Subject: [Homestead] Newsweek -- "A one point race" ?
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:03:57 -0700 (PDT)
This article in Newsweek talks about the close polls some of you were
mentioning. The jest of it, I believe, is take them all with a grain of
salt.
But if McCain is doing as well in PA, as I heard this am , this could be
setting up a big upset. PA is almost 70% democrat by registration. I
thought it was over, maybe not.
Could be like the Dewey/Truman thing. I don't think anyone on the list is
old enough to remmber that, but this outcome could be similar. But, with the
economy, it should be a blow-out.
People aren't realizing , yet, that the dems were more responsible for the
mess than the dumb*ss repubs. Soon, they will figure out, and hopefully
throw many of them in jail, and most of them out of office......bobford
"Which is why the Drudge Report, the Politico Playbook and Mark Halperin's
The Page--three of the main arbiters of Washington's conventional wisdom--are
all linking to the latest national surveys from IBD ("close!") and AP-Gfk
("shock!"): they show Obama's leads at 4 points (46-42) and 1 point (44-43),
respectively.
"The presidential race [has] tightened after the final debate," writes the
AP's Liz Sidoti; Fox posted a new "TIGHT RACE" graphic: "AP POLL SHOWS
VIRTUAL TIE." Neither McCain, Obama nor the media has any incentive to
disagree.
Unfortunately, the same polls also show McCain crushing Obama in the sub-25
demographic (IBD) and benefiting from a 19 percentage point boost in
evangelical turnout (AP).
Given that Obama typically leads by about 40 points among young voters and
McCain isn't particularly popular with the born-again crowd, reasonable
people--that is, those of us who actually want to figure out who's winning
and by how much--can probably agree that AP and IBD aren't the best polls on
which to base our sense of the race.
But that raises the question: how should reasonable people be reading the
polls? Here are three tips:................................."