Oct 13 2008
Polls Tightening, Political Industrial Complex Off It’s Collective Rockers
McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America!
Major Update: Seems we have more proof of how bad the polls really are for Obama:
As I mentioned yesterday, my brother is paid staff with the McCain campaign. Two nights ago there was a conference call, where they released internals on GA, VA, and OH.
McCain was up HUGE in those states. They are not worried about those states.
If McCain is not worried about VA and OH, the PA is probably in play and has Obama and the Dems in a near panic. I said it weeks ago, but the race will be determined by PA and VA, and if either candidate can take both it means a lot of states will swing as well and this will be an electoral landslide. H/T Kim Priestap – end update
It seems we have a tightening race, if one looks at the daily tracking polls out there today. But first I want to focus on a couple of polls out recently for what they indicate about the lack of quality in the polls. First is the Newsweek poll which Jim Geraghty, over at The Campaign Spot, assessed and determined was pure BS:
You have McCain winning Republicans, 89 to 7. You have Obama winning Democrats, 91 to 5. … Â You have McCain winning independents by 2 percent, 45 to 43.
And this adds up to an 11-percent Obama lead in your latest poll.
Of course this doesn’t add up. The only way to create an 11% lead with a tie like this is to assume Obama gets an enormous surge of support and no Hillary supporters defect to McCain. It is that last assumption that kills most polls and makes them garbage. But even the first assumption is way off. Independents will select the winner, and there are many independents truly excited over Governor Palin. Her crowds rival Obama’s, her debate audience surpassed that of Obama’s by millions. And then there are the angry, populists crowds out there railing against Obama. I see the intensity factor rapidly becoming a draw.
I have to laugh at all the idiots crying foul about a populist uprising against Obama headed by Governor Palin. After decades of the left claiming the GOP was responsible for the dragging deaths of gays, and would starve children and old people to feed corporate coffers, the idea that a woman has come out of the Northwest and called out the politicians for being elitist, cliquish, snobs who have no connection to the American People (but sure find time to hang around the terrorists like Bill Ayers) has the Political Industrial Complex stumped. The more they wail, the more Americans realize the best punishment for DC is to send in Sarah to kick some butt.
Victor Davis Hanson dissects the wailing of the elitists left and right best – so I won’t go into it in detail. The point is the temperature is rising because the anti-Obama forces are starting to roil. Which makes optimistic turnout models for Obama very risky. The folks fed up with DC are fed up with pollsters, the news media, the talking heads, the deal makers, the lobbyists, the power brokers and the politicians. They realize a power hungry clique has taken hold of the country’s levers of power and have been feeding them BS and keeping them in the dark for years now. But Americans are not mushrooms and they can make their displeasure known.
With a 90% wrong track numbers, historic lows for Congress, historic lows for the news media there is more of a chance there is a quiet and determined wave about to smash DC than there is a wave to anoint DC’s “chosen one”. And this is Obama’s Achilles Heel coming into the final stretch as the leader in the race. Everyone in the dungheap of DC is rooting for Obama now. Conservatives like Brooks are calling the lady from the backbone of America a ‘cancer’. Well, America sees Brooks and his cronies in DC as the cancer. The way to excise that cancer is to bring in what the cancer fears most.
So let me get to the next poll out recently, the newly schizoid Gallup Daily Tracking Poll. I am being very cheeky here because Gallup is doing what I have been asking pollster to do for a while now – show us a range of turnout model predictions. Just like a storm track cone, different turnout model assumptions give different trajectories. So Gallup as done the nation a favor here and shown how turnout assumptions are driving Obama’s tilted numbers in many polls. Here’s their data:
Now we can see as fact how turnout models are twisting the polls (like the Newsweek joke we discussed above). First, note how Obama’s support is very large in the general pool of ‘registered’ voters. This is the standard tilt to the left of the general population, who don’t all vote. When you focus down on ‘likely’ voters we see the classic 3-5% shift to the right (which will be there all the way to the final voting day). Obama’s lead goes from +7% down to +4% using the classic polling model.Â
Now Gallup tries to inject some momentum in the race by attempting to relate the willingness to talk to pollsters as momentum for one side. As long as the willingness to talk to pollsters is directly tied to willingness to get out and vote, this is could measure any momentum for Obama. But given the fact Palin attracts the same or bigger crowds, even on national TV, I seriously doubt Obama has the edge in momentum anymore. Sarah Palin was a risky gamble, but she may well prove decisive. If you look the Gallup Numbers related to ‘intensity’, Obama jumps back to a +6% lead.
The Gallup Internals show a different race. The party affiliation numbers show a tie race, and maybe a McCain lead because he is winning the middle (Obama takes +3 for the middle left-right groups, but McCain takes +9 from the hardcore independents). I would not be doing what RCP is doing and even factor in the Gallup ‘intensity’ numbers, because if this was a complete analysis there would be a scenario that would have reasonable assumptions that favor McCain. Like the fact Palin and anger at Obama’s liberal leanings will offset any Obama surge – just as Hillary supporters kept Obama from winning the primaries outright. There is a model that should be run where McCain’s supporters are grossly under measured due to the fact the will not participate in the polls. And that could mean the third possible trajectory is a +5% lead for McCain.Â
In my mind that makes the +4% lead from the conventional poll model the middle of the spectrum of possible outcomes, not the most pro-McCain scenario.
Newsweek did the same thing but without telling their readers. They took what would be a historically tied race and gave a huge (and unproven) boost to Obama, basically deciding he would bring out 11% more voters to the polls. Â And he will do this relying on the most unreliable of voters, the young. Â
I have seen and documented this tilt in poll internals for weeks now, as I did with the Morning Call PA Poll. That poll hillariously has a 15% difference in voter turnout between Dems and Reps, even though that state was won by George W Bush by only 2.5% in 2004. Â I don’t for a minute believe McCain-Palin is down by 15%, I am not even sure they are down 5%. This poll is why the PA numbers are so far off and you will find Obama in that state trying to hold on to any lead he may have.
As of today Obama’s one time +8% lead in the Rasmussen poll has shrunk down to +5% in the last week. At this rate of decline (if held steady and there is no reason to assume it will hold steady) McCain would win easily three weeks from now.
The Gallup numbers are even more stunning, going from +11% to +4-6% (depending on which model you want to rely on) in a week. Even the more optimistic models show that this rate of decline would result in a McCain win by the time we go to vote.
We may be about to see the next President Dewey.
Update: I want to agree with Hanson about why so many are jumping ship on Palin to save their careers in the Political Industrial Complex.
Second, with Obama now with an 6-8 point lead, some in the DC/NY corridor these last three weeks figure it’s time now to jump or at least sort of jump, since the train they think is leaving the station and there might be still be some space at the dinner table on the caboose. They also believe as intellectuals that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind-in contrast to the “cancer” Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table-talk other than the proper chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.
Not to mention keeping their mugs in front of the TV cameras and thus their paychecks nice and fat.
McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America!
If Obama really is up 15% in PA then WHY does:
Obama makes four stops in Philadelphia
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama12-2008oct12,0,2470805.story
Remember: Don’t follow the polls follow where the candidates go
Obama has a very good ground game so they say. Palin is our ground game.
An aside AJ, did you read that Iran has made preconditions on the US for talks with them? The preconditions are that we get out of the Middle East, and that we cut Israel lose. To bad Obama. There are always preconditions that protect the country that each party represents.
About PA, Obama needs huge margin in Philly. Watched the Clintons and Biden in Scranton yesterday – funny how they all focussed on Biden and not much about Obama.
Jennifer Rubin has a great piece at pajamasmedia
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-shouldnt-relax-just-yet/2/
“Palin’s real accomplishments in energy policy” by Ethel C. Fenig at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/post_130.html
“While the elitists mock Republican vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as a frozen moose hunter who thinks conducting foreign relations means she can see Russia from her house, they are merely betraying their own ignorance.
However, even her own state’s main newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, berates her for letting her energy platform be dumbed down to “drill, baby, drill,” while praising her for her truly outstanding accomplishments.
In energy alone they summarize:
In just two years as governor:
She worked with lawmakers and used her popularity to vastly increase Alaska’s take-home share of its oil wealth, providing the state with billions of dollars in budget surplus with an oil tax that increased both the base rate and captured progressively more at higher oil prices.
She encouraged new investment and exploration with generous, intelligent tax credits.
She kick-started investment in a natural gas pipeline — both through her own Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and the response by North Slope producers BP Alaska and Conoco Phillips, who pledge to spend up to $600 million on their own project.
She maintained her predecessor’s hard- line stance with Exxon/Mobil over development of the Point Thomson gas reserves, ultimately deciding to take the leases back rather the trust Exxon to make good on its umpteenth promise to produce. That prompted Exxon to go to court. That also prompted Exxon to promise $1.3 billion of work on Point Thomson.
She proposed a Renewable Energy Fund that lawmakers last session approved for $250 million over five years. This is money to bankroll wind, geothermal, tidal and other forms of renewable energy.
• She supported lawmakers’ work on home energy conservation, including $200 million for the Weatherization Program that increased the qualifying income limits for individuals and families and $100 million for the Home Energy Rebate Program, which provides up to $10,000 per household for energy efficiency improvements.
(snip)
Her Alaska record shows she’s paid attention, can see beyond drilling platforms and isn’t afraid to take on the industry when the public good demands it. So far on the campaign trail she’s shown gumption without vision on the subject of energy. Rather than pad her resume, she should build on it; she’s got more to offer than “drill, baby, drill.”
BOTTOM LINE: Sarah Palin’s got a solid energy record in Alaska. National voters need to hear more than “drill, baby, drill.” ”
one more point:
When will anyone mention Obama’s promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (in a speech on Jan 22, but no mention of this promise on his official campaign website)? I’ve been pro-choice since 1969, but FOCA makes ME uncomfortable.
From a purely objective standpoint, this election will be fascinating to see how much polls match reality. They are certainly painting a pretty drastic picture; one of a nation ready to hand Obama a landslide. I mean, there was a poll out in the last few days showing Obama winning West Virginia in a landslide! Something is seriously wrong here.
One thing for sure, though, is that McCain-Palin supporters are being told to give up. It’s over.
One last point, why is McCain-Palin compaigning in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Wisconsin?
I think there may be a backlash against Obama by the time of the election. The arrogance, the bullying, the sanctimonious preaching and the elitism is really getting on people’s nerves.
Not to mention the lying.
For all those people out there who think the angry Right has said some unkind things about the Messiah, check this photo out and tell me, how fair is this?
Yep, one set of rules for the Obama folks and yet another for we mere mortals.
I think you’re right about the skewed polls and desperate Dems. Looks like BO and the Dems are dusting off Clinton’s old campaign.
Obama makes four stops in Philadelphia
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama12-2008oct12,0,2470805.story
“If he wins the White House, Obama said, he will use the $10 billion the nation currently spends each month in Iraq on domestic programs.”
Remember what a disaster cutting all that military spending was after Clinton got in, all the attacks on American embassies, the USS Cole, etc. It emboldened the terrorists knowing the American people believed in starving their own military, all while Clinton diddled. I mean, fiddled. I mean, saxed. No, oh never mind.
BO goes on:
“He told a crowd of 20,000 in Germantown: “If we can rebuild Baghdad, we can sure as heck rebuild Philadelphia.””
Dude, how can we “rebuild Baghdad” if we’re not winning the war, if the surge didn’t work??
BO does the full ACORN:
“”If you will join with me, if you will work with me and organize with me and make phone calls with me and knock on doors with me…. “It’s on each and every one of you to bring your friends, your relatives, your co-workers, people on the block, everybody has to vote,” Rendell said. “I don’t care how long the lines are. Nobody leaves.””
The article goes on to talk about the “street money” in Philadelphia to get out the vote. It’s pretty sick.
“Obama aides declined to comment on whether they would give out street money. But if they don’t, Madonna said, someone will do it on the campaign’s behalf.”
Quite a different odor altogether from the sweet smell of 10% success settling down in Philly.
Also:
WSJ: Obama’s 95% Illusion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html
So who’s all doing the “bamboozling”? Or should we say, “Obama-boozling”?
30,000 inelegible voters on Florida’s registration rolls who are convicted felons. Democrats outnumbering Republicans 2-1. Polling according to “registered voters” doesn’t mean squat.
Ace has the flaming skull up:
“US ATTORNEY IN OHIO TO FILE RICO ACTION AGAINST ACORN TOMORROW MORNING”
AJ, I truly hope you are right on your gauge of American intelligence; for me this election is the litmus test as to whether the election process has been completely co-opted by the establishment in DC and the MSM.
Glad to see that RICO has finally come to bear against ACORN, I can think of nothing more heinous or traitorous than aiding and abetting the fraudulent election of a POTUS—leave that for the county dog catcher and king of Venezuela elections.
However, the market seems to be pricing in a democrat victory in November and the conversion of our economy to a much less laissez-faire environment for doing business and creating jobs with real lasting value—-unless we all become community organizers.
Talk about “racist”!
3 Pathetic Black Men Who Won’t Vote for Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq8iuVZwsc0
This election is getting really scary in revealing the attitudes and pressures black conservatives have to live with. Just read some of the captions that were added by the guy who uploaded the clip. The comments are a hundred times worse.
From Bob Parks “Black & Right”
http://www.black-and-right.com/
Remember how the obama campaign told Hillary it was over? How they tried to call the primary WAY before it was over? “Get out of the race now, Hillary”…blah, blah, blah.
Same thing going on now. But guess what?
AMERICANS ARE MAD AS HELL AT THE DEMOCRAT VIOLATIONS OF TRUST AND DECENCY AND ATTACKS ON OUR FREEDOM. Their socialist agenda has caused ENOUGH HARM, already.
And they aren’t going to take it anymore. Three strikes and you’re out obama: Wright, Ayers, ACORN, and let’s not forget Rezko. Singing like a canary, I understand!
So, o. Get used to it. You’re taken on the seasoned Navy Pilot and the sharp stiletto’d pitbull. As one poster said: The POW/WOW ticket. Love that!
Let me see if I get this straight.
Obama has had a 7-11 point lead in the Gallup Daily Polls for 11 straight days.
Obama’s favorability ratings are up 4 points in the last month. McCain’s are down 15. Palin’s are down 16.
PPP has Obama up by 6 in OH, Strategic Vision by 2, ABC/Post by 6.
Rasmussen has Obama up by 3 in FL, Strategic Vision by 8, Mason-Dixen by 2.
Rasmussen has Obama up by 13 in PA, SurveyUSA by 15.
(All polls are within the last week.)
And yet… the Democrats are “in a near panic”?
Seriously – are you all HIGH?
Here is an article worth reading from the camp of Hillary supporters. Looks like something major is brewing and:
It is a long article that touches on several subjects but well worth the read, in my opinion.
Of course the Democrats are in a panic. We have a rapidly aging, angry, out of touch prisoner of war at the helm and somebodys’ mom ready to back him up… I mean, he’s gonna clean up Washington and change, uh, something… the mess he and his own party made perhaps… and her… no brainer, I mean, did you see the Katie Couric interview? If you don’t think that individual is the 2nd most qualified person in the world to be its leader than well, perhaps you’re right… As a republican I was so proud of how she answered the questions, this is the VICE PRESIDENCY of the US, who cares if she can’t swim in a one one one interview about, uh, politics and stuff… it was mean and unfair… but him?… he’ll be the oldest person ever elected, so better think long and hard about a qualified successor, right? Country First! The democrats are worried sick the best senior citizen/hockey mom combo might win! They should be worried, its friggin’ scary!
b_i_b, I got a chuckle out of your posting. So you work for the Obama campaign? “Rapidly aging” … uhm, no, he ages at the same speed as we all do, one day at a time. Angry … really? Are you just repeating Democrat rhetoric here? Odd how McCain was the darling of the liberals when he was criticizing the Republican leadership, everyone sang his praises including the New York Times and the Washington Post. Now he is “angry and ‘rapidly’ aging”. That’s hilarious. And what makes him “out of touch”? I would say he is much more in touch with average America than Obama is. And so is Palin. In fact, Palin is pretty much representative of the vast majority of American working mothers.
It was cute, though, how you managed to fit all those Democrat characterizations of McCain into one single sentence.
Hey bush_is_best, is McCain more angry or less angry than these crazy leftist grumps?
(1) People who call Sarah Palin a “MILP” (Mother I’d Like to Punch)? http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/crush-the-obamedia-narrative-look-whos-gripped-by-insane-rage/
(2) “Let’s stone [Sarah Palin], old school”? http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/pds-mobsters-in-philly-lets-stone-her-old-school/
(3) People wearing “Sarah Palin is a c__t” T-shirts? http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/obama-supporters-wearing-sarah-palin-is-a-c-tee-shirts/
And these are just things that got posted yesterday. Never mind the avalanche of garbage printed and spoken about Palin and her family in the week after McCain announced her as his VP pick.
You liberals really don’t deserve to be taken seriously when you complain about other people’s behavior.
“Angry … really?”
Yes, really. Even other members of the GOP agree:
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Cochran said about McCain by phone. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”
Plus, a man worth hundreds of millions, and who can’t remember how many homes he owns – that man is “in touch with average America”? A woman with a net worth of $2.5 million is “representative of the vast majority of American working mothers”? How do you figure that?
yeah, I’ll give it up… citing someones age as a detractor is no better/worse than citing someones race or gender… I do not work for the Obama campaign, I just feel that a debate blog should contain, well, debate, which includes examination of the positives and negatives of both sides. I see a distinct lack of contrasting viewpoints here, yet plenty of very repetitive conservative rhetoric. The republicans have a very solid opponent here, in Barack Obama, with many redeeming qualities that are obviously resonating with the American public, and certainly with the world at large. The political climate currently is a very clear indicator that conservative ideals are not necessarily the only road to prosperity. The average American is not what he/she used to be. There is a movement in this country that involves youth and minority viewpoints more than ever before. Technology, morality, lifestyle… they are all changing. Through his language, Obama displays a wider variety of understanding and a greater capacity to learn than McCain does. These are the qualities that are of the utmost importance in picking a president, and through the mistakes and embarrassments of the recent past, its quite obvious that many people agree. Sarah Palin represents working women, evangelicals and the conservative base, sure she does… but many believe she chosen for those reasons alone in an attempt to win an election. That is pathetic… a candidate must be chosen because there was no other individual available on the planet who displays understanding and intelligence requisite of the presidency. Was there nobody else? I think there were plenty, and I think republicans need to acknowledge her positives as well as her negatives (like the Couric interview) in order to use the term ‘straight talk’… or else its not straight. You are losing the election. You are behind in the polls. Talk straight as to why, exactly, that is, or examine several possibilities.
Even CNN is starting to notice the massive registration fraud going on. Latest one is 5000 new registrations turned in in Indiana. They started checking them. They got through the first 2100 of them without finding a single legitimate registration and threw them all out.
Obama. Fraud you can believe in!