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Latest Swing State Polls

Anagram said:
And what would be point of what they're doing now then? If by the election they are showing a close race, then they wouldn't be discouraging the Republicans to vote by predicting a huge Obama win anymore?
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They are trying to shape the election. They are hoping that the constant drum roll of inevitable defeat will change conservatives opinions and resign them to an Obama victory. If it doesn't work and republicans stay committed and the race stays tight as it is now they will have to report the truth to save their credibility. Therefore they will change the demographics of the people they interview and a tighterning of the race will be reported. These will be the only polls that are remembered and the ones cited by these firms iin the future as a predictor of future results.
There are more polls today than ever before and the vast majority are paid for by the msm. The same media that intentionally misrepresents the news every day to favor and protect Obama.
 
Bobcat said:
the oversampling of dems has been documented. but polls of 1000 people are still BS.
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Samplling evenly from democrats and republicans is not statistical sampling and cannot be extrapolated to the entire population to estimate an election income. If more democrats than republicans appear in a random sample, it is an indicator that there are more democrats than republicans in the test population.
 
AdamT said:
No, this digging through poll sample business seems to be a conservative disease. Liberals will point out from time to time that certain pollsters, like Rasmussen, don't poll cell phone users which skews their polls in favor of Republicans.
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That's just the typical partisan bs. Back in the 200 and 2004 elections libs were all over how the polling was off. Take off the blinders.

The ONLY polling that matters at this juncture are the internal polls the candidates themselves generate and follow - and we don't get to see those. If you want to know how a state is polling, take a look a scheduled campaign stops for the candidates. If they believe they're slipping in a state you'll see them doubled up on campaign stops in that state.
 
jerry7 said:
They are trying to shape the election. They are hoping that the constant drum roll of inevitable defeat will change conservatives opinions and resign them to an Obama victory. If it doesn't work and republicans stay committed and the race stays tight as it is now they will have to report the truth to save their credibility. Therefore they will change the demographics of the people they interview and a tighterning of the race will be reported. These will be the only polls that are remembered and the ones cited by these firms iin the future as a predictor of future results.
There are more polls today than ever before and the vast majority are paid for by the msm. The same media that intentionally misrepresents the news every day to favor and protect Obama.
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I don't think so. I've been going back over some of the polls a month or two ahead of the election in 2008 and 2010, and although it is impossible to say for sure considering we don't actually know what the state of the race was then, it doesn't seem like that was happening then.
 
clownboy said:
That's just the typical partisan bs. Back in the 200 and 2004 elections libs were all over how the polling was off. Take off the blinders.
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Yes, and they were dead wrong.
 
JRog said:
Samplling evenly from democrats and republicans is not statistical sampling and cannot be extrapolated to the entire population to estimate an election income. If more democrats than republicans appear in a random sample, it is an indicator that there are more democrats than republicans in the test population.
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There is no such thing as a "random" sample in these polling orgs. And a truly random sample wouldn't give anywhere close to accurate results - except by sheer accident.

Look, most folks I know won't take the time to, or are never asked to, participate in these polls. What you're getting is people who will respond, and that breaks down to partisans (who can easily skew the poll), people who like to screw with pollsters and give false/misleading answers and well, pretty much no one else.
 
Anagram said:
Unless the race shifts toward Romney, I doubt they converge.
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If you believe what you see now from firms like Quinnipiac, I suppose it will appear like a shift toward Romney. However you want to interpret it, in all liklihood we're not going to be seeing Dem advantages in places like Pennsylvania that are 5 points greater than what we saw in 2008, as they're currently prediciting.
 
JRog said:
Samplling evenly from democrats and republicans is not statistical sampling and cannot be extrapolated to the entire population to estimate an election income. If more democrats than republicans appear in a random sample, it is an indicator that there are more democrats than republicans in the test population.
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There are more registered republicans in Ohio than democrats. And yet every poll that comes out has democrats heavily over sampled. The newest poll has dem respondents +9. This can only happen consistently if it is intentional.
 
Taylor said:
If you believe what you see now from firms like Quinnipiac, I suppose it will appear like a shift toward Romney. However you want to interpret it, in all liklihood we're not going to be seeing Dem advantages in places like Pennsylvania that are 5 points greater than what we saw in 2008, as they're currently prediciting.
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It's not actually a real democratic advantage though. People who just said they were going to vote for Obama are more likely to identify as a democrat even if it isn't their actual registration when they later ask the question.
 
jerry7 said:
There are more registered republicans in Ohio than democrats. And yet every poll that comes out has democrats heavily over sampled. The newest poll has dem respondents +9. This can only happen consistently if it is intentional.
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And just in case no one has noticed, the President seems to be spending quite a bit of time there.

Hmm.....
 
I think the pollsters are just being sloppy and taking the first people who answer the question. There are merits to seeking out a precise sample over multiple demographics and there are arguments not to. It just depends on turnout aligning with the sample in all the right places or not. If you call at noon you are going to get more people who are retired, unemployed, students, etc than say lawyers and doctors who will be at work at noon. These are nothing more than snap polls anyway for the most part. A good pollster will ask multiple questions that might reveal deception, inconsistencies, etc, but it is hard to find people willing to stay on the phone with you long enough to answer those questions. It is like weather--historical performance determines part of the long-term forecasts but so do big old blobs heading toward the jetstream that may not comport with historical performance.
 
Bobcat said:
the oversampling of dems has been documented. but polls of 1000 people are still BS.
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LOL Of course more Dems are sampled than Reps. Dems outnumber Reps. in real life too. I guess you forgot that.
 
Anagram said:
I don't think so. I've been going back over some of the polls a month or two ahead of the election in 2008 and 2010, and although it is impossible to say for sure considering we don't actually know what the state of the race was then, it doesn't seem like that was happening then.
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I never claimed it happened then. It is my point that the American press is so over the top, in the bag for Obama that they will intentionally commission polls that distort the truth in order to deflate voter opposition to him. Did you notice the difference between the Univision interview and one typically conducted by the msm? That's how an actual free press conducts itself.
 
clownboy said:
There is no such thing as a "random" sample in these polling orgs. And a truly random sample wouldn't give anywhere close to accurate results - except by sheer accident.
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If sampling is done correctly, it absolutely can and will be reasonably close to results which are accurate for the population as a whole. Not sure about the methodology behind this one, but balancing sampling to ensure equal coverage of both parties is not statistical sampling for a test of the general population.
 
jerry7 said:
I never claimed it happened then. It is my point that the American press is so over the top, in the bag for Obama that they will intentionally commission polls that distort the truth in order to deflate voter opposition to him. Did you notice the difference between the Univision interview and one typically conducted by the msm? That's how an actual free press conducts itself.
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Fox isn't in the bag for Obama, and they're the biggest game in the US media world.
 
Jack Fabulous said:
And just in case no one has noticed, the President seems to be spending quite a bit of time there.

Hmm.....
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Wher would you like him to go? NY or California maybe? Whoever wins Ohio wins the election, that's where both candidates are spending their time.
 
iguanaman said:
LOL Of course more Dems are sampled than Reps. Dems outnumber Reps. in real life too. I guess you forgot that.
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There is zero proof of that. Twenty two of 50 states don't report party affiliation. Of those 22 most are in the south and midwest which are GOP strongholds. Republicans control more state legislatures now than at any time in history. They also have 29 governors. They recently enjoyed their biggest mid term election results in history.
 
Anagram said:
RealClear Politics - Polls

They look pretty good to me. Except for Hawaii, I don't think any of them were more than 3% off after a quick look through.
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Polling done right before the election and an average of ALL polling (most of it not publically published until after the election). Take a look here at the actual breakdown of those averages.
 
jerry7 said:
I never claimed it happened then. It is my point that the American press is so over the top, in the bag for Obama that they will intentionally commission polls that distort the truth in order to deflate voter opposition to him. Did you notice the difference between the Univision interview and one typically conducted by the msm? That's how an actual free press conducts itself.
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So you think this is a new phenomenon? Well I'm sorry, but based on the accuracy of historical polling, I'm going to have to wait until the actual results show that these are skewed before I believe there is some conspiracy to influence the poll data.

Is there any evidence to show that predicting a landslide for one candidate decreases turnout for the other more than itself anyway? My gut reaction makes me think overconfidence of the voters for the candidate predicted to win in a landslide would deter more voters.
 
jerry7 said:
There are more registered republicans in Ohio than democrats. And yet every poll that comes out has democrats heavily over sampled. The newest poll has dem respondents +9. This can only happen consistently if it is intentional.
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It can come from voter registration rolls being full of what are, practically speaking, non-voters. In Ohio they have a lot of cruft in their voter rolls. Lawrence county, down on the W Virgina border, has about 5% more registered voters than the estimated number of eligible voters living in the county (!!!). Turns out that Ohio doesn’t actively purge their registration rolls, a lot of those registered haven’t voted in a number of elections. People that move, people that die, they remain on Ohio’s lists.

Democratic registration rose strongly in the state in 2008 as Obama’s team was active in first-time voter initiatives. So the cruft is going to be strongly biased to GOP party affiliation. Thus even before applying “likely voter” models you are going to tend to get a more Democratic mix of respondents than the top lines on the voter registration rolls would imply.
 
jerry7 said:
There is zero proof of that. Twenty two of 50 states don't report party affiliation. Of those 22 most are in the south and midwest which are GOP strongholds. Republicans control more state legislatures now than at any time in history. They also have 29 governors. They recently enjoyed their biggest mid term election results in history.
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spot on Jerry.. somehow Libs seem to have blacked out the Mid Term REJECTION of Obamas agenda..but now tell us Obama will win...

Obama is going to be packing up moving boxes in Nov
 
clownboy said:
Polling done right before the election and an average of ALL polling (most of it not publically published until after the election). Take a look here at the actual breakdown of those averages.
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What's wrong with it? Bush got a convention bounce that lasted most of September, and the polls narrowed as Republican enthusiasm closed, and ended up accurately predicting the election.
 
Anagram said:
Is there any evidence to show that predicting a landslide for one candidate decreases turnout for the other more than itself anyway? My gut reaction makes me think overconfidence of the voters for the candidate predicted to win in a landslide would deter more voters.
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There are arguments that go either way. I don't think it is a conspiracy, but the difference between the supposedly equally scientific outliers from one side to the other gives me concern that all the published polling may have no utility.
 
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