..probably a slight Obama lead with those voters. Either way, you can't tell the election with the early voters. It will be a very tight race.
     
  3. Pete Chilcutt

    Pete Chilcutt Contributing Member

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    I don't get why there is so much emphasis in polls. I get you need to analyze, but I mean it is only a couple thousand of people being polled.
     
  4. R0ckets03

    R0ckets03 Contributing Member

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    Good call. Both sides finding different polls that favor their respective sides and bragging about it is a little annoying. Who gives a **** about polls. Come next week everybody will know Obama has been re-elected.
     
  5. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    This is interesting considering a Business Week article today Democrats hold an early voting advantage.
    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-29/democrats-hold-early-voting-advantage-over-republicans

    Romney may have a big edge in some states in early voting while Obama has an edge in battleground states based upon that according the Gallup article more early voting has happened in the West, South than Midwest and East. OTOH according a Time Magazine poll last week cited in the Business week article Obama has a two to one edge in Ohio among early voting.
     
  6. DFWRocket

    DFWRocket Member

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  7. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    There does seem to be something fishy with Gallup's polling this year. I am not ruling out that they may be right but they have frequently been big outliers compared to other polls.
     
  8. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

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    Gotta agree with you on this.

    I'm clearly pro-Obama anti-Romney, but I can understand how polls are going to fluctuate. Still, Gallup has been waaaaaaaaaaaay Romney. Someone please check if Mr. Gallup is getting paid off.

    This was a moveon.org article from 2004. Only found it in pdf version. The evangelical Christian thing tells me a lot.

    www.moveon.org/content/pdfs/Final-Gallup-Ad.pdf

    WHY DOES AMERICA’S TOP POLLSTER KEEP GETTING IT WRONG?

    If John Kerry believed in the Gallup poll, he might as well give up. A couple of weeks ago, a highly publicized Gallup poll of “likely voters” showed President Bush with a staggering 14-point lead.

    But wait a minute. Seven other polls of likely voters were released that same week. On average, they showed Bush with just a three-point lead. No one else came close to Gallup’s figures. And this isn’t the first time the prestigious Gallup survey has been out on a limb with pro-Bush findings.

    What’s going on here? It’s not exactly that Gallup’s cooking the books. Rather, they are refusing to fix a longstanding problem with their
    likely voter methodology. Simply put, Gallup’s methodology has predicted lately that Republican turnout on Election Day is likely to exceed Democrats’ by six to eight percentage points. But exit polls show otherwise: in each of the last two Presidential elections, Democratic turnout exceeded Republican by four to five points. That discrepancy alone can account for nearly all of Bush’s phantom 14-point lead.

    This is more than just a numbers game. Poll results profoundly affect a campaign’s news coverage as well as the public’s perception of the candidates. Two media outlets, CNN and USA Today, bear special responsibility for this problem. They pay for many of Gallup’s surveys, in exchange for the right to add their names to the polls and trumpet the results first. They wind up acting as unquestioning promotional partners, rather than as critical journalists.

    The public would be better served if journalists asked some tough questions, beginning with the Gallup Organization, which has been asked to select the audience for the Bush-Kerry “town meeting” debate on October 8.

    George Gallup Jr., son of the poll’s founder, was the longtime head of the company and now directs its non-profit research center.Why hasn’t he pushed for an update of the company’s likely voter modeling, which his own father pioneered in the 1950s?

    Gallup, who is a devout evangelical Christian, has been quoted as calling his polling “a kind of ministry.” And a few months ago, he said “the most profound purpose of polls is to see how people are responding to God.” We thought the purpose is to faithfully and factually report public opinion.
     
    #9 ROXTXIA, Oct 30, 2012
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2012
  9. jopatmc

    jopatmc Contributing Member

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    That's very interesting. And it does give me pause about the Gallup poll numbers.

    However, can you identify the same kind of bias in other polls towards Democrats??? I can.

    And the bottom line is the poll is only going to be as accurate as how it weights it's polling. It has to get close to actual voter turnout to be somewhat accurate.

    So it begs the question. What assumption are you going to make on voter turnout? Do you think Dems are going to turnout 5 points or more over Republicans in this election? Do you think they are going to turn out 10 points or more than Republicans? Do you think they are going to turn out evenly? Do you think the Republicans may actually turnout a couple points more than Dems?

    If you know what voter turnout is going to be, then you can look at the different polls and get a better gauge for which ones are going to be the most accurate going into election day.

    In my opinion, for this election cycle, because of the extreme negativity in the electorate over the economic conditions in this country and because the newness of having our first black president has worn off, I believe the energy and momentum of this election favors Mitt. Therefore, I believe that the gallup and Rasmussen polls, which are reflecting voter turnouts more similar to 04 and 00 are going to more accurately reflect actual voter turnout this election. And I believe that polls that are weighting D+5, D+8, and D+10 or more are waaaaaaay off. And even in those polls where they are running extreme Dem heavy, most of them are showing tossup. So, in my opinion, as long as Mitt continues to maintain momentum and keeps focused on the economy, it's over.

    Secondly, in most of these polls, Obama is still below 50% with a good portion of undecideds. History shows that the odds are very high that undecideds break in favor of the challenger at about a 70% ratio.

    Now, those are my assumptions. You've got your assumptions. You can assume Dems are going to turnout 5 points or more than Republicans. You can assume that over 50% of the undecideds are going to vote for the incumbent this year. And you may be right. But the odds are against you.

    So, what are your assumptions?
     
  10. Major

    Major Member

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    Polls don't make assumptions about voter turnout by party ID. They weight by age, race, etc but do no such thing for party. Your actual argument is that, for reasons that you have yet to explain, all the pollsters are magically randomly calling too many people that are Democrats, despite the fact that there is no history of this every happening before.

    This, also, is completely false if you actually bother to look at real data.
     
  11. jopatmc

    jopatmc Contributing Member

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    Polls do make assumptions regarding voter turnout, Major. Look it up.

    Provide proof that a distinctive majority of undecideds do not fall in favor of the challenger, Major. I've got the proof they do. You show historical proof that the majority of undecideds don't fall in favor of the challenger. Don't point to one election. That's just one election. Don't point to the anomaly. Prove that in most elections undecideds vote for the incumbent.
     
  12. DimeDropper

    DimeDropper Member

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    Gallup relies on corporate polling, hence they blow the Republicans.
     
  13. Rocketman95

    Rocketman95 Hangout Boy

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    You're the one who made the claim. It's on you to back it up.

    Dwight. David. Howard.
     
  14. jopatmc

    jopatmc Contributing Member

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    No, sorry. Major is the one trying to prove the anomaly is the normality. The evidence that most undecided voters break for the challenger is abundant and clear. All anybody has to do is punch a couple keystrokes on google. But the evidence is not clear and abundant for your claim. Major has the burden of proving that most undecided voters break for the incumbent.
     
  15. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

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    My assumptions?

    Gallup looks like it has a right-leaning bias, Rasmussen is proven as pro-conservative. There are a couple of others that tend to lean left.

    Generally, when I see a poll that leans way too far in one direction, it makes me suspicious. I don't like Romney, but I'd admit if the President were doomed, as John McCain was four years ago (he got run over by the Obama machine, and McCain's campaign wasn't the best, but I'm not here to criticize him).

    When I see a poll saying "Romney leads Obama by 5/6/7 percentage points among likely voters", I think, Did they catch the President kissing Ahmadinejad and can prove it wasn't photoshopped? Was the poll conducted in Oklahoma?

    But if I saw a poll that showed those names reversed, I'd be equally suspicious.

    The bottom line is, I don't trust the polls. I think some tend to ignore people who don't have landlines. Some people won't answer the phone because they're sick of all the political calls. Some people this. Some people that.

    In the end, Obama has the advantage of the path to 270, but this is going to be a tight race in the end.

    But can we agree that WE LOVE THE ROCKETS? :)
     
  16. jopatmc

    jopatmc Contributing Member

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    LOL, what advantage does Obama of the path to 270?



    And yes, Go Rox!
     
  17. Pizza_Da_Hut

    Pizza_Da_Hut I put on pants for this?

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    Its funny, because outside D&D I tend to like you and BigTexxx's posts. Half the time I even agree with you. It goes to show, if the Rockets have a good season this year maybe we don't even end up talking about politics that much. Heck, since we got Harden I can say I've spent less time lurking in the D&D section myself...
     
  18. Rocketman95

    Rocketman95 Hangout Boy

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    Google it, Mr. Howard.
     
  19. Cannonball

    Cannonball Contributing Member

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    Based upon the states that are pretty much already decided, he needs fewer EV's to get there. Of the undecided states, he has to win fewer of them than Romney does to get to 270. He's also polling ahead of Romney in most of these states. What part of this do you not understand? Right now it's easier, and thus more likely, for Obama to get to 270 than it for Romney.
     

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