Re: Why Obama is Winning
posted at 9/12/2012 7:33 PM EDT
In response to skeeter20's comment:
In response to andiejen's comment:
In response to jmel's comment:
Ohhhhh what a shame................
"
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows President Obama attracting support from 46% of voters nationwide, while Mitt Romney earns 45% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. "
jmel,
Let us not leave out another important piece of data from the Wednesday report.
50% of voters in the Swing States Approve of Obama. These are the states where the general will be decided.
Andie: I can't speak to Rasmussen in particular, but most polls are oversampling democrats by 5-11 points. that's just not real world. the other issue I see in many of these polls is likely vs. registered voters. Registered voters polls are nearly useless. Another issue is that urban areas are vastly over-represented. People in the burbs and rural areas work for a living and therefore not around to answer the phone, and generally are not well represented in the polls.
The last issue is that given the increasingly hostile environment towards citizens from their government, I suspect many conservatives are not answering the polls, or not answering them honestly.
skeeter,
You make several valid points. If polls were all that accurate, then we hardly need vote, putting aside a few considerations.
The phone issue. I have done phone banking for candidates. It is not a lot of fun and is being used less and less. People see the candidate's name in caller id and often do not answer. Or they get called too many times and get angry. Many people I know have dropped their landline and are just using cell phones.
Some candidates I know this year are having the calls come up Wireless Caller versus their name to try and get a round the Caller Id. We have been called at home at night. Also come back from a medical appt. to find robo call messages waiting for us. Cannot stop it with the Do not call list because politicians are excluded.
You may get some heat that you implied people who live in the city do not work, therefore they are home for daytime calls. We live in the suburbs because that is where I am most comfortable. But people should know most phone banks really do not begin until the later hours.
Registered versus likely voters is always an important difference. You can tell likely voters by their recent past voting record. That is available to the public.
As for oversampling. I know more people identify themselves as Democrats than as Republicans. One poll had it as 35%-28%. That leaves everyone else an independent if accurate.
I do not know where you got the information regarding oversampling so I cannot really speak to it.
