Posted on 10/14/2008 5:09:38 AM PDT by tomymind
Barack Obama has erased traditional Republican advantages in four key bellwether counties that President George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004, according to a new Politico/InsiderAdvantage survey. Each county is critical to the outcome in the battleground state where it is located.
In Reno, Nevada's Washoe County, Obama leads McCain by a 46-45 percent margin, with six percent undecided. Obama posts a wider 50-44 percent lead with five percent undecided in Raleigh, North Carolina's Wake County, and another 6-point lead in Hillsborough County, Fla., where Tampa is located. There, he edges McCain 47-41 percent, with 11 percent undecided.
Among the four counties tested, McCain leads in only one: Jefferson County, Colo., a populous Denver suburb. McCain is ahead there by a margin of 45-43 percent, with eight percent undecided.
At first glance, these Politico/InsiderAdvantage numbers might not look so troubling for McCain, who trailed Obama by 10 points in an ABC/Washington Post national survey, released Monday.
But these four counties are crucial battlegrounds in four of the most competitive states in the presidential race. In recent years, the Republican path to the White House has run through these areas.
In 2004, President Bush won Washoe County, Nevada's second-most populous county, by a four-point margin over Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry. This year, when Obama is expected to run up a big vote lead in Las Vegas' Clark County, McCain is unlikely to be able to afford a loss in Washoe.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
It is more accurate to compare to 2000, 1988 or 1968: The races with no incumbents.
A quick study of polling in these races will show a significantly different outcome.
Exit polling flaws:
1) cluster sampling;
2) the tendency of face-to-face interviewers to choose people like themselves to interview, instead of sampling randomly. Add to that the fact that exit pollsters are people willing and able to work at minimum wage for just a day, a cohort that tends to be young and/or poorly educated, and that fact that exit pollsters receive minimal training;
3) exit polling cannot take absentee and early voting into account;
4) post-election polling can’t correct for the natural human tendency to identify with the winner of an election immediately after that election, which is why the same exit polling that had Kerry up hugely in the early afternoon miraculously became 37-37 when post election interviews were tabulated in.
Pollsters used to think that party ID was static, that people registered with a party when they turned 18 and that was the party they identified with for life. Not true. Party ID is, in fact, a very labile concept for the majority of the electorate. Pollsters will tell you that if they poll during the Dem convention, huge numbers will say they’re Dem. Poll during the Pubbie convention a week later, and shazam, everybody’s a Pubbie. Poll right after an unparalleled worldwide financial crisis happening on the watch of an already unpopular Republican President, and suddenly everybody’s a Democrat again.
Today at a rally McCain said that he was 6 points down in the polls. Yesterday his campaign spokesman said the same thing, that their internal polling had him down 6. I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that McCain’s pollster is not in the tank for Obama and oversampling Dems. That -6 puts McCain right about where the good trackers say he is and gives me an invaluable data point from which to analyse the head-to-head polls.
Good exit pollers, in fact, are required by training to sample randomly and NOT to "choose people like themselves." Sure, it happens.
Absentee voting usually benefits Republicans, esp. in battleground sates. OH and FL are notorious for having absentees that benefit Republicans.
#4. You've gotta be kidding, right? Most people are too busy to hang out on Drudge and get freaked out over exit polls (most people don't even know what an exit poll is). They arrive early, vote, then go to work. You've gotta do better than this.
Yes, party ID is pretty static. It's only bad pollsters who see shifts during conventions. In 2000, and 2004, we knew who our Rs were and we knew exactly how many we had to get out to win. Any good pol in any major organization will tell you the same thing.
In Reno, Nevada's Washoe County, Obama leads McCain by a 46-45 percent margin, with six percent undecided. Obama posts a wider 50-44 percent lead with five percent undecided in Raleigh, North Carolina's Wake County, and another 6-point lead in Hillsborough County, Fla., where Tampa is located. There, he edges McCain 47-41 percent, with 11 percent undecided.
“A quick study of polling in these races will show a significantly different outcome.”
Don’t be coy. If you’re trying to make a point, please make it. Significantly different outcome from what? How is the polling in 2000, 1988 or 1968 necessarily more or less accurate than that of other years? And how does incumbency affect the accuracy of polling?
In 1968, Gallup predicted Nixon to win with 43% of the vote. He won with 44%.
In 1988, Gallup predicted Bush to win with 56% of the vote. He won with 53%.
In 2000, Gallup predicted Bush to win with 48% of the vote. He won with 47.9%
Now who’s being coy? The comparisons have to be graphed week to week.
“Actually, if you know anything about the “insides” of campaigns, if they say they are 6 down, it’s more likely they are tied or down 12.”
Normally I’d agree, but McCain’s campaign has been an OPSEC travesty. They’ve announced every move they’re going to make in advance. There is no advantage for McCain to tell the world he’s down, yet he did it anyway. McCain’s campaign has been all tactics and no strategy. That’s a lousy campaign, not a sign of some super secret political jujitsu.
“Sure, it happens.”
Yes, in 2004.
“#4. You’ve gotta be kidding, right?”
I stated clearly that I was talking about post-election interviews. Those numbers you’re so sure are absolutely correct, tell me, exactly how are they derived? And please be specific. Somebody who was really “inside baseball” wouldn’t make the rookie mistake of thinking that partisan turnout numbers only come from exit polling.
As for party ID, pollster Mark Blumenthal: “Moreover, more recent studies have shown evidence of significant short-term change in Party ID. The 2000 Annenberg National Election Study (NAES), like the 2004 study now underway, was a daily tracking survey that ultimately included more than 58,000 interviews over the course of the year, roughly 5000 interviews per month. NAES observed that the percentage of the electorate identified as Independent “was not stable over time.” In a chart on page 61 of Capturing Campaign Dynamics, Daniel Romer and his colleagues showed the percentage of Independents falling steadily from roughly 31% to 27% during the conventions, then spiking 8 points to 35% just after the Democratic convention in early September, then falling off again steadily back to roughly 28% on election day, then plummeting sharply to below 25% a few days later. No surprise that they concluded:
Surveys that are weighted by party identification may be operating under some misconceptions about party identification. Party identification may not be as stable as once thought and could be considered an indicator of the respondents’ attitudes toward candidates at a given moment of the campaign.”
Like I said, I deal in facts, not assumptions. If you’ve got better data than the NAES, I’d love to see it.
Graph it for me, then, please.
If reporting a poll that shows McCain behind ‘depresses turnout’, why would McCain report that he is behind by 6? It makes no sense....
If Schmidt is ‘rallying the troops’ by saying they are behind by 6, then why am I accused of depressing the troops by reporting the same thing?
I agree that McCain showed himself to be a closer in the primaries, while Obama showed the opposite. However, I’m not convinced that McCain is playing with the same zeal he had a couple of months ago. Furthermore, he doesn’t have Huckabee to help him siphon off votes that would be going to his opponent (Romney).
Whatever, yawn.......
Setting the criteria should have been obvious to you, but if you are not willing to do the actual grunt work to get a true evaluation, you should not be in the poll “analysis” business.
I knew you wouldn’t answer but I’ll try again just in case you might reconsider your commitment to intellectual dishonesty....
If Schmidt is ‘rallying the troops’ by saying they are behind by 6, then why am I accused of depressing the troops by reporting the same thing?
Your silence is deafening. Why don’t you grow a pair and answer the question.
If Schmidt is ‘rallying the troops’ by saying they are behind by 6, then why am I accused of depressing the troops by reporting the same thing?
Perhaps McCain has chosen the wrong team.. < / sarc
Or perhaps we have chosen the wrong candidate... We got stuck with Mr. Bi-partisan.
....the sound of crickets fill the air.....
Sarah 2012!
LOL! I thought so.
Possibly because people listen to Mr. Schmidt and nobody gives a rat's ass about you?
Hmm.
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