Hearing Footsteps
Never look back, Satchel Paige used to say: someone might be gaining on you:
Gallup: McCain within two among traditional likely voters
…
Hopefully that’s the first sign of the polls tightening as voters start to focus during the final week. Hasn’t shown up in the state data yet, though: The RCP map actually looks slightly worse today than it did last week, with Ohio having flipped to “Leans Dem” and Arizona now within seven points.
Indeed. But McCain is gaining across the polls, with the lead down to anywhere from two to five points. (The Diageo poll shows an eight-point gap, but it has the highest margin of error, the lowest sample number, and who the hell are they?)
I said it would tighten toward the end, simply because I think there’s an elastic band between the two candidates. Neither can get too far ahead without beginning to feel the tug back toward parity. But I also believe the “spread-the-wealth” theme has caught on.
Message to McCain: it’s the socialism, stupid.
Buck O'Fama said,
October 28, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
Hillbuzz has been skeptical of the state polls for a while. Here is a recent article posted there:
I was having dinner a night ago with a friend of mine who is a statistician for a well-regarded private polling company. They do some work for Republicans in California, but most of the work they do is for Democrats or Democrat-leaning operations (Unions, etc.). Anyway, her shop was retained to do a few Presidential polls for targetted states on behalf of a union so the union could decide where to spend their ad dollars for the last week. They did Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Missouri. After mocking the hell out of the voter id spreads used by Rassmussen, Zogby, etc. (and this is coming from a committed Dem who will be voting for Barry O) she said the results of their polling lead her to believe that McCain will definitely win FL, OH, NC, MO and NV. She says Obama definitely wins New Mexico. She said that Colorado and New Hampshire were absolute dead heats. She said she thinks there is a 55% chance Obama holds on in Pennsylvania and a 75% chance McCain wins Virginia. She absolutely laughed at the public polls showing Obama leading Virginia–and pointed out that all of those polls rely on Dem turnout being +4 and as much as +7, when in 2006, Republicans actually had the advantage by +3. She also pointed out that the numbers for Obama in SWVA look absolutely awful and that McCain is running 10 points better then Allen did in NoVa.
Anyway, her companies conclusion is that the election will come down to Colorado, New Hampshire and the Republican leaning district in Maine, which in her opinion might very well decide the Presidency (apparently the district in Nebraska that Obama thought he might be able to get is now off the table). She said she has very little doubt that the public polling is part of a “concerted voter suppression effort” by the MSM. She said IBD/TIPP was the only outfit doing public polling that was “worth a bucket of warm piss”.
http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/page/2/