National polls shift towards McCain
http://community.livejournal.com/obama_2008/1683652.html
What the hell happened? Let's hope people wake up by November 4. Let's hope the Obama-McCain and Biden-Palin debates help turn the tide.
We need to renew our Obama volunteer, phonebanking, voter registration, and fundraising efforts---pronto."Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
- H. L. Mencken
Here are the latest national polls for McCain vs. Obama, from RealClearPolitics:
PollDateSampleMcCain (R)Obama (D)SpreadRCP Average09/05 - 09/08--48.345.6McCain +2.7Rasmussen Tracking09/06 - 09/083000 LV4848TieABC News/Wash Post09/05 - 09/07LV4947McCain +2CBS News09/05 - 09/07655 RV4644McCain +2USA Today/Gallup09/05 - 09/07823 LV5444McCain +10CNN09/05 - 09/07942 RV4848TieHotline/FD Tracking09/05 - 09/07924 RV4444TieGallup Tracking09/05 - 09/072733 RV4944McCain +5
Poll shows big shift to McCain among white women (Reuters).
McCain Now Winning Majority of Independents (Gallup): Majority of independents now prefer him over Obama, 52% to 37%
Today's national projections on FiveThirtyEight.com:
FiveThirtyEight.com says:
The Mommy Quotient
The ABC News finding that Sarah Palin dramatically upped John McCain's support among white women is one I'm not entirely convinced by, mostly because other polling by the same agency shows Sarah Palin performing worse among women than she does among men. One needs to remember that the margins of error are much higher for subsamples of the data than for the poll as a whole. That's why I generally don't spend a lot of time focusing on the demographics in individual polls. If a poll is breaking out six or eight different demographic groups, and the margins of error on these subsamples are 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 points, then odds are that something is going to be out of alignment merely due to chance alone.
With that said, there is a subheadline in the ABC poll that I find both more interesting and more believable. Sarah Palin polls very well among women with children -- specifically white women with children, who give her an 80 percent favorability rating. In fact, it appears to me that Palin's high favorability ratings among women are entirely owing to her popularity among women with children. Roughly one-third of registered female voters should have children at home, which means that among white women without children, her favorability rating is around 60 percent -- still pretty decent, but barely different from the 58 percent she received in the poll overall.
So -- one is led to ask -- which state has the most moms? [Continued...]
Today's electoral projections on Electoral-vote.com:
Obama 281 McCain 230 Ties 27
John McCain, a big supporter of the surge in Iraq, is having a surge of his own in the U.S. In the national polls, he has gained half a dozen points since the start of the Republican convention and that is starting to appear in the state polls as well. However, as Rick Hasen points out, legal battles about voting laws, voter registration, voter fraud, third party ballot access, and provisional ballots may ultimately determine the outcome in half a dozen swing states and thus the election.
What the hell happened? Let's hope people wake up by November 4. Let's hope the Obama-McCain and Biden-Palin debates help turn the tide.
We need to renew our Obama volunteer, phonebanking, voter registration, and fundraising efforts---pronto."Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
- H. L. Mencken
Here are the latest national polls for McCain vs. Obama, from RealClearPolitics:
PollDateSampleMcCain (R)Obama (D)SpreadRCP Average09/05 - 09/08--48.345.6McCain +2.7Rasmussen Tracking09/06 - 09/083000 LV4848TieABC News/Wash Post09/05 - 09/07LV4947McCain +2CBS News09/05 - 09/07655 RV4644McCain +2USA Today/Gallup09/05 - 09/07823 LV5444McCain +10CNN09/05 - 09/07942 RV4848TieHotline/FD Tracking09/05 - 09/07924 RV4444TieGallup Tracking09/05 - 09/072733 RV4944McCain +5
Poll shows big shift to McCain among white women (Reuters).
McCain Now Winning Majority of Independents (Gallup): Majority of independents now prefer him over Obama, 52% to 37%
Today's national projections on FiveThirtyEight.com:
FiveThirtyEight.com says:
The Mommy Quotient
The ABC News finding that Sarah Palin dramatically upped John McCain's support among white women is one I'm not entirely convinced by, mostly because other polling by the same agency shows Sarah Palin performing worse among women than she does among men. One needs to remember that the margins of error are much higher for subsamples of the data than for the poll as a whole. That's why I generally don't spend a lot of time focusing on the demographics in individual polls. If a poll is breaking out six or eight different demographic groups, and the margins of error on these subsamples are 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 points, then odds are that something is going to be out of alignment merely due to chance alone.
With that said, there is a subheadline in the ABC poll that I find both more interesting and more believable. Sarah Palin polls very well among women with children -- specifically white women with children, who give her an 80 percent favorability rating. In fact, it appears to me that Palin's high favorability ratings among women are entirely owing to her popularity among women with children. Roughly one-third of registered female voters should have children at home, which means that among white women without children, her favorability rating is around 60 percent -- still pretty decent, but barely different from the 58 percent she received in the poll overall.
So -- one is led to ask -- which state has the most moms? [Continued...]
Today's electoral projections on Electoral-vote.com:
Obama 281 McCain 230 Ties 27
John McCain, a big supporter of the surge in Iraq, is having a surge of his own in the U.S. In the national polls, he has gained half a dozen points since the start of the Republican convention and that is starting to appear in the state polls as well. However, as Rick Hasen points out, legal battles about voting laws, voter registration, voter fraud, third party ballot access, and provisional ballots may ultimately determine the outcome in half a dozen swing states and thus the election.