I see people posting GE maps, but how many of you understand how polling works?

[Exilednight]

This is why polls in this election cycle will get turned a bit upside down, and for those of who you took statistics, well consider this a refresher.

Polling is done by taking a scientific sampling of the population and comparing it to past trends. Where polling fails is that often lacks to look at current trends, and this can prove to be an advantage to Obama.

Let's say you live in a state of 110,000 people who voted in the 2004 election, and your state has 200,000 eligible voters. Let's say that the election before that, in the year 2000, 100,000 people voted.

Let's say that out of those voting that 12% were African Americans. This is about the national average.

30% were female.

10% were under the age of 30.

Now let's say your a pollster for Pew Research and you must get an accurate sampling for a poll. You are instructed to poll 1 person for every 100,000 that voted. This means you would poll 1000 people.

Out of that 1000, 120 would be African-American, 300 would be female, and 100 would be under the age of 30.

Now let's say that 10% increase was evenly distributed throughout the data. Meaning that African-Americans saw a 10% increase in turnout, as did women and voters under 30. This means the numbers don't change at all, except for the fact that you could expect another ten percent increase across the board, but here's the problem........

Obama is bucking the trend. The under 30 vote is turning out in droves for Obama, in some places they are more than tripling their previous turnout in a primary when compared to the previous GE. Same with the African-American vote.

In past elections, African-Americans have made up between 10-12% of overall voter turnout in the GE, and voters under 30 often make up less than that, but both make up much larger numbers of the overall population. This year we could see African-Americans make up more than 20% of overall voter turnout and the under 30 crowd could make up even a larger number.

Women voters do make up a large portion of voters, but are not committed to either party. Neither Hillary or Obama have broken the 50% mark with women. Hillary is at 47% and Obama is at 43%, and turnout has actually been on the downswing when measured in terms of percentile compared to past history. More than likely this will be the only number accurately measured for potential voter turnout, but could be offset if African-American women turnout in large numbers.

On the rethug side, there is another wild card. Bush won primarily because of the Hispanic and Latino vote, but McCain has been talking tough about immigration. This has the great potential of turning off Hispanic and Latino voters to voting for him.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying this is a sure fire win for Obama, but he has been outperforming his numbers in the primary, even in states that he lost. He has consistently under polled in all but a handful of states that have held their primaries thus far.

What does this all mean? Simple, states that he is losing, but within the MOE, could more than likely become states that he would win in the GE.

Also, it's a bit early to be looking at polling data for the GE. Wait until he has officially won the nomination, then wait another three weeks before you start paying attention to the polls, and most of all - remember the above when looking at the map.