Saturday, November 01, 2008

The Poles are an independant people with a.......oh the polls.

Poll watching is an interesting phenomenon. Kind of like the commercial on TV says, 90% of statistics can be made to say anything, 50% of the time.

Daily tracking polls, Rasmussen, Zogby, AP, Gallop, IBD/TIPP, there must be dozens of polling organizations out there all wanting to be the one that nails the election results down to the tenth of a percent come Wednesday. Will any of them get close? Who knows.

John Zogby nailed the 2000 election. On the day before the 2004 election he predicted an electoral college landslide for Kerry, woops. If you want to figure out who is going to be the next president, there are a few polls you really need to be watching. Battleground states. National polls and daily tracking polls are almost meaningless, almost. Zogby's daily tracking poll showed today McCain leading 48% - 48%.

A double digit swing in a week either shows a real move of undecideds one direction or a flawed sampling methodology. I am not sure, but like I say, we will know Wednesday.

I check Real Clear Politics everyday to get my polling fix. I watch the battleground state polls and take an average. Sure, most polls are over-polling democrats by 8 - 13%, thinking more democrats will turnout to vote than republicans by those margins, and that may be why Obama's supporters might wake up on Wednesday thinking the evil republicans stole another election.

Remember the Kerry/Lieberman exit polls in 2004? The Democrats and the media, like there is a difference, went absolutely bananas when Kerry did not win. He was polling so well, the exit polls showed a landslide, what happened?

Will the pollsters over sample democrats hoping to discourage republican turnout? Will the young vote turnout this time in convincing numbers? Will there be a Bradley effect? Will the LA Times release the video tape of Obama and Rashid Khalidi ? Will the Cowboys get to the Superbowl?

Stay tuned.

Oh and for the dumb ass who threw a planter through the window of the Yolo County republican headquarters downtown; very mature. I only hope the Woodland PD will get the finger prints off the planter. I don't want any jail time, I just want the names published.

No comments: