Batman, Jeff, et al, now that Rasmussen has got Kerry up, do you still hold to your opinion that his polls are biased and worthless? http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm -- Monday October 25, 2004--The latest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll shows Senator John Kerry with 48% of the vote and President George W. Bush with 46%. The Tracking Poll is updated daily by noon Eastern. This is the first time Senator Kerry has held the lead since August 23. The 48.4% for Kerry is the Senator's highest total since August 17. Data for this update is collected on a three-day rolling average basis and Senator Kerry held the lead on each of the three days of polling. When "leaners" are included, Kerry leads 49% to 48%. Leaners are those who initially do not express a preference for Bush or Kerry. We ask them a follow-up question to determine which way they are leaning at the moment.
I still believe the polls to have a very limited value due to their inaccuracy. I tend to agree that the samples they are getting or for that matter, aren't getting still make the polls flawed. They might put the race in a general neighborhood that's accurate, but theses 2-5% moves in the polls mean very little.
small movements w/in the margin of error w/o any major news stories to cause them are pretty meaningless regardless of the poll or whoever is running it.
Due to my age, I'm pretty new when it comes to politics. I followed the Bush/Gore campaigns a bit 4 years ago, and basically nothing before that. I've always been under the impression that polls are pretty accurate. Obviously, the biggest sticking point is the description of "likely voters". But at least it should be fairly well, considering how much both candidates rely on the polls. Can anyone tell me just how accurate has polls been in recent past has been compared to election results?
Seriously, it seems like just about every poll taken in the last year has been within the margin of error, so what's the point? No more polls until November 2nd. Please.
Samfisher put it best. November 2nd is going to be a glorious a day. I will be having a victory party celebration at my house from 3rd thru the 7th by the grace of God. Kerry = 280 Bush = 242 Tied = 16 http://2.004k.com/tracking/
The only poll I will pay any attention to will be on November 2. Even then, it will have to wait until AFTER the Rox play.
As an aside, I had lunch the other day with a group that included political science professor. The professor said he thought that Kerry would win. He was fairly sure, which I am not btw. His reasonings are that W had locked in his core voters (with the gay marriage issue and its associated state wide referendums), that W had spent $160 million without much effect to get swing voters to vote for him, and that independent voters historically break 2-to-1 for the challenger. For W to make headway, the prof said W would have to get his approval rating above 50%, which given the current state of the economy and Iraq he did not think was possible. The prof also said that the Democrats had done a good job with voter registration and anticipated a high voter turnout for the election.
I think we are going to be amazed and stunned by the huge voter turnout on Nov 2. The American People already rejected Bush in 2000. Now they are pissed and will show up to make sure he is rejected again.
That has been the key all along getting your people out to vote. Don't let many kid you before the debates a large majority of people knew which way they would vote. I'm sure some minds were changed since then by the debates or other issues but in teh end the election will be decided by which party can rally it's core to get people out to vote (especially in the swing states). As for teh high voter registration I agree it is great. But let's see how great of turnout we have next week. With all the polls split downt eh middle it all comes down to which party can get people out to vote.
I rather not say. I do suspect that the prof is not a registered Republican (if that is where you were going). I assume political science professors have a better handle on the elections than us in the unwashed masses. That is why I mention it. Just another point of reference. For all I know, this prof is some biased, day dreamer who isn't really following this election that closely (but I doubt it). I suspect that if he wanted Kerry to win but thought W was going to win he would have said so.
basso: I don't think I ever said Rasmussen's polls are worthless. I just said they were a right leaning polling firm. That's common knowledge. I still check them at least daily along with Zogby, WP/ABC, ARG, TIPP and Survey USA. Kerry being up in Rasmussen while he's down in Zogby is pretty worthless though. If you go to Real Clear Politics or Polling Report, you can get the latest updates from everywhere and see how incredibly contradictory they all are. I still look at electoral-vote.com, but the seesaw gives me a headache. Lately Will's daily (sometimes twice daily) election update on slate is my favorite indicator, but even that's just for fun. The polls are good for trends when the trends are reliable at all, outside MOE, for a couple of days at least. Here are the states where they're not: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Hawaii. That's ten states that are virtually impossible to predict right now. Any one of them could be this year's Florida, or they could all be this year's Florida. In the face of that, a bump in popular vote in either direction, especially inside MOE, is a pretty big non-story.
The closer we get, the more I think we're going to have recounts in 3-4 states. Although I'm not sure how it works with touch screen voting.
Polls are a very difficult science at times.... although they can be accurate... Even the fact that they now have caller id.. makes it difficult for even phone polls to be random... there can easily be a characteristic that makes some people less lilkely to answer than others when they see who it is on caller id
