This is freaking a lot of people out:
Mitt Romney leads President Obama by four percentage points among likely voters in the nation's top battlegrounds, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and he has growing enthusiasm among women to thank.Nate Silver responds on Twitter:
As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds female voters much more engaged in the election and increasingly concerned about the deficit and debt issues that favor Romney. The Republican nominee now ties the president among women who are likely voters, 48%-48%, while he leads by 12 points among men....
Among all registered voters in the survey, Obama leads by nine points among women and by two points overall, 49%-47%.
Looking at breakouts of "swing states" from national polls is just dumb when there are dozens of actual swing state polls out every week.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
It's basically a choice between looking at a few hundred interviews vs. thousands of them. Not a close call.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
Also, (i) everybody defines swing states differently and (ii) not all swing states are equally important.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
The Obama campaign has some thoughts as well:
- Gallup’s likely voter model predicted a 15 point advantage for Republicans, 55-40, on October 31, 2010.That's not the same as GOP poll denialism a few weeks ago, which posited a vast left-wing conspiracy to fake numbers. This is just critiquing Gallup's numbers, which have never seemed ideologically driven, but could be wrong. We'll see what future polls find.
- The final result was a 6 point margin, 51-45.
- That year, Gallup's registered voter survey was much closer to reality at 48-44.
A pollster's likely voter model will vary in quality from election to election, even when its internal mechanisms remain unchanged. Every election is different, and so are the motivations of voters and the GOTV operations that help to decide who goes to the polls. Hence there's no particular reason for putting a lot of faith in Gallup's LV numbers. Their registered voter numbers have continued to put Obama ahead of Romney by a couple of percent nationally, even if that is down slightly from his 4% lead in Gallup's tracking poll before the first debate.
ReplyDeleteWorth remembering too that Romney's margin of victory in many red states is very large, so he'd need to be ahead substantially in national polls in order to have a decent chance of picking up the swing states he needs to win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31FFTx6AKmU
ReplyDeleteImagine the sh*tstorm if Obama wins the Electoral Vote, but loses the popular election - like Bush did, thanks to his Father's little helpers on the SCOTUS.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I don't think saying Scalia's famous words, "You lost! Get over it!" if repeated by us will work as well with Conservatives as it did with Liberals.
We Liberals tend not to boiling with rage 24X7.
The media reports the polls that make the story interesting. Surprised we don't have more of this?
ReplyDeleteOnce more, thank the kindly fates for Nate Silver- good news or bad, at least I know he's smart & (as far as I can tell) honestly unbiased as far as deciphering polls. Now if only the damn NYT would offer full readings of his posts free, as a public service announcement. Ah, Nate, can't blame you for joining the big time, but...
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