Obama pulling away in Ohio

[ChinaBandit]

Conventional wisdom has always had this as a must win for the GOP.

Isn't it over with some polls showing as much as 9 point Obama lead?

Couple this with the fact that Obama appears to be leading in all other swing states.

Isn't the fat lady singing for Romney?

 

[XdOu™]

romney should o.d

 

[JackLuis]

He keeps drinking the Neo-Con Kool-aid, hoping he'll od.

 

[XdOu™]

he needs to drink bleach!

 

[JackLuis]

he needs to drink bleach!

If he gets any whiter, he'll sunburn so bad, when he's horse dancing.

Why are all the wing nuts talking stupid shit about Obama, when there are som many real issues to confront him with?

First, his treatment of the banks and the defrauded homeowners under water. Bail out Wall street, but fuck Main Street?

Or this little gem:

Terror delisting the MEK is a cynical sham

While the right wing Dicks and Peters get all huffy about Libya, No one bitches about him rescuing/recruiting the CIA/Mossad terrorist proxies for Iran?

 

[KingOrfeo]

While the right wing Dicks and Peters get all huffy about Libya, No one bitches about him rescuing/recruiting the CIA/Mossad terrorist proxies for Iran?

Of course not, they're the ones who want the U.S. to bomb Iran.

 

[Dazzle1]

These polls are skewed another attemp by the media to push Obama.

They are basing on 08 instead of 10.

 

[mercury14]

Where's Vette to point out that Rasmussen has Obama up in both Ohio and Florida? And creeping up into the margin of error in Missouri?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Dear Reader

Our resident STPs arent gracious winners.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

CB, there have been a dozen different threads on this topic, specifically polls.

Have you taken the time to follow the links to these polls and look at the internals?



PS when the Dems get to trashing Rasmussen, keep this in mind:

http://www.fordham.edu/images/acade...ccuracy in the 2008 presidential election.pdf

 

[Pookie]

PS when the Dems get to trashing Rasmussen, keep this in mind:

http://www.fordham.edu/images/acade...ccuracy in the 2008 presidential election.pdf

Yeah, but what about 2010?

Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly
By NATE SILVER

Every election cycle has its winners and losers: not just the among the candidates, but also the pollsters.

On Tuesday, polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.

Other polling firms, like SurveyUSA and Quinnipiac University, produced more reliable results in Senate and gubernatorial races. A firm that conducts surveys by Internet, YouGov, also performed relatively well.

The analysis covers all polls issued by firms in the final three weeks of the campaign, even if a company surveyed a particular state multiple times. In our view, this provides for a more comprehensive analysis than focusing solely on a firm’s final poll in each state, since polling has a tendency to converge in the final days of the campaign, perhaps because some firms fear that their results are an outlier and adjust them accordingly.

(After a couple of weeks, when results in all races have been certified, we’ll update our official pollster ratings, which use a more advanced process that attempts to account, for instance, for the degree of difficulty in polling different types of races.)

The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.

Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.

Rasmussen’s polls have come under heavy criticism throughout this election cycle, including from FiveThirtyEight. We have critiqued the firm for its cavalier attitude toward polling convention. Rasmussen, for instance, generally conducts all of its interviews during a single, 4-hour window; speaks with the first person it reaches on the phone rather than using a random selection process; does not call cellphones; does not call back respondents whom it misses initially; and uses a computer script rather than live interviewers to conduct its surveys. These are cost-saving measures which contribute to very low response rates and may lead to biased samples.

Rasmussen also weights their surveys based on preordained assumptions about the party identification of voters in each state, a relatively unusual practice that many polling firms consider dubious since party identification (unlike characteristics like age and gender) is often quite fluid.

Rasmussen’s polls — after a poor debut in 2000 in which they picked the wrong winner in 7 key states in that year’s Presidential race — nevertheless had performed quite strongly in in 2004 and 2006. And they were about average in 2008. But their polls were poor this year.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...rate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/

 

[mercury14]

AJ is the queen of over-generalizing by virtue of a single data point.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

CB, keep one other thing in mind; these polls were put out by fairly liberal (at least I've never seen CNS called rw-radical propaganda, RATHER more as "mainstream" or "centrist") media to coincide with the opening of "Election Month" well ahead of even the first debate.

The Disappearance of Election Day
John Fund, NRO
October 1, 2012

We have done away with Election Day in most of the country in favor of Election Month. Over a third of voters in 2008 — up from 15 percent in 2000 — cast their ballots using either early voting at polling stations or mail-in absentee ballots. This year, the proportion of votes cast before Election Day is expected to pass 40 percent. But shouldn’t we debate what this is doing to our democracy before we wake up and find that Election Day is completely gone? It has already effectively disappeared in Oregon and Washington.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much “convenience” voting has taken hold of our election process. North Carolina started mailing out absentee ballots on September 7, only one day after Barack Obama accepted his party’s nomination in Charlotte. A total of 32 states and the District of Columbia now allow early voting. Key swing states such as Virginia, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina are either already allowing or about to allow people to cast ballots.

“We’ve evolved to the point where every day is Election Day,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told National Journal. “It used to be that there was always tomorrow in a campaign — ‘We’re down, but we’re going to come back tomorrow.’ Well, now tomorrow never comes, to quote the Bond movie. Because it’s always Election Day, it takes away some of your hope if you’re down. And it increases the pressure on you, because at every minute, somebody is voting and they’re closing the book on you.” The growth of absentee and early voting also aids candidates with the biggest bankroll, because a campaign now needs the resources to mobilize voters to turn out not only on a single day but over a long period of time. It also means more advertising on TV and more money spent — things people tell pollsters they dislike about politics today.

So one has to wonder, is this skewed polling sample designed to not just create a story, but by energizing one camp and depressing another, but to also make the story true and then they can claim that their polling was correct all along.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows President Obama attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns the vote from 46%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. See daily tracking history.

Four years ago today, Rasmussen Reports tracking showed Obama leading John McCain by a 51% to 45% margin. The numbers barely budged for the rest of the campaign season as Obama enjoyed a comfortable lead and stayed between 50% and 52% every day for the last 40 days.

When “leaners” are included, it’s now Obama 49%, Romney 47%. Leaners are those who are initially uncommitted to the two leading candidates but lean towards one of them when asked a follow-up question. Today is the last day that results will be reported without leaners. Beginning tomorrow, Rasmussen Reports will be basing its daily public updates solely upon the results including leaners. Platinum Members will be still be able to see the more detailed numbers along with demographic breakdowns, and additional information from the tracking poll on a daily basis.

Currently, 43% of voters are “certain” they will vote for Romney. Forty-two percent (42%) are that certain they will vote for Obama. The remaining 15% are either uncommitted or open to changing their mind. To many Americans, especially partisan activists, it is hard to imagine how someone could be anything but certain at this point in time. One of the distinguishing features of these potentially persuadable voters is that they don’t see the choice between Romney and Obama as terribly significant. In terms of impacting their own life, just 28% say it will be Very Important which man wins.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...ministration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

I do not put a lot of stock and faith in polling and am certain that Obama will win; I mean the hate that Independents such as yourself and Perg for Romney are pretty much what lead me to that conclusion, if you are going to vote for Johnson, no matter what, then these polls are indeed correct. If, on the other hand, the debates can convince you that Mitt is an acceptable alternative, then the race is on again, but from your first announcement that you though Mitt sounded pretty good, you were inundated with Democrat operation research which quickly, and I mean, pretty much in the course of 24 hours, caused you to decided that there was no way you could vote for a guy like that, so I think that even if he makes a good impression upon you in the debates, the cacophonous wailing that will follow the debates will probably put your mind back at ease with Johnson being the only sensible choice, which of course, while sensible, is still a vote for Obama, so the question is, Is Obama really that much better than Romney? Do you really not worry much about fore more years of what we have now?

If the answer to either one of those questions is yes, then Gary is your man.

Hanns Down!

I am going to vote for Obama because I do want to let them enjoy fore more years of that which they salivate over. That ought to cure some of them. The only way that I could vote for Romney is if I saw some changing attitudes should reality and reason come to the fore before the election; to quote Osama bin Laden, "Everyone gravitates to the strong horse." (Not a Dressage joke)

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yeah, but what about 2010?

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...rate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/

It was a Republican blow-out from top to bottom.

As merc would tell you, your analysis is from a blog, mine is from a University study.

Now, the question is which weighting are the sudden double-digit swings using, the 2008, or the 2010.

Also, the difference between top and bottom in 2010, according to the blog, was not as great.

Also, this conclusion by Nate needs to be explained:

Rasmussen’s polls — after a poor debut in 2000 in which they picked the wrong winner in 7 key states in that year’s Presidential race — nevertheless had performed quite strongly in in 2004 and 2006. And they were about average in 2008. But their polls were poor this year.

because the study puts Rassmussen at number 1.

As you know from past conversations, I am not a fan of polls even when they favor what I think.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It's the Morning Throb and Merc Show!

AJ is the queen of over-generalizing by virtue of a single data point.

ad hominem

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

An Obama win kills Mitts chances in 2016, and effectively knocks Hillary out, too. She'd be 70 then. The Democrats have no one else, while the GOP has a bullpen fulla likely prospects.

If the GOP controls Congress the control effectively gelds Obama, as the GOP gelded Clinton in 1996 with control of both houses. Obama will spend 4 years on vacation playing golf, with an occasional dip of his wick in the punchbowl to keep America excited.

An Obama win is the best we can get from all the possibilities. Mitts a fop America doesnt want.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Are you hurt because I did not add you to my list of Independent voters JAMES?

 

[Pookie]

It was a Republican blow-out from top to bottom.

Yes, it was a blowout. But Rasmussen was way off on their State polls.

Again, from 2010 ...

On Tuesday, polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates.

Other polling firms, like SurveyUSA and Quinnipiac University, produced more reliable results in Senate and gubernatorial races. A firm that conducts surveys by Internet, YouGov, also performed relatively well.

The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.

Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.

Picking the New York Yankees to finish higher in the standings than the Boston Red Sox this year was fairly easy. It was a blowout. But picking by how many games they would win is the real trick. In a close contest, accuracy matters much more. Rasmussen's record since 2008 has been fairly poor.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Note this makes no claim as to who is winning or losing, just a highlighting of some of the factors involved which cause me to take all of it with a grain of salt.

The Particulars of Polls
Michael Barone, NRO
October 1, 2012

As a recovering pollster (I worked for Democratic pollster Peter Hart from 1974 to 1981), let me weigh in on the controversy over whether the polls are accurate. Many conservatives are claiming that multiple polls have overly Democratic samples, and some charge that media pollsters are trying to discourage Republican voters.

First, some points about the limits of polls. Random-sample polling is an imprecise instrument. There’s an error margin of 3 or 4 percent, and polling theory tells us that one out of 20 polls is wrong, with results outside the margin of error. Sometimes it’s easy to spot such an outlier, sometimes not.

In addition, it’s getting much harder for pollsters to get people to respond to interviews. The Pew Research Center reports that only 9 percent of the people it contacts respond to its questions. That’s compared with 36 percent in 1997.

Interestingly, response rates are much higher in new democracies. Americans, particularly in target states, might be getting poll fatigue. When a phone rings in New Hampshire, it could well be a pollster calling.

Are those 9 percent representative of the larger population? As that percentage declines, it seems increasingly possible that the sample is unrepresentative of the much larger voting public. One thing a poll can’t tell us is the opinion of people who refuse to be polled.

Then there is the problem of cell-phone-only households. In the 1930s and 1940s, pollsters conducted interviews in person because half of households had either no phone or (your grandparents can explain this) a party-line phone. By the 1970s, phone ownership was well nigh universal, and pollsters mostly phased out in-person interviewing. Phone interviews are much cheaper and quicker.

But today the percentage of households without landline phones is increasing. Under federal law, pollsters must dial cell-phone numbers by hand rather than by computer; computers dial landline numbers even when live interviewers ask the questions.

Cell-phone-only individuals tend to be younger and more Democratic than landline owners. Most pollsters are conducting a set number of interviews with cell-phone-only households, but they can only guess at what percentage of the electorate these respondents constitute. Oversample them, and you’ll get overly Democratic results.

That, many conservatives are arguing, is what pollsters have been getting in polls this month. They point out that Mitt Romney is running ahead among independents in many polls even though he trails overall.

This can happen only if Democrats have a big lead in party identification, as they did in 2008. In the exit poll then, 39 percent of voters identified themselves as Democrats and 32 percent as Republicans.

In contrast, exit polls showed an even break in party identification in 2004 and 2010. But many September polls and some earlier polls showed Democrats with an even bigger party identification lead than four years ago, in 2008.

That seems implausible. Party identification does change over time, as exit polls indicate, but it usually shifts gradually rather than suddenly, as current polls suggest.

There is evidence that since the Charlotte convention Democrats have become more motivated to vote and have narrowed the advantage in enthusiasm Republicans have had since 2010. In that case, more Democrats may be passing through screening questions and getting polled.

I don’t believe that any of the media pollsters have been tilting their results in order to demoralize Republicans, although I do look with suspicion on the work of some partisan pollsters.

But I do have my doubts about whether samples with more Democratic-party identification than in 2008 are accurate representations of the actual electorate. Many states with party registration have shown big drops in registered Democrats since then.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, who weights his robocall results by party identification, adjusted monthly, has shown a much closer race than most pollsters who leave party identification numbers unweighted. So has the Susquehanna poll in Pennsylvania.

It may be that we’re seeing the phenomenon we’ve seen for years in exit polls, which have consistently skewed Democratic (and toward Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries). Part of that is interviewer error: Exit-poll pioneer Warren Mitofsky found that the biggest discrepancies between exit polls and actual results were in precincts where the interviewers were female graduate students.

But he also found that Democrats were simply more willing to fill out the exit poll. That raises the question: Are we seeing the same thing in this month’s polls?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yes, it was a blowout. But Rasmussen was way off on their State polls.

Again, from 2010 ...

Picking the New York Yankees to beat the Boston Red Sox for the division title this year was fairly easy. It was a blowout. But picking by how many games they would win is the real trick. In a close contest, accuracy matters much more. Rasmussen's record since 2008 has been fairly poor.

But Pookie, that's the opinion of your op-ed and I am unable to track down his sourcing and I am not finding the numbers to back the contention "way off."

 

[Pookie]

Note this makes no claim as to who is winning or losing, just a highlighting of some of the factors involved which cause me to take all of it with a grain of salt.

The Particulars of Polls
Michael Barone, NRO
October 1, 2012

The whole cell phone only being slanted more to Democrats is an argument that is quickly disappearing. But polling firms have figured that into their methodology. Rasmussen's methodology of sampling in just a four hour period in the evenings misses close to half of the population who are either at work, commuting, etc.

By contrast, the automated polling firm Rasmussen Reports has recently released polls showing Mr. Obama two points behind Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and three points behind in Colorado — the worst results that it has shown for him in those states all year. Another automated polling firm, Gravis Marketing, recently put Mr. Obama at a five-point deficit in Virginia, in contrast to three traditional polls that put him ahead by margins ranging from four to eight points there. A third automated polling firm, Public Policy Polling, has shown stronger results for Mr. Obama, but they also had him with good results before the conventions, and so haven’t shown him gaining much ground.

These results are consistent with some past research. Roughly one third of American households rely solely on mobile phones and do not have landlines, meaning they will simply be excluded by polls that call landlines only. Potential voters who rely on cellphones belong to more Democratic-leaning demographic groups than those which don’t, and there is reasonably strong empirical evidence that the failure to include them in polls can bias the results against Democrats, even after demographic weightings are applied.

In 2008, there was very little overall bias in the polls. In 2010, however, polling averages partial adjustment based on whether polling firms include cellphones or not. (We assume that a polling firm does not call cellphones unless there is evidence that they do.) But as you can see from these results, the adjustment is a fairly conservative one relative to the practice of omitting polls that skip cellphone votes entirely.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...ks-stronger-in-polls-that-include-cellphones/

 

[Pookie]

But Pookie, that's the opinion of your op-ed and I am unable to track down his sourcing and I am not finding the numbers to back the contention "way off."

Nate Silver has been doing this for years. He backs his numbers and analysis up with a tremendous amount of detail on his blog. All you have to do is ... wait for it ... read what you post before you post it. First you have to click the link though. Give it a try, AJ.

 

[kbate]

It is amazing.

We now fight over the methodology used for polling in states where nobody who is fighting lives.

The interwebz - future of humanity.

I hope the fucking Mayan calendar is right.

 

[mercury14]

ad hominem

It wasn't ad hominem because I wasn't debating a point with you, dingus. Seriously bro, you keep misusing that term; perhaps it's time for a refresher on definitions.

 

[Pookie]

It is amazing.

We now fight over the methodology used for polling in states where nobody who is fighting lives.

The interwebz - future of humanity.

I hope the fucking Mayan calendar is right.

The methodology being "fought over" applies to all States, including mine.