Aug 12 2008
Obama Gets Faux “Olympic Bounce” In Polls
Obama’s Olympic Bounce in the polls is not good news. I had predicted Obama sinking a bit in the polls before the Democrat election, and so far the opposite has happened (check the RCP poll average and the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll). OK, normally I should be dishing up some crow to chow down on (I have gotten quite used to the taste of it in my life). But this is not good news for Obama if his poll bounce is coming due to a lack of interest in politics instead of a bounce in support.
With the Beijing Olympics on most other news loses oxygen as people are consumed with end of summer vacations, preparing to go back to school, and watching the Olympics. To say our nation’s attention is focused someplace other than politics right now is an understatement. Â That is why the Democrat Convention is not scheduled during or before the Olympics, but after – to maximize viewership.
And that is why Obama’s current bounce in the polls may not be a good sign. It is clear Obama’s base is more motivated (and one might even say obsessed), so it would make sense that as attention moves away from politics for a few weeks Obama’s numbers would rise simply because of this extra energy in a small base.
But what comes up must come down, as we say in physics. And what this tells me is when attention does move from the Olympics to the elections, Obama’s numbers will drop as the polls start to get a more representative sample of opinions. And falling polls going into the Democrat convention will be played to the hilt on why Obama is destined to fail this fall.
I think this is a response to those 48% who were sick of Obama finally getting some relief by having Obama go to Hawaii.
Well, it is not much of a bounce. He seems to stay in the same 4-5 point range.
Meanwhile Rasmussen has him holding steady at 2.
But no one is getting the majority. That is interesting.
The problem with the polls is that they are all based on certain demographics, and those demographics are in flux right now. The Democrats are claiming a numerical advantage, so that advantage then goes to their candidate. However, there is some debate as to how many of these Democrats will actually vote. The young are fickle and the older Hillary Democrats are pissed. Meanwhile Mr. Beautiful is raising millions of dollars at high price elitist fund raisers. Power to the People my behind.
I saw this at Big Lizards :
In other words, CBS considers it a reasonable prediction that in November’s general presidential and congressional elections, 39.3% of voters will be Democrats, while only 27.5% of them will be Republicans… Democrats will outnumber Republicans by half again as many.
The only possible explanation is that CBS predicts one of the greatest Democratic turnouts in post-WWII American history… coupled with one of the most dismal Republican turnouts ever.
Say, might this weighting equation might affect their conclusion that Obama led the race by six points?
Here is where the poll internals came in amazingly handy. Page 3 of the pdf breaks down the candidates’ support by different groups — sex, race, age, education — but also by political party. It was the work of a couple of minutes to make an algebraic formula to see how changing the party percentage would affect the final results.
First, I used the weighted percentages; I got 45.4% for Obama and 38.7% for McCain… which by rounding turns into 45% to 39%, just as CBS reported. This confirmed that my formula worked.
Next I plugged in the original, unweighted party percentages; this changed the results to:
* Barack H. Obama 43.6%
* John S. McCain 40.6
Using the unweighted sample — which already has a substantial advantage for Democrats — reduces Obama’s lead from six to three points… which by an amazing coincidence is exactly the margin of error.
So the CBS poll, using the raw sample, found Obama and McCain in a statistical tie… but after some quick manipulation of the party percentages, increasing the Democratic advantage markedly, they ended instead with a significant and fairly substantial lead for Barack Obama.
It seems to me that the more voters get to know Obama, the less they like what they see, and the reverse is true with McCain.
I was extremely distraught that McCain got the Republican nomination. Since my primary interest is fiscal, I was particularly incensed about McCain’s vote against the Bush tax cuts; even worse, his reason for voting against them. With his proposal to extend the Bush cuts and add a monumental corporate rate reduction, I feel he has come my way, I may even consider not using the clothespin on my nose when I go vote for him.
[…] On August 12th I was beginning to prepare myself a hefty dish of crow as Obama rebounded somewhat when the Olympics started, but then I thought about it and doubled down on my prediction: And that is why Obama’s current bounce in the polls may not be a good sign. It is clear Obama’s base is more motivated (and one might even say obsessed), so it would make sense that as attention moves away from politics for a few weeks Obama’s numbers would rise simply because of this extra energy in a small base. […]
[…] like my prediction about Obama sliding behind McCain was off by a few days. I predicted it would happen before the Dem […]
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