Comments on: About Those Polls

By: JBraunstein

JBraunstein — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:09:13 +0000

I’m convinced that Obama’s true poll numbers are and will always be at least 5% below the technical numbers, and perhaps more. Its simply a fact that many people who have serious doubts about voting for a black man will keep them secret to avoid ridicule. I’m no political strategist, but if the GOP machers don’t have a plan to unleash a flurry of doubt-seeding quasi-racist offensives right before the elction, they ain’t worth their salt. Pathetic though it may be, their only hope, all things remaining equal between now and election day, is to try and facillitate a “Bradley Effect” that will show up in the results but not in the polls.

Then again, It might be a wash, assuming unprecedented turnout among African-Americans and young people.

By: DaveA

DaveA — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:20:38 +0000

Polls? Call me in October.

By: kitstolz

kitstolz — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:02:28 +0000

I recently interviewed a pollster named George Barna, who mostly polls for religious organizations, but came out three weeks ago with a national poll that reached almost exactly the same conclusions as Newsweek’s. He agrees that the crucial distinction is between registered voters and likely voters, but argues that because far fewer McCain voters believe their candidate will win (31%) far fewer of them are likely to go to the polls than Obama voters, who are confident of their candidates chances (53%). You can see the same kind of “enthusiasm gap” between supporters of McCain and Obama in the Times/Bloomberg poll, where 81% of Obama voters are enthusiastic, and only 45% say the same of McCain.

http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=300

As for McCain spin, isn’t his campaign also arguing that Obama’s plan to staff campaign offices and spend money in every state is a sign of weakness?

By: M.Z. Forrest

M.Z. Forrest — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:54:17 +0000

There seems to be an awful lot of sample smoothing all around. If you remember, undersampling and oversampling independents threw off some of the estimates for the early primary states. I think the pollsters are having a lot of trouble knowing what a random sample should look like right now.