Do polls mean anything? I keep forgetting. http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1124117&srvc=2008campaign&position=8 Pollster: Don’t believe the Dem hype By Joe Dwinell & Jessica Fargen Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - Updated 3h ago The presidential race is still too close to call and could come down to the very last weekend before voters decide if they like or distrust Barack Obama, a national pollster predicts. “I don’t think Obama has closed the deal yet,” pollster John Zogby told the Herald yesterday. Zogby’s latest poll, released yesterday in conjunction with C-Span and Reuters, shows Obama and John McCain in a statistical dead heat, with the Illinois Democrat up 48-45 percent. Zogby said the race mirrors the 1980 election, when voters didn’t embrace Ronald Reagan over then-President Jimmy Carter until just days before the election. “The Sunday before the election the dam burst,” Zogby said of the 1980 tilt. “That’s when voters determined they were comfortable with Reagan.” Now voters are wrestling with two senators with opposite resumes - Obama, at 47, the unknown, and the established 72-year-old McCain. Zogby said he’s still hearing from moderates and non-partisan voters - what he calls “the big middle” - who are still shopping for a candidate. “It still can break one way or the other,” Zogby says. The Numbers The three-day survey polled 1,220 likely voters - about 400 people a day. Zogby will continuously poll right up until the November election. The latest poll numbers may reflect the bump that McCain received after his running mate, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin sparred with Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden during the first and only vice presidential debate last week. The poll shows that the two White House contenders have no problem attracting support from their own parties. Obama is winning 84 percent of the Democratic Party support and McCain has 85 percent of the GOP support, but Obama has the edge among sought-after Independent voters. He leads McCain among independents, 48 percent to 39 percent, according to the poll. Obama also has support from a slightly higher percent of conservative voters than McCain gets from liberal voters, but the advantage is small, according to the poll. Pollsters surveyed 1,220 likely voters and asked approximately 39 questions. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
They only mean something on November 4 and I've been saying that. I'm assuming that you are trying to discredit the polls by posting another poll, no?
Not at all. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVMbnF9-l5w&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVMbnF9-l5w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
i don't trust zogby, but there's a lot about the current polls in general that i don't trust. it would not surprise me in the least if Obama were in fact leading by some 3-7 points, depending on the poll. i'm suspicious of polls that show great swings from day-to-day, such as both zogby and gallup. rasmussen is much more stable in this regard, moves are reflected over days, in much smaller degrees (btw, even ras has O up by 5, but that is down from 8 a few days ago). the other items i'd pay attention to are whether the poll is of registered or likely voters. despite obama's efforts in the former category, there's no guarantee they'll turn into the latter. additionally, most polls now show a dem/rep breakdown w/ a 6-8 point dem advantage in party ID. now, that may be true, but if so, it represents a sea change from 2006, much less 2004 this is a number to watch on election night- if the actual partyID gives dems an 8 point or greater advantage, it'll be a very long night for republicans. if the spread is closer to 3 points, McCain is in good shape. in between...it gets interesting. also, democrats have been championing their GOTV efforts this time around, but it's worth remembering that they did the same thing in 2004. that year, a much quieter republican effort was just that much better... and then there's the question of whether the cell phone and bradley effects cancel each other out...and whether republicans use cell phones...(we're all about the VOIP). bottom line, if the spread is less than 5 or so, i wouldn't get too comfortable if i were in the obama camp.
Zogby became a major player and built his business by going against the grain and predicting Bush over Gore, including the narrow margin in Florida. He tried the same thing in 2004 by picking Kerry over Bush. I guess he's going to give it another shot. We'll see how it works out.
How do zogby and other pollsters make money? This seems like it would be an easy business to start...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5 Real Clear Politics' electoral map shows that the Blue team has breached 270. it's panic time for the right.
I don't know, but if it has anything to do with how much people are paying attention to the polls then it would be in the pollsters best interest if it were a close race. I'm not accusing anybody or anything, I'm just saying . . .
