After a slow couple of weeks, the pollsters have been very busy in the past 48 hours:
So, what's going on here? A pretty decent set of results for Obama -- but also not ones out of line with our expectations. South Carolina and South Dakota are relatively competitive? We knew that based on how North Carolina and North Dakota had been polling. Iowa looks out of reach for McCain? It's looked that way all year, with the exception of one or two polls taken during the flooding. Obama's numbers look pretty good in the CBS/NYT and ABC/WaPo national polls? Those pollsters have tended to show relatively favorable results for the Democrats all year.
So what looks like a pretty interesting set of polling is really more of the same. Obama is polling a bit of his peak numbers (note that the trendline adjustment now tweaks his numbers downward in states like Florida), but he retains a meaningful lead in the popular vote and some structural advantages in terms of the electoral math.
(Full disclosure: I also caught a small bug that was failing to roll in the trendline adjustment properly in recent days and also overstating the third-party vote. This was inflating Obama's popular vote margin by half a point or so. It has been corrected.)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Today's Polls, 7/15
-- Nate Silver at 7:00 PM
Labels: colorado, iowa, minnesota, north carolina, south carolina, south dakota, today's polls, washington
170 comments
Very much OT, Nate... but I've been wondering how much "coattails" effect there might be, and if there's any way to factor that into the Senate races. Does the presidential victor have a down ticket effect in a given state--and how much, and under what conditions? And... given what we're seeing now, how much of an effect is plausible/likely in this election?
That spike around 300 EVs is getting pretty frickin huge... is that still representing Kerry states plus OH, IA, CO, NM?
Nate, Rasmussen also has Mccain up 20 in LA and Obama up 8 in MI.
All I keep hearing from Right Wing Pundits is that "Michael Dukakis was up so many points this time in the election to Bush (41)in '88, and he still lost-big!" We'll true, BUT the significant difference is this: Bush(41) was V.P. to Ronald Reagen, whom (disagree with him or not) left office with the highest approval rating of all time. Imagine if this race was (insert opponent name here) versus Dick Cheney (or any other VP of the lowest-approved POTUS of all time). Wouldnt even be close. Unfortunately for McCain, he carries with him today's scarlet letter "R" next to him, Whether you like Obama or not, get used to "President Obama"....
Obama seems to be stuck at around 4-5 points behind McCain in NC. I'm still very surprised at how well Obama is polling in Iowa, I know that Obama ran a great campaign there and McCain pretty much skipped it but still
nate:
are you going to HOPE? I'll be there.
i wonder if your model would benefit greatly from a genetic algorithm that exploits emergence just as Torsten Reil did when he used genetic algorithms endorphin/euphoria to make far more realistic characters for grand theft auto 4... ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=ySRvKzZsDqw )
and more realistic motion for movie special effects, too.. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ae3fgj2x1aI
it would be so cool to apply this sort of technology to polling.
McCain is going have to play defense in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Thats almost as good as winning one of those states outright.
It's interesting how few really competitive states there are right now. There are only two where Obama's odds are between 40% and 60%: Virginia, which is dead even, and Montana, which has a 40% chance of victory for Obama.
In every state in which Obama is currently winning, his odds of victory are 66% (ie Colorado) or higher. And aside from VA and MT, there's no state Obama's losing where his odds are better than 36% (Nevada).
No wonder there's that big spike on the graph!
The new national polls are showing that Obama's lead is not going away.
The CBS News/NY Times poll has Obama up 6%, no difference from their June poll.
The Quinnipiac poll has Obama up 9%. They had Obama up 7% in their May poll.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll has Obama up 8% among registered voters and up 3% among likely voters. They had Obama up 4% among registered voters in June.
The newest Gallup tracking poll has Obama up 4%, which is in line with what they've had for a while.
The newest Rasmussen tracking poll has Obama up 4% without leaners and up 2% with leaners.
It looks like the McCain comeback was all hype.
We're light years until the general election. You know what they say, a day is a lifetime and a week is an eternity in politics.
This year may be different because of the close attention payed by the voters, but these polls are very near irrelevant with regards to predicting General election results.
We have the Obama Iraq trip, the VP picks, the conventions and the debates as scheduled big events. Not to mention the unexpected events(AKA Jeramiah Right type stuff). We haven't even seen the first real attack add. The race might as well be a dead heat.
McCain may or may not have to defend NC, and I expect Obama will make him work for South Dakota, which isn't all that different from North Dakota.
But South Carolina, regardless of Nate's similarity scores, really is different from North Carolina.
Charlotte is a pretty cosmopolitan city, ditto the Research Triangle, ditto Asheville. There's nothing like any of these in SC. The cities themselves are more conservative, and they're smaller cities to boot.
Both states have a lot of small-town and rural areas with a lot of conservative voters, but there's a lot less to counterbalance them in SC than in NC.
If I were McCain's campaign manager, I wouldn't waste a dime defending SC, even if Obama threw the kitchen sink at it. Even if Obama wins >375 EVs, none of them will come from SC.
I think that some of us are getting to hyped up for the inevitable President Obama. Lets just take a few breaths, let Nate's model work, and stop screaming about how Obama can't lose.
As much as I'd like him to win, the Republicans have not even started running real negative campaign ads yet (most of what we see around now is just leftover from the primary), and Obama by no means holds a large enough majority in all the states he needs.
However, it is sort of nice to see McCain having to play defense in Virginia by starting ad buys. Hope Montana, the Carolinas, and the Dakotas follow soon. Anything that keeps money away from the real battle states.
It looks like the McCain comeback was all hype.
Reading a bit much into daily poll fluctuations? RCP average is up from 4% to 4.5% with high poll turnover. Obama is still off from his 6%+ high a couple weeks ago.
The NY Times poll says Obama gets 37% of the white vote and McCain gets 46%. It also says that only 30% of whites have a favorable opinion of Obama. I find these results low. Only 30% of whites like Obama??? And only 24% of whites like Michelle Obama. All these numbers seem awfully low, even though Obama still has a +6 advantage overall. Someone explain??
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Moore Information is a GOP pollster and internal for Dino Rossi. Probably shouldn't be included.
Actually for the White Vote for democrats- I think thats part for the course- didn't kerry have the same numbers?
Actually for the White Vote for democrats- I think thats part for the course- didn't kerry have the same numbers?
"THIS SITE IS SO WRONG...LOL"
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--fgasparini
YayMaryland----Democrats never win the White vote....Bill Clinton did not win the white vote in 92 or 96.....The last Dem to win the white vote was LBJ in 1964....Obama's 9 point deficit is less than Gore's deficit of 12 in 2000 even though Gore won the popular vote
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