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09-07-2008, 11:16 PM #1Big Balls Guest
McCain/Palin up 10 on Obama/bin Biden
According to latest USA Today/Gallup poll.
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09-07-2008, 11:52 PM #2
Four points.
Nice math skills though.In the long run, we're all dead.- John Maynard Keynes
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09-08-2008, 12:07 AM #3Big Balls Guest
Ten points.
Nice READING skills though.
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09-08-2008, 12:22 AM #4
Only "morans" would think ONE poll means very much... the only REAL way to see what is happening is to view the variety of info/data here; http://www.pollster.com/
The current "poll" info looks like this; (Edit: this is an active link... the graph will be current each time this thread is viewed)

just so you don't think there is too little "data" behind this graph, please click here to load the HUNDREDS of polls amalgamated to create this work.
The current "electoral votes" info looks like this;

and click here for the specifics... remember it takes 270 to win.Last edited by timvwcom; 09-08-2008 at 01:03 PM.
If some of the best times of my life were skiing the UP in -40 wind chill with nothing but jeans, cotton long johns and a wine flask to keep warm while sleeping in the back of my dad's van... does that make me old school?
"REHAB SAVAGE, REHAB!!!"
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09-08-2008, 12:30 AM #5Big Balls Guest
Ok first of all FL, NC, VA, ND, and MT are NOT tossups, those are all either McCain likely or solidly McCain (or in the case of MT solidly Palin
). Second of all all polls are not created equal. The only polls worth paying attention to are Zogby, Rasmuesen, and Gallup (in this case it was a USA Today/Gallup poll). All the others are a joke. Those 3 will rountinely be within 1 point of each where as all the others have 16 point disparities between them. They are just all over the place. I've been following polls closely for 8 years now and those are the only 3 worth paying attention to. So the fact that Pollster.com uses hundreds of polls for data is not testament to how accurate it is but testament to how inaccurate it is. Right now McCain/Palin is up either 4 point, 6 points or 10 points depending on who you go by......... Oh, I also find it funny how that site has PA SOLIDLY Democrat when virtually every other place (including both campaigns) consider it a big tossup.
Last edited by Big Balls; 09-08-2008 at 12:34 AM.
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09-08-2008, 12:37 AM #6
Soooo... all the polling companies haven't called you yet? I'd have thought they would recognize yer genius from posts just like this long ago.
If some of the best times of my life were skiing the UP in -40 wind chill with nothing but jeans, cotton long johns and a wine flask to keep warm while sleeping in the back of my dad's van... does that make me old school?
"REHAB SAVAGE, REHAB!!!"
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09-08-2008, 12:46 AM #7Big Balls Guest
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09-08-2008, 01:09 AM #8Copied from your link, GeniusMcCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican's biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul. Then, he lagged by 7 percentage points.
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09-08-2008, 01:19 AM #9
Sooooo... would a college edumucated male believe in scientific methods? If he would, we are in luck!!! Turns out that someone has gone back over 129 different electoral contests since 2000, for contests that include President, Senate, Governor and the Presidential primaries... and actually found out who has been the most accurate. I'll include all the "scientific crap" after the results, but here they are;

You can peruse it yerself here; http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...ings-v311.html, but since I'm such a nice guy, I've posted it here too.
Full Methodological Description
I presently have a database of 171 different electoral contests since 2000 that have been surveyed by at least three of the 32 pollsters that I include in my study. These include contests for President, Senate and Governor, as well as polls from the presidential primaries. A poll is included if (i) it is the last poll that an agency put out before the election; (ii) it was released no later than two weeks from the election date.
My goal is to isolate the instance of methodological error, or what I call Pollster-Introduced Error (PIE). If you look at a poll at any given time before an election, there are essentially three different sources of error:
Total Error = Sampling Error + Temporal Error + PIE
Sampling Error is the error that pollsters typically report in their margin of error calculations -- the error intrinsic to sampling only a subset of the entire voting population. All polls have sampling error, though of course a pollster can reduce it by including more interviews in its sample.
Temporal Error is the error introduced by taking a poll weeks or months before an election. Temporal Error is a major consideration now, in April, when we are looking at polls of the November general election; many things can happen between now and then, and (contrary to the common perception) it is not up to the pollster to predict the future. Temporal Error is incorporated into our model in terms of the uncertainty we build into our estimates. For purposes of the pollster ratings, however, we can ignore Temporal Error (that is, assume it to be zero), because we are limiting our evaluation to polls taken very near to the election date.
That leaves us with our final source of error, Pollster-Introduced Error. PIE is what a tennis aficionado might call "Unforced Error"; it is error that results from poor methodology. As a matter of practice, all pollsters have some PIE, which is why the actual margins of error are always larger than those espoused by the pollster. However, this amount varies fairly significantly from agency to agency -- which is the impetus for producing these ratings.
To find the PIE, we will first calculate the Total Error for each pollster, and then deduct its Sampling Error. We begin with a calculation called the Raw Total Error (RTE), which is simply the average number of 'points' by which a pollster missed the final margin in a given contest, weighted by the number of pollsters that surveyed that contest. We then compare this against what we call the Iterated Average Error (IAE), which is average error for other pollsters that surveyed the same contest, as determined by a multiple iteration method. This step is functionally equivalent to that which we employed in Version 2.0 of our pollster analysis and is described at greater length there. We then subtract the IAE from the RTE to produce a +/- rating. A negative rating means that the pollster outperformed its peers, while a positive rating means that it underperformed. The +/- score for each pollster in our database is indicated
Turns out these same people ALSO are keeping track of electoral votes... Here's what they show as of Sunday;

And their version of the poll amalgamation;

And I know YOU are the expert and all... but maybe you could stop by the FAQs and see how THEY "measure" the polls; http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...t-revised.htmlIf some of the best times of my life were skiing the UP in -40 wind chill with nothing but jeans, cotton long johns and a wine flask to keep warm while sleeping in the back of my dad's van... does that make me old school?
"REHAB SAVAGE, REHAB!!!"
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09-08-2008, 11:53 AM #10
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...obama-244.html
VA is a dead heat right now as well, and without that, OH, and CO, McCain doesn't win.
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09-08-2008, 12:19 PM #11
How many of you only have a cell phone?
Ahh.. polls. You can only poll who you can reach.
Who are they polling? How old are these lists? What's the ratio between dems with only a cell phone and Repubs with only a cell phone?
Pollsters don't call cell phones. I think it's safe to say the majority of the millions of newly registered democratic voters are young and do not have a home phone.
Hmmmmm...
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09-08-2008, 12:31 PM #12advres Guest
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09-08-2008, 12:35 PM #13Big Balls Guest
Copied from my link genius.
"In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.
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09-08-2008, 12:37 PM #14
Think, Advres.
McCain isn't exactly bustin' it up on campus. Most students have cellphones, not landlines, so are harder (if not impossible) to poll. Then again most don't bother voting in the end, so it's usually a wash. This election could be different, however.
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09-08-2008, 12:49 PM #15
Ya, I thought of that but the proportion of newly registered democratic voters greatly overwhelms the same for the republicans.
Looking for hope? Not exactly. I'm just pointing out a fact that every republican should really worry about. Time to tighten up those blinders advres.
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09-08-2008, 01:06 PM #16
I can't believe any of you still put any faith in polls.
"Active management in bear markets tends to outperform. Unfortunately, investors are not as elated with relative returns when they are negative. But it does support the argument that active management adds value." -- independent fund analyst Peter Loach
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09-08-2008, 01:15 PM #17
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09-08-2008, 01:23 PM #18advres Guest
The real thing funny about this is you people believe anything is going to change if Obama wins. No matter who wins, I will live pretty much the same life.
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09-08-2008, 01:25 PM #19Big Balls Guest
I find it funny how I say "hey look at this widely respected poll done yesterday showing McCain up 10 points", and you guys say "oh yeah, look at this electoral map based upon state to state polling done WEEKS ago". Or you say, "oh yeah, well history has proven that this poll is off by a whopping 1.8 points on average". So lets say you give Obama the margin of error AND an additional 2 points McCain is still whooping him. And I don't see how I should have to argue electoral maps based on state to state polling when most state specific polling is only done every couple weeks. Some of the latest polling on some toss up states are over a month old!
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09-08-2008, 01:30 PM #20
Un Paid Spokesman
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I recieved a poll call on my cell phone last thurs.
Their first question after I agreed to take the poll was "Are you, or any member of your family, employed by a newspaper or TV/Radio station?"
Me; "Why yes...I work for a radio station."
Them: "Oh...Thank you for your time"...click
WTF? are media types just presumed liberal, or were they afraid I would talk about this on the air? (I did anyway) or try to slant the poll #'s.
Anyway, a PSA if you don't want to be bothered by pollsters. Tell em you're with the media.
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09-08-2008, 01:33 PM #21
I think it's funny that you can't read well or that you refuse to read what the poll actually says that you referenced:
Are you intentionally being dense or are you simple very dumb?McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican's biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul. Then, he lagged by 7 percentage points.Damn shame, throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that
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09-08-2008, 01:40 PM #22
^^^OMG how many times does this have to go back and forth...the NEW POLL is down the page and is done via most likely voters... READ more than just a few lines:
In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.
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09-08-2008, 01:42 PM #23
ACTUALLY... you said exactly "McCain/Palin up 10 on Obama/bin Biden" and "According to latest USA Today/Gallup poll."
Soooo... when you say McCain is "up" on Obama by "10"... we just pointed out that one poll does not the truth make... what's so unusual about that?
Of course, THEN you go and make a idiotic claim that only 3 polling companies are "worth paying attention to" and that "All the others are a joke"... and I hand you your ass. That was simple too...
Now get back to other productive thrunting here abouts and stop whining like a baby.
If some of the best times of my life were skiing the UP in -40 wind chill with nothing but jeans, cotton long johns and a wine flask to keep warm while sleeping in the back of my dad's van... does that make me old school?
"REHAB SAVAGE, REHAB!!!"
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09-08-2008, 01:42 PM #24Big Balls Guest
Haha! OMG you are so dumb. You obviously are reading neither the article nor this thread. I suggest you fully read one of the two (or god forbid both) before you make incredibly stupid insights on both. I'd point out your oversight but I have already done this twice already!
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09-08-2008, 01:44 PM #25
All of you are idiots...
SAME POLL, DIFFERENT GROUPS...
"by 50%-46% among registered voters" & "by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote"If some of the best times of my life were skiing the UP in -40 wind chill with nothing but jeans, cotton long johns and a wine flask to keep warm while sleeping in the back of my dad's van... does that make me old school?
"REHAB SAVAGE, REHAB!!!"












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