Sep 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Back on Top
Obama once again leading in the Gallup tracking poll, a result I believe is mirrored in other trackers.
25 Responses to “Back on Top”
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September 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Are there really people who keep changing their mind about who they will vote for at this point? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I have this feeling we keep looking at static and pretending that it is meaningful.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I’m afraid it’s now a battle for the votes of the “low information” voter. So, it’s down to who can who can get themselves noticed in a good way or, more likely, make their opponent look bad in the latest news cycle. If this was about qualifications, competence, polices – you know, “the facts” – Obama would be ahead by 20 points.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Oh it’s meaningful, this move has been predicted for a couple weeks. What you’re seeing is the effect of the last convention bounce receded, Palin’s favorability tanking as people attack and get to know her better, and probably some negative reaction to the McCain camp’s skirmishes with reality. It’s too soon for Black Monday to figure in these numbers, that’ll come in a few days.
For the best analysis I’d recommend fivethirtyeight.com; they’ll have a roundup later today. FWIW, my take here.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Yes– elections are decided by people who can’t make up their minds. Pardon me while I go bang my head against the etagere.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Obama once again leading in the Gallup tracking poll, a result I believe is mirrored in other trackers.
As Gallup says, “The Sept. 14-16 Gallup Poll Daily tracking update shows Barack Obama regaining a slight, although not statistically significant, edge over John McCain.”
With six weeks to go, it’s still essentially a dead heat. Isn’t it exciting?
September 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Miatch, since they don’t poll the same people each day, it’s not that at all, but the built-in inaccuracies of polling a small sample of dummies like us. I haven’t changed my mind since January.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Sure, statistical inaccuracies are built-in, hence the margin of error, but when you formulate a weighted average of the trackers as at fivethirtyeight.com, you get a much better picture.
But basically, one particular poll like Gallup or Rasmussen individually moving a few points within their margins of error can be a “built-in inaccuracy”. Lots of different polls moving at the same time is not.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Since Convention Bumps are widely recognized as transient, one wonders why campaigns spend so much time trying to achieve them (or to ruin the other guy’s – see John McCain.)
September 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I don’t think convention bumps are recognized by enough people as transient as evidenced by the hand wringing by so many Democrats and bloviating by so many talking heads over the last two weeks.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
The way most people vote in this country is sad. They don’t want to be bothered with politics until right before the election, and then they make a hasty decision based on who they “like” more. Few people really consider the candidate’s pasts, how they have conducted the campaign, or the ideas they unintentionally communicate to voters through gaffes. I really want to meet this 15% of people in the middle of this… how can you not have your mind made up yet? Sadly, these people are probably all around me every day.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
But basically, one particular poll like Gallup or Rasmussen individually moving a few points within their margins of error can be a “built-in inaccuracy”. Lots of different polls moving at the same time is not.
Even fivethirtyeight.com, which you recommended, says that the latest polls merely “hint” of a move of a couple of points towards Obama.
Anyway, that wasn’t my point. Maybe there has been a real, if small, shift towards Obama over the past couple of days. There have been similar shifts in favor of each candidate throughout the campaign. Polling obsessives seem to jump on every tiny uptick in favor of their preferred candidate as if it represents the start of a trend. But neither candidate has gained a clear and sustained advantage over the other. With six weeks to go, they’re still only a few points apart. It could easily go either way.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
The way most people vote in this country is sad. They don’t want to be bothered with politics until right before the election, and then they make a hasty decision based on who they “like” more.
Ah yes. Isn’t democracy an awful way to run a country? If only the masses paid more attention and weren’t so emotional and gullible. Not like the elites. It would be so much better if we just let them decide how to run the country instead of giving that power to the collective will of the people.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Pollster also does regression-based analysis of poll trends, and also has Obama pulling back into a small lead:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/08-us-pres-ge-mvo.php
Which does in fact put us right back to where we were before the conventions with perhaps a bit fewer undecideds, as one would expect.
Incidentally, what I am interested in seeing is yet to come, namely whether the recent refocusing of the contest on the economy has any lasting effect.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Pollster also does regression-based analysis of poll trends, and also has Obama pulling back into a small lead:
And RCP has them exactly tied, at 45.7%. Both the pollster and RCP averages showed Obama with a significant lead over McCain almost every day between April and the end of the GOP convention. Since then, McCain has mostly been in the lead.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Right, but there is a lot of daylight between “clear and sustained advantage” and “could easily go either way”.
People like me are interested in the performances of the campaigns over time, to figure out what works and what doesn’t, what people like and what they don’t like at the macro level of an election.
With a conservative model like 538’s, you can see it. It’s just delayed a few days compared to places like pollster.com and RCP that have more sensitivity and show more noise.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Mixner,
Just an aside, but Pollster, like 538, does a regression-based analysis, as opposed to the pure averaging of RCP. And it may be worth noting that RCP’s window currently includes survey data from as far back as 9/5.
That said, as I previously noted you are correct that even assuming Pollster is correct, all that has happened is a restoration of the pre-Conventions status quo. Generally, all the recent developments in the polls are more or less consistent with what one would expect from the usual Convention bumps (538 had some nice charts on what to look for, and all this has more or less tracked their charts).
September 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
What part of “a slight, although not statistically significant, edge” doesn’t Matt get?
Once again, Obama should be fifteen to twenty points ahead of this idiot McCain by now.
Why isn’t he? Don’t bother, the question is rhetorical. I’ve told you way – and Matt – as well as most of the Democrats apparently – don’t want to hear it.
Once again – the Democrats are going to lose this one again, and be wandering around for four years wondering why. And then we’ll have Hillary all over again in 2012.
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