The Latest Polls: Obama’s Lead Decreases
The latest polls show that Barack Obama’s lead is decreasing. According to both Rasmussen and Gallup Poll John McCain has had a reasonable week, not closing the gap, but slowly making progress nonetheless.
As it is, though, Obama still maintains a reasonably comfortable lead of 6% in the Gallup poll, and – which I would not call comfortable – of 4% according to Rasmussen.
Although those nationwide polls speak in McCain’s favor, he is having trouble in many individual states, and especially in what are considered key battleground states. Several analysts have Obama already at 270 electoral votes, the minimum necessary to become president.
The Gallup poll, meanwhile, shows that McCain is actually only 2% behind if the pollsters only take “traditional” likely voters into account: 47% vs. 49%. 2% is, obviously, within the margin of error.
These polls are still, clearly, in Obama’s favor, but it is interesting that Jack Tapper reported only three days ago that top advisers to Barack Obama told him that they are more worried than most would expect; they believe that the polls are off and that the gap between Obama and McCain is much smaller. As Tapper put it, “Smart folks in the Obama campaign … believe Obama’s poll numbers are artificially high, McCain’s are artificially low, this race will come down to two or three points, and anything could happen.”
Whether that is true or not remains to be seen of course, but it is interesting that there is considerable debate about the validity and accuracy of the polls, and that both the McCain campaign and Obama campaign believe that McCain is trailing less far behind than those polls indicate.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
Comments are closed.
PoliGazette Comments Policy
PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree.
Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate
these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors.
Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue
publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.
(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly
or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that
respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should
not be posted.
(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.
(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional
reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.
(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not
include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement
the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.
(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements.
Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or
that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat
slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.
Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors
by email only.
It ain’t over yet. That’s for sure. If McCain is recovering that is worrying. In the last week we have seen a politician who is erratic, impulsive, strong on personal attacks, weak on content and particularly weak on the economy. If really people are worried about tax-increases for the few super successful plumbers (and others) who own over 250,000 dollars and together received billions of tax-breaks under Bush and screwed up the national budget. Continuing Bush’s economic policies as McCain largely proposes will be irresponsible and desastrous for the US. But if that’s what people want. What can I say? It will certainly lead to a lower dollar and further diminsh the respect, crdibility and influence the US has in the world. It’s up to the voters.
Thankfully there will be end to polls and the one final “real” poll:
Nov. 4, 2008
At least you didn’t bring up the statistical tie meme/canard. Your old friend skippy had a great post about that polling fallacy.
http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2008/08/close-only-counts-in-horseshoes-and.html
I hope so very much that this election the republicans are not once again going to steal votes like in 2004. In 2004, in the voting booth, I voted for Kerry and when I pressed *send* it changed into Bush! The vote had gone to Bush. I never have been able to find out what had happened (my upset concern was not taken seriously) and I was told *you must have ticked the wrong name* (I am not an idiot, sorry, and I did not cross the wrong name)
How can we protect our votes this time?