Poll: Obama has edge; enthusiasm favors Romney before final debate GOP voters more energized

The Washington Times ^ | 10/22/12 | Stephen Dinan

[nhwingut]

Romney is winning 5 national polls: Gallup, Rasmussen, ARG, Monmouth, and Politico/GW.

It’s tied in two others: Reuters (D+6) and NBC/WSJ (D+6)

While Obama is hanging his hat on three misfit polls: WT/Zogby (Special Sauce) and IBD/TIPP (D+7), and Hartford Courant (D+9).

[Lucky9teen]

Wha...huh?
Obama has edge; enthusiasm favors Romney before final debate

So, how does Obama have an edge, when enthusiasm favors Romney? That headline contradicts itself IMO....doesn’t make sense to me.

[skinkinthegrass]

optics...Barbara Streisand..

[skinkinthegrass]

optics...Barbara Streisand..

[ConservativeInPA]

A very odd sample, and a small one (800 LV) at that.

That is a very small sample. It breaks down to 16 people per state, but you would think that Zogby would weight states by population. Even then, it is still difficult to get random in larger states.

[crosslink]

It is worse then hating Bush, His brother is a lobbyist for the Arab’s

James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based organization which serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab American community

[TornadoAlley3]

The campaign that does the best at engaging their partisans wins.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Wishful thinking once again masquerading as enlightened political commentary.

[VideoDoctor]

Things currently are looking very GOOD...

By the way, since 1936 there have been, I believe 19 Presidential elections. Gallup has ACCURATELY polled 16 of them.

Check this fact:
No one in the history of the Gallup Poll has ever lost the election for president if they’re above 50% after mid-October.

 

Gallup 10/22: R-52/O-45
Gallup  | 10/22 | Gallup

Romney-52% Obama-45%

http://www.gallup.com/Home.aspx

[FredZarguna]

800 isn't that "small" if your model is a good one. Keep in mind that sampling 1000 would only improve the margin of error by about 11% so, from like +/-4 to +/-3.5

The problem is that Zogby's models aren't good, so he could sample 2500 and still have zero predictive value.

[pgkdan]

He’s ben doing the polling for the Washington Times. Funny...this is the only poll out today that has obammy up over Romney and has obammy at 50.

[traderrob6]

Zogby has always sucked.

His accuracy was 18th out of twenty in 2008 and 10th out of 16 in 2004.

[SC_Pete]

Why can’t the WashTimes affiliate with a reputable pollster? Why does the WSJ lower themselves to cohabitate with NBC? I don’t get it.

[Salamander]

What about these people?

http://www.unskewedpolls.com/

Legit or what?

[KC_Conspirator]

Yes, I did see the Zogby poll showing Obama winning NASCAR fans and thought, Wow! He is up to his same old BS.

Zogby at one time was cutting edge and one of the most accurate pollsters in the 90s. However, in the 2000s he became more democrat leaning and erratic.

[snarkytart]

Actually they all show Romney ahead nationally or tied if they really over sample Dems.

[devolve]

.

- John Zogby (the pollster) - his brother James Zogby - is with CAIR right?

- CAIR has had a number of their Muslims be indicted for felonies, convicted, and sentenced to prison -

- Not for selling lemonade

.

[Cboldt]

The "edge" is for winning the debate on points, I suppose. A majority of the public thinks that Obama is better prepared for the debate, than Romney is.

[FredZarguna]

IIRC, Zogby was the only pollster who predicted Dole would have a decent showing against Clinton. Again, to the degree that my memory serves me without double checking — and that is always iffy — his last poll predicted Clinton would win by 6%, and the final tally was Clinton +8.5. A lot of other major pollsters had BJ up by 12 or even 14. He was a newcomer on the scene, so people thought it was significant. Beginner's luck, and nothing more as it turns out.

[FredZarguna]

Maybe.

The interesting thing is that they all line up with Gallup, who has never used Party identification as part of his model. So you would expect that to the extent that Party ID is the strongest determining factor on whether you vote for 0 or R/R they should show what Gallup shows when the partisan edge is factored out.

Now, here is the problem. On the one hand, in 2008 Dems had a +6 edge at the polls, so if you use the most recent presidential year as a way of modelling likely voters, we are in some trouble, and Gallup's method (minus 6) shows essentially an even race. On the other hand, in 2008 Republican Party self-identification was at historic lows, so D+6 is probably too high for 2012. Right now, Rasmussen shows Republican Party self-ID is a little over 1% HIGHER than Democrat self-ID, so it looks like Gallup might be right. The thing that disturbs me is that even with all that in mind, Rasmussen is calling this a dead even race. I sure don't like that...