Race Tightens Slightly, But Early Voters Favor Obama

[TiaCarrera]

Run time: 02:29 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlsEipTfNs4   Posted on YouTube: October 29, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 30, 2008 By DU Member: TiaCarrera Views on DU: 330

 
In Gallup Poll Daily tracking, conducted Oct. 25-27, Barack Obama has a slight edge over John McCain among the traditional model of likely voters, 49% to 47%. But,among those who have already voted, Obama leads McCain 53% to 43%.

[ksimons]

1. LMAO - 'skews a little more towards John McCain' -

Shows that the polling companies are just milking the data to try to keep in business. Base on the latter half of the video, Obama ahead 10 points is termed 'a little skewed toward Obama', and Obama ahead by 6 points is a 'little skewed towards McCain'. Laughable Gallup - wonder how their questionaires are 'slanted' if this is how they interpret them.

All THREE polls (early vote, intend to early vote, and traditional vote) were ALL pro-Obama, but they try to make it sound up in the air. Gallup probably wouldn't be getting any more business if it weren't close, so I guess making it sound close is all they got.

[tclambert]

2. Love how they try to find underlying causes for statistical noise

The polls for the last month have fluctuated within their margins of error. Yet they try to rationalize every daily change. Stock market analysts do the same. And every organization analyzes it as if their poll is the only poll. So when one fluctuates up a point, and another fluctuates down a point, they come to opposite conclusions about whatever happened that day.

The weird thing is the state polls show Obama slowly but steadily improving his electoral vote position. RealClearPolitics.com shows Nevada now leaning toward Obama, and Georgia has slipped from leaning McCain to a toss-up. Obama now has 259 EVs solidly for him, and another 52 leaning. McCain only has 152 solid or leaning his way.

Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight.com pointed out that the national tracking polls do a few thousand interviews a day, but the state polls are doing like 15 to 20 thousand interviews daily. More data should be better data.