Slippage
Presumeably the non-partisan press will begin reporting on the pending disaster, writing on the wall for Obama, campaign in panic mode, etc. He just slipped into single-digit territory with Gallup, the polling organization that managed to phone up 10 points worth of Obamism for the past week when everyone else was tallying 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 points. Looks like Newsweek picked up Gallup’s shutins, though, currently clocking 11 points. Zogby, who doesn’t think this election is a coronation yet,* only manages to find 4 points worth of Obamedge, NBC/WSJ and TIME are charitable with 6.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 4:33 pm on Saturday, October 11, 2008
2 Responses to “Slippage”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Rasmussen has Obama up 52-45, and that’s the only poll I pay any attention to.
Their electoral college numbers are even more depressing. Right now they have Obama at 255, McCain 163.
The media has hoodwinked a lot of people into believing that the Democrats are the solution to, rather than the cause of, the current financial crisis - and it’s showing in the polls.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Zogby is right — and any honest pollster or statistician would say the same.
1. Polls are massively oversampling Democrats, given that the %age of Dems, GOPs, and Indies who actually show up and vote has remained remarkably stable over the last thirty years. Reweight those polls to election day percentages, and we’re either tied, or ahead, depending on the poll.
2. A large segment of Obama’s support is the “youth vote.” We’ve been hearing how this segment would show up at the polls and change America since 1972, and it has never happened. McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, the “youth vote” was supposed to elect them all. Could this be the election when they get out of bed and go to the polls? Sure, but it’s not likely.
3. People seem to forget that campaigns have their own pollsters, whose job is to give them the most accurate information possible. Obama is still spending huge amounts of money in states he should be able to take for granted, like New York, and his attacks on McCain and Palin do not reflect the actions of a man whose pollsters assure him of a landslide victory.
4. Carter was ahead of Reagan until late, then they were tied. Reagan didn’t start to pull away from Carter in the polls until the beginning of November, right before the election.
Finally, as I’ve said elsewhere, here is my advice for anyone who cares about the election: The next time you feel like whining or moaning about the election which hasn’t happened yet, or the next time you feel like complaining about McCain or his campaign, instead, head down to your nearest GOP headquarters and work the phones or walk the neighborhoods for a couple of hours. Actually do something. You’d be surprised how it will change your outlook.