Zogby is Clueless

Pollster Prez, John Zogby is about 11 months too late on this one...

"John Zogby, president of Zogby International, told a group of businesspeople today that it’s up to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to convince voters to go with him. If he’s not successful, the country will likely vote for “a comfortable old shoe”, that being Republican Sen. John McCain."

According to 538 (a composite pollster), that's pretty much impossible.



Pollsters need to stop being in the narrative-creating business. The MSM is more than enough for me.

Narrative-creating

The jokers at the AP and other blind media outlets usually are guided by election time hysteria and narratives come and go within hours. I have seen this AP headline on my YahooNews ticker for the past 36 hours. NEVER have I ever seen the same headline on the ticker for more than 6 hours (and that's even a stretch). This is the same tired article that goes along with the Image of the Week/Useless Poll that I talked about two days ago.

Here's the cached headline that has actually moved from a brief mentioning to a headline.



Everything about this article is absurd. The title, "A New Racial Divide", is a pathetic attempt to make it seem like Obama is somewhat responsible for creating this "New" concept of racism and black-white animonsity. The teaser, "And who's to blame?" makes it abuntantly clear that the AP is trying to heighten racial tensions as the election nears. How about the, "Poll: Racial views may cost Obama". Cost him what? The election? Right.

The wedge the AP is going for is pretty apparent. Now that Obama has a comfortable lead, it's time to bring his race back into it and see if that might scare the numbers into tightening.

Image of the Week

Well, I guess it was a matter of time until we saw a racist poll like this surface.

From the mouth of the douche himself, Ron Fourier claims:

"40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks."

And in case that wasn't inflammatory enough, they gave us this handy little image to go along with the paranoia.


This is so offensive, but while we're looking at it, was anyone surprised by the GOP numbers?

VA Switches Back to Obama

Will more States do the same?

"In an election for President of the United States in Virginia today, 09/15/08, 7 weeks till votes are counted, Democrat Barack Obama defeats Republican John McCain 50% to 46%, according to this latest SurveyUSA poll conducted for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, WJLA-TV in Washington DC, WTVR-TV in Richmond, and WJHL-TV in the Tri-Cities. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released one week ago, immediately following the Republican National Convention, Obama is up 3 points; McCain is down 3. The movement solidifies Virginia place as America's 2008 battleground."

Poll Sampling

Wonder why McCain has an edge? I don't.

Huffington has the story.

"In a year in which Democrats have a lead of 11 million registered voters over Republicans, and have been adding to that advantage through a robust field operation, are pollsters over-sampling Republicans?"

National Polls

It's fun to pretend that McCain is leading...excpect when he's not.

Barr and Nader will play a serious roll in this election.

McCain TV Poll

What do you think?

Online Surveys & Market Research

In case you forgot...

Sugarfoot
Sugarfoot is the title of a TV western that aired from 1957 to 1961. The series featured Will Hutchins as fledgling frontier lawyer Tom Brewster and Jack Elam as sidekick Toothy Thompson. Brewster was a correspondence-school graduate whose apparent lack of cowboy skills earned him the peculiar nickname "Sugarfoot".

Gentle Ben
The show stars a young Clint Howard (Ron Howard's brother) as Mark Wedloe, and chronicles his adventures with a lovable 650-pound American black bear.

Medical Center
The show starred James Daly as Dr. Paul Lochner and Chad Everett (Richard Bradford in the pilot) as Dr. Joe Gannon, surgeons working in an otherwise unnamed university hospital in Los Angeles. The show focused both on the lives of the doctors as well as the patients showcased each week.

This one is pretty good...

At the core of the series was the tension between youth and experience, as seen between Drs. Lochner and Gannon. Helping the doctors was efficient Nurse Wilcox, played by Audrey Totter. She started out as a bit role but was eventually upgraded to co-star status starting in 1972.


Maude
Maude starred Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay, an outspoken, middle-aged, politically liberal woman living in suburban Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York with her fourth husband. Maude embraced the tenets of women's liberation, always voted for Democratic Party candidates, strongly supported legal abortion, and advocated for civil rights and racial and gender equality. However, her overbearing and sometimes domineering personality often got her into trouble when speaking out on these issues.

Chico and the Man
Chico and the Man was an American sitcom which ran on NBC from September 13, 1974 to July 21, 1978, starring Jack Albertson as Ed Brown (The Man), the cantankerous owner of a run down garage in an East Los Angeles barrio, and introducing Freddie Prinze as Chico Rodriguez, an upbeat, optimistic Chicano street kid who comes in looking for a job. It was the first U.S. television series set in a Mexican-American neighborhood.

I think Ed is pretty much McCain...

McCain Ed doesn't want any Chico's help and distrusts all foreigners Chicanos. A hard-drinking adulterer widower, he stubbornly refuses to fit in with the changing neighborhood and has alienated most of the people who live around him. Ed uses ethnic slurs and berates minorities and women Chico in an effort to get themhim to leave.

Presidential Poll Update

As I have been whining about for the past few weeks as some numbers seem to be tightening (ignore Gallup), you have to look at the composite polls and not one single poll. I have to remind myself of this often, otherwise I will start to hyperventilate.

Here you go...

Research 2000: Obama 51% McCain 39% Barr 3% Nader 2%

Democracy Corps: Obama 49% McCain 43% Barr 3% Nader 1%

CNN: Obama 51% McCain 44% Nader 6% Barr 1%

Pew: Obama 47% McCain 42%

As you can see, Obama has anywhere from a 5 to 12 point lead. Something to look at is how these polls are including Barr and Nader, but it doesn't look like voeters are breaking from Obama, but rather from McCain. McCain's biggest problem with Barr and Nader is that he has very little enthusiam surrounding his campaign. That could be a reason his numbers are being hurt by Barr while Obama's seem to remain fairly static.

Interesting tidbit from the historical cross-tabs. In August 2004, voters "strongly" behind Bush were 32%, and for Kerry they were 28%, meaning the election firmed up pretty quickly, even over the summer. You were either FOR or AGAINST Bush.

This go around the situation is eerily similar to Clinton's elections in the 90s, with 24% of voters strongly backing Obama, vs. 17% strongly backing McCain (17% is a paltry number, btw)...

Looking back historically, in August 1992, Clinton's "strong" voters were at 24%, and Bush Sr's were at 14%. Similar situation in 1996 w/ Dole. Ironically, however, during both of those elections, Perot was able to steal away a lot of voters, and so because Clinton's strong voters were higher, he was able to retain support and consistently polled in the 50s.

What I SUSPECT will happen is that voters will eventually break for Obama after the conventions, especially given his substantial lead among strong supporters...

What do you guys think?

Gallup's Poll Controversy

In the past few days, many Obama supporters seem to have been a little down. The most recent Gallup poll shows McCain leading Obama among likely voters. I have written about this before and cited how registered voters are the most dependant voters who we can poll. Likely voters very rarely turn up, are less excited and are also very likely to be more fickle on their voting decision. Luckily, those of us who read polls constantly know that Gallup is one of the worst pollsters out there and this recent poll is a glaring example of pollsters trying to falsely tighten the race.

Gallup was asked how they determined if a voters was a "likely voter".

"As for how "likely voters" were identified, USA Today reports that respondents were asked "how much thought they had given the election, how often they voted in the past and whether they plan to vote this fall." Fair enough. But the very next sentence raises even more questions about whether USA Today's effort is actually a snapshot of the electorate, as its website claims, or enters the realm of forward-looking hypothesizing. Buried in the ninth paragraph of USA Today's own write-up, they reveal that "McCain's gains came because there was an even number of likely voters from each party. Last month, the Democrats had an 11-point edge."
Abramowitz says this contradiction is the equivalent of polling malpractice. "It is simply not plausible that there would be an 11-point swing in party ID among likely voters or that there is now an even split in the likely electorate between Republicans and Democrats," he wrote in an email to the Huffington Post."

So, Gallup claims that voter's are identifying with the GOP more this month than last. Maybe, but as Abramowitz points out, 11 points is impossible for the beleaguered party. There hasn't been a single poll out this season that suggests party ID is anywhere close to even. So, what Gallup did was search and search until they found the number that created an even split.

From fivethirtyeight,

"How do you get from a 47-44 Obama lead among RVs to a 49-45 McCain
lead among LVs?A few quick calculations shows how. You have 900 RVs and 791 LVs, so that means that among your 109 UVs (that's unlikely voters according to
Gallup) Obama leads McCain by a whopping 61% to 7%. Putting it another way,
according to Gallup 16% of registered Obama supporters are unlikely to vote
compared with only 2% of registered McCain supporters."

Keeping the race close is what the media and pollsters want. I don't think that they're trying to "get" Obama, I just think that elections are the a tremendous source of revenue, especially for pollsters like Gallup who usually don't get any attention from anyone in the off season. It is a bit scary though. The polls drive the media narratives and those narratives can set the tone for the campaigns.

Gallup Chief Frank Newport admits that this was a little fishy.

So sure, "under a scenario" where McCain's voters are energized at a level equal to Obama's and the national distribution of party ID is equal between Democrats and Republicans, perhaps it would make sense to see McCain with a four-point lead in a poll with a plus/minus 4 percent margin of error. But engineering coverage of a poll with metrics contrived to show results under a certain "scenario" sounds more prospective and hypothetical than the paper's stated mission of covering polls as momentary snapshots and "not forecasts of far-off election days." As Newport said on MSNBC this morning: "The likely voters simply tell us that turnout could make a difference."

Yeah, but polls are not supposed to be based on a series of "what-if" scenarios. I'm done with Gallup until they apologize or run a story admitting their errors.

My Gallup-esque poll question: If McCain was 46 and Obama was 71, who would you vote for?

Ridiculous, but not too far from what Gallup did.

Useless Polls

This is a particularly useless one. Apparently pet owners prefer McCain to Obama (42-37). I'm so glad that pollsters are taking the time to put this info out there, so the voters can truly make an educated decision as to who they support. There is not even a decent quote to post here, but I'll give you the best I could find.

"Richard Powell, 79, of Spokane, Wash., whose dog passed away last fall, said if a person owns a pet that "tells you that they're responsible at least for something, for the care of something."

Yeah, I guess he's right. Obama probably isn't responsible for anything. I'm convinced now. Sorry Obama, I guess I have to support McCain now. He must be a more compassionate person like Bush who has two terriers. I am a little confused as to why to article only mentioned that Obama doesn't have any pets, yet it doesn't say anything about McCain's pets. Any help? Does he have pets? I bet he has a few scattered about somewhere around his ten homes.

Is McCain even getting a free ride from unknown pollsters? Useless dribble...