Michael Barone also said he wondered how useful polling was going to be now that many many folks no longer have landlines and many many also just don’t answer the phone when they don’t recognize the number. We got rid of our landline a month or so ago. Before that, if I didn’t recognize a caller-ID number as a friend or family, I didn’t answer the phone. Too many telemarketers and other undesirables call. I am no different from most people in this regard. How can anyone get an accurate sample with so many like me? It then comes down to special sauce modeling. I have doubts that any of them are able to detect intensity. Internal campaign polls are the only ones worth it as they are paid for by the campaigns. Look at the two candidates, look at the media, they know which way this is tilting. It is odd to hear an expert like Barone make a pick four days out with such confidence. He knows something that majority of us don’t and is perhaps one of the top ten minds in the USA when it comes to precincts. I side with Barone. Nate Silver is Obama’s Love Monkey.
I think that the best polls are probably close to useless right now, and the worst ones are much less than useless. Given that Reagan won with 50.7% in 1980, I think it will be close to that for Romney.
R/R are drawing huge crowds, O/B not-so-big. Certainly not 2008-big. Morris keeps saying the almost all of the "undecided" voters will break for the challenger. So reading the tea leaves, I still think RR manage to pull it off.