McCain takes lead over Obama: poll

How reliable are polls in August that concern an event in November?

You need some more options in the poll, like "Doesn't Matter", "+/- 15% Equals No DIfference", "Eggplant". and the old reliable "Orlando Bloom".

Yes, I'm thinking another poll category, "It's still within in the Margin of error so Who Cares?"

Duncan J Macdonald said:

You need some more options in the poll, like "Doesn't Matter", "+/- 15% Equals No DIfference", "Eggplant". and the old reliable "Orlando Bloom".

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Quoted for emphasis

Shadow_Ferret said:

Yes, I'm thinking another poll category, "It's still within in the Margin of error so Who Cares?"

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I'm with Ferret.

No. It means they phrased the question differently.

There's only one poll that matters and that's the final one taken in November by all the eligible voters.

Until then pollsters will do anything to create news in what is an otherwise boring race.

Democrats have typically led the polls by a wide margin going in to the conventions.

That either diminishes the value of polls overall (likely), or shows that McCain is going against the trend (not impossible).

If you check the RCP site, you will see that the Reuters/Zogby poll is only one of many, and slightly anomalous compared to the rest of the current ones. The RCP averages do show this week that the Obama lead has shrunk a bit from the polls a couple of weeks ago, down from the 3-4% range to the 2-3% range for most of them. McCain does appear to have had an effective August campaign, and it's helped him a bit in the numbers.

But imminently we'll have the VP choices announced, and the convention hoohas, and those will likely affect the polling in unpredictable ways. Then the real fun begins.

Regarding "Democrats have typically led the polls by a wide margin going into the conventions", as MattW has observed, check this out, for Bush-Kerry 2004, also from the RCP site:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/chart3way.html

Suggests that the polling was generally very close up to the end of August 2004, which is when Kerry got Swift-boated. After that debacle, Bush jumped to a big lead, which Kerry whittled away at until election day, but never quite caught up.

Expect a similar attempt to blitz Obama shortly after the Dem convention.

caw

Well, we had the first salvo with Corsi's book.

One of the more paranoid liberal blogs I was reading the other week- which I can no longer find a link to so take this for what it is- claims that this is all being orchestrated by Rove via the staffers that worked closly with him that now work closly with McCain.

I'm wondering if it's the narrowing of the VP choices. Barack seems to be leaning to Biden, and I think that choice will really hurt Obama.

I'm with SF on this one...
Life is much easier when you don't bother paying attention to polls before the election.

Shadow_Ferret said:

There's only one poll that matters and that's the final one taken in November by all the eligible voters.

Until then pollsters will do anything to create news in what is an otherwise boring race.

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Remember the great poll of the New Hampshire primary? That really had people wondering why there were polls when they were so inaccurate.
But why this poll has me worried is that it just might be true. Russia's invasion just led people to lean more towards mccain...

Joe270 said:

I'm wondering if it's the narrowing of the VP choices. Barack seems to be leaning to Biden, and I think that choice will really hurt Obama.

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Don't think so. Gotta simply disagree with you on this one. The choice of Biden represents a considerable challenge for McCain to respond with at least an equally acceptable one. I'll report on the polls in the next few days.

caw

creamofmushroom said:

Remember the great poll of the New Hampshire primary? That really had people wondering why there were polls when they were so inaccurate.

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If you analyze carefully, the NH polls weren't actually all that inaccurate. It was shaping up always as a close primary. The polls fell, closely, on the wrong side of the actual result.

And, remember, that was the first primary, when things were extremely volatile. Following NH, the polls did a much better job of predicting outcomes.

caw

blacbird said:

Don't think so. Gotta simply disagree with you on this one. The choice of Biden represents a considerable challenge for McCain to respond with at least an equally acceptable one. I'll report on the polls in the next few days.

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Got to agree with Blac. I think it will help Obama, or at worst, certainly do him no harm.

The Biden announcement and Dem Convention come just at a time when McCain and the GOP are going after Obama for his questionable home purchase arrangement with Tony Rezko, now convicted of fraud.

Which one wins out in drawing more airtime and ink? And which really matters most to the independent center?

That's what will affect the next poll.

(Also - Rezko's sentencing is now delayed to one week before the election)