Tag: polls

Everyone being polled could be lying. John McCain could pull Osama bin Laden’s head out of a bag and hold it up before the TV cameras the weekend before the election. Sarah Palin could be replaced on the Republican ticket by Warren Buffet, who — along with Colin Powell — will renounce his previous endorsement of Barack Obama. So no predictions from me.

But good Lord. John Zogby, whose methodology may understate support for Barack Obama, now has him leading McCain by 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent. And Pew has Obama up by 14 points among both registered voters (52 percent to 38 percent) and likely voters (53 percent to 39 percent).

Posts on polls are kind of useless, and I apologize. But the campaign has taken over most of my brain cells. I thought it was interesting that what seemed like a slight shift toward McCain a few days ago appears to have been stopped and is now being reversed.

I still think it’s going to be close.

I’m allergic to math, but even I can understand why Barack Obama’s eight-point lead in the Zogby tracking poll is bigger than it looks.

Zogby has consistently had John McCain doing better than in many other polls. As Nate Silver explains, it’s because Zogby weights party affiliation based on exit polls from the previous election.

So if the electorate is more Democratic today than it was in 2004 — and it is, by quite a bit — then Obama’s lead is actually understated by Zogby. That is, if the tracking poll is accurate in the first place, which is always a question worth asking.