Gallup Daily: Obama 52%, McCain 42% Among Likely Voters PRINCETON, NJ -- Barack Obama leads John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviewing conducted Wednesday through Friday by an identical 52% to 42% margin among both traditional likely voters and expanded likely voters. Obama leads by a similar 52% to 41% margin among all registered voters. http://www.gallup.com/poll/111661/Gallup-Daily-Obama-52-McCain-42-Among-Likely-Voters.aspx
Obama has 5-point lead over McCain Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll Sat Nov 1, 2008 11:49am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama's lead over Republican rival John McCain dipped slightly to 5 points with three days left in the race for the White House, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Saturday. Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, down from a 7-point advantage on Friday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. McCain, who made solid gains in Friday's single day of polling, sliced Obama's lead among independents from 15 points to 6 points and among women from 9 points to 4 points. "There is no doubt that McCain made some gains," said pollster John Zogby. "It is enough to raise the question, is McCain making a move?" Obama's support dropped below the 50 percent mark after two consecutive days at that level. McCain's support has never moved above the 45 percent mark in the more than three weeks the tracking poll has been taken. Obama has led McCain in every national opinion poll since late September, and McCain also trails in many of the key battleground states including Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. But McCain and his campaign aides say he is clawing back, and McCain enlisted the help of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the battleground state of Ohio on Friday. "I know a winning campaign when I see one," McCain said. "We're a couple of points back. Arnold said it best. The Mac is back." The tracking poll showed Obama still holds an 8-point edge among Catholics and a 6-point lead among men. The Illinois senator led among all age groups except those voters between the ages of 30 and 49. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, trails by 5 points among voters with a member of the military in their family. The Arizona senator was also winning over only 26 percent of Hispanics, a fast-growing group that gave President George W. Bush more than 40 percent of their vote in 2004. Obama also does a better job of bridging the ideological divide. He is attracting 19 percent of self-described conservatives, the poll found, while McCain gains only 6 percent of liberals. Independent Ralph Nader received 2 percent in the national survey, and Libertarian Bob Barr was at 1 percent. About 2 percent of voters remain undecided. The rolling tracking poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, surveyed 1,201 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day's results are added, while the oldest day's results are dropped to monitor changing momentum. The U.S. presidency is determined by which candidate wins the Electoral College, which has 538 members apportioned by population in each state and the District of Columbia. Electoral votes are allotted on a winner-take-all basis in all but two states, which divide them by congressional district. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN3134134020081101
ZOGBY SUNDAY UPDATE: Zogby is going to hurt himself trying to dance around and individually explain his huge one day poll variances. You can close the book on McCain's one-day, one-point lead on Friday's polling. It was a complete fluke. Saturday's numbers have Obama by 10, 52/42. I don't know who is more responsible for the blather: Drudge for splashing it in bold on his website or Zogby for his chatter blatter on his daily results. Someone should tell him that since he says one day doesn't make a trend, why talk about each day's numbers. Just comment on the trend. I get the impression he likes being part of the news. McCain is buried. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1627 Pollster John Zogby: "Obama has consolidated his lead over McCain. His single day lead today was back to 52%-42%. He leads by 10 among independents and has solidified his base. He leads among Hispanics by38 points, African Americans by 88, 18-24 year olds by 36, 18-29 year olds by 25, 25-34 year olds by 16, women by 8, and men by 3. He has a 17 point lead among those who have already voted, 22 by those who have registered to vote in the past 6 months, Moderates by 34, Catholics by 10. He even receives 21% support among Conservatives. "So what happened to give McCain a one-point lead in the one-day polling on Friday? It was a day of consolidation for him, too. He had been losing support among key groups and began to regain some of his own base. He now leads by 21 points among NASCAR fans, 9 among investors, 6 among voters in armed forces households, and 2 among voters over 65 years old. "Remember, as I said yesterday, one day does not make a trend. This is a three-day rolling average and no changes have been tectonic. A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else's) health."
Though nothing will Drive them away We can beat them Just for one day We can be Heroes Just for one day
I know very little about polling, but I can't figure out how the numbers are so volatile. You can't honestly tell me that there are millions of folks out there that haven't made up there minds in the last few days of the election. I always scratch my head when I see... Gotta love this one though...
These are tracking polls - they interview about 1200 people over 3 days (400 per day). The individual 400 people days are very volatile because the sample is so small - they are something like +/- 5%. So if shows McCain at 49%, it really means he is anywhere between 44-54%. This is the reason the pollsters don't release one-day samples (except Zogby, who's an idiot who likes to get himself in the news, as someone else earlier mentioned). And it's also the reason people don't give massive amounts of commentary with each poll (unlike Zogby, who thinks 1 pt moves are clear evidence of a shift in the electorate).
"The margin of error" in itself is not absolute according to polling theory. That is supposed to be correct 95% of the time. So a +/- of 5% margin of error could mean that the final results could be +/- of 30% and that's okay. Polling is never a certainty.
I'm glad you are reiterating this. It's all about the sigmas, ain't it? I really, really don't trust the polls now. I think in 2008, versus say 1992, people are increasingly likely to lie, hide their true intentions, or simply not answer the land line.
As I remember it the average of the polls in 2004 was pretty accurate. They showed a very close race leaning slightly to Kerry. It turned out to be a very close race leaning slightly to Bush. Am I remembering that wrong?
The polls have always been pretty accurate. There are exceptions, but most of the polling problems in 2000 and 2004 were the exit polls, not the regular daily polls. Here's how the polls showed the 2004 race: <img src=http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2004-all.png</img> Here's the 2008 races: <img src=http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008-all.png</img> (that assumes you assign every state to a candidate even if they are up 1%. here's a link for if you only assign states outside of the margin of error: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008.html )
Let's try that again... The polls have always been pretty accurate. There are exceptions, but most of the polling problems in 2000 and 2004 were the exit polls, not the regular daily polls. Here's how the polls showed the 2004 race: <img src=http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2004-all.png> Here's the 2008 races: <img src=http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008-all.png> (that assumes you assign every state to a candidate even if they are up 1%. here's a link for if you only assign states outside of the margin of error: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008.html
thanks, major. I'll admit my anxiety about the polls is non-scientific, to put it mildly. Those graphs are very interesting. They speak of a successful campaign strategy.
