By John Stark
Many Democrats seem to be icing down the champagne for an Election Night celebration, but Mitt Romney could still overcome Barack Obama’s apparent lead in opinion polls, says John Cassidy, writing in the New Yorker.
While Obama’s lead in the polls is significant, Cassidy notes that late-September margins typically get a lot tighter by Election Day, and the presidential debates are still to come.
Also still to come: economic and international headlines known only to Nostradamus. Will the October surprises benefit the President, or the challenger?
Also on the New Yorker website, the always-helpful Andy Borowitz offers still more comfort to the Romney camp under this headline: “Romney ahead in presidential race, say replacement refs.”
All you dem’s icing that champagne if you don’t open it you might be able to sell it me(if it’s the good stuff) on election night, I’m going to be sabering at my celebration btw;
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2010/10/27/wine-101-the-art-of-sabering/
Ask Jimmy Carter what he thinks about weighted/skewed polls, here a good site to see what’s really is happening!
UnSkewed Polling Data
Wednesday, September 26, 2012 10:49:40 AM
Poll Date Sample MoE Obama(D) Romney(R) Spread
UnSkewed Avg. 9/4 – 9/20 — – 44.0 51.8 Romney +7.8
Reason/Rupe 9/13 – 9/17 787 LV 4.3 45.0 52.0 Romney +7
Reuters/Ipsos 9/12 – 9/20 1437 LV 2.9 44.0 54.0 Romney +10
NBC News/WSJ 9/12 – 9/16 736 LV 3.6 44.0 51.0 Romney +7
Monmouth Univ. 9/13 – 9/16 1344 LV 2.5 45.0 50.0 Romney +5
QStarNews 9/10 – 9/15 2075 3.0 44.0 55.0 Romney +11
NY Times/CBS News 9/8 – 9/12 1162 LV 3.0 44.0 51.0 Romney +7
Democracy Corps 9/8 – 9/12 1000 LV 3.1 43.0 52.0 Romney +8
Fox News 9/9 – 9/11 1056 LV 3.0 45.0 48.0 Romney +3
Wash. Post/ABC News 9/7 – 9/9 826 LV 4.0 45.0 52.0 Romney +7
CNN/ORC 9/7 – 9/9 875 RV 3.5 45.0 53.0 Romney +8
IBD/CSM/TIPP 9/4 – 9/9 808 RV 3.5 41.0 50.0 Romney +9
ARG 9/4 – 9/6 1200 LV 3.0 43.0 53.0 Romney +10
http://www.unskewedpolls.com/
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I don’t take anything for granted. Vote.
“The national polls of the presidential race remain skewed and this is an issue that remains important for following the political process and truly understanding what is taking place. The Gallup tracking poll, which has been over-sampled Democrats in the past,….
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-skewed-polls-issue-and-why-it-is-important-1
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“NYT/Quin/CBS Poll Oversamples Dems By 11%………
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/nytquincbs-poll-oversamples-dems-by-11?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sweetness-light%2FsURR+%28Sweetness+%26+Light+-+Articles%29
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
The only way Romney will win, is if Obama gets assassinated the day before the polls open.
Probably a mistake to reply to this one, but in fact, if a presidential candidate died before the election and his ticket was still on the ballot, I think his vice president would assume office in January. Is that correct?
that’s assuming his ticket carried enough states, of course
What a great position for the dems to be in.
And it’s still Sept!!
Articles and blog posts trying to figure out what kind of miracle it would take for
Romney to win.
The righties can really only wail about certain polls being “close” or what happened in the
’70s. (18 or 19′s.. ) like it’s relevant.
This race was over before it started and THEN Mitt stated (on tape!!) how he
“wouldn’t worry about” 47% of the populace.
His campaign staff is actually making the McCain/Palin’s advisors look
brilliant!!
Lovin” it.
AFY: Good to be enthusiastic and keep tracking down those polls…. but:
Intrade: Obama at 75
538: Obama at 79
FWIW, 538 hit ’08 on the nail and, astonishingly had 49 of 50 states right.
Don’t forget, it’s the Electoral College that counts (memory refresher: 2000)
“….But these media polls don’t headline what they’re seeing as far as the Democrat turnout advantage because no one would believe it. In fact, no one believes Obama will match the D+7 nationwide advantage he enjoyed in 2008. And no one certainly believes he will surpass it.
Oh, except this non-stop litany of media polls being wielded like weapons by the corrupt media……
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/09/26/BREAKING-Democrat-Voters-Turnout-Advantage-Over-Republicans-Will-Break-All-Time-Records
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I’m still shocked that Romney is the best the GOP could come up with. He might be the worst candidate I’ve ever seen.
The “media”‘s fault.
Lol.
“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows both President Obama and Mitt Romney attracting support from 46% of voters nationwide. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided……
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“….After the election(1984), Ed Rollins ran into the Washington Post’s blunt-speaking editor Ben Bradlee and “harassed” Bradlee “about his paper’s lousy polling methodology.”
Bradlee’s “unrepentant” response?
“Tough sh…t, Rollins, I’m glad it cost you plenty. It’s my in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.”
Got that?
So the questions for 2012.
How corrupt are all these polls showing Obama leading or in a “close race”?
….How does one explain a president who, like Jimmy Carter in 1980, is increasingly seen as a disaster in both economic and foreign policy? How does a President Obama, with a Gallup job approval rating currently at 49% — down a full 20% from 2009 — mysteriously win the day in all these polls?
How does this happen?
Can you say “in-kind contribution”?
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/25/how-carter-beat-reagan/
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Dick Morris is promoting the idea that “undecided voters” always go against the incumbent, thus, Romney will prevail. It does seem somewhat like common-sense, as the undecided are not for Obama. However, other pundits have ridiculed Morris’ “incumbent rule.” I believe there are a lot of people, especially the ones getting polled, who say they are voting for Obama, but will vote for Romney when they get into the polling booth. My prediction for the Electoral College is Romney 301, Obama 237. The popular vote will be for Obama. I think I am the opposite of the MSM: the closer it gets to Election Day, the more I think Romney will win.
Let’s try repeating a message obviously not heard or deliberately ignored (are you listening AFY?):
Intrade: Obama at 75
538: Obama at 79 (actually, the “current” forecast is a staggering 97 — the 79 is adjusted for possible shifts in voter decision-making leading up to the election)
These are NOT polls. Intrade is a futures market. Its “prediction” is the value placed on the proposition by savvy investors who incorporate the polling data and much more.
538 is Nate Silver’s statistical analysis that is based on crunching very large numbers using a host of factors (including polls but also incorporating statistical features of financial, social and cultural movements and factors like biases among the “undecided” like Edward57 noted). It has been stunningly accurate in past elections.
FWIW, those of you who still think Romney has a shot should go to Intrade. You can buy Romney at 25 and if he wins each share will be paid at 100. Nice 4x prop.
And, yes, it’s legal because Intrade is considered to be a futures market and not a gambling site. Funny world we live in, yes?
Thanks for the tip on the bet, the money will come in handy during the Romney victory celebration!
Mucho glad they are buying into the bogus polls, don’t ya know!
“…Cost’s central point – and he is among the most prescient of poll observers — is that most major polling organizations are oversampling Democrats, based on an assumption that the 2012 electorate will demographically match 2008′s, when blacks, Hispanics and under thirty’s constituted record percentages….
Rasmussen’s most recently published numbers for six battleground states:
Ohio: Obama +1 (at 47%)
Florida: Obama + 1 (at 48%)
Virginia: Obama + 1 (at 49%)
Colorado: Romney +2 (Obama trailing at 45%)
Iowa: Romney + 3 (Obama trailing at 44%)
New Hampshire: Romney + 3 (Obama trailing at 45%)
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/polls_if_you_must.html#ixzz27ccY7h92
I think likely voters will be most likely doing the voting and you can crunch all the numbers you want to find something different but if the O is under 50% and the undecided break as they do historically, the O will be looking for a new place in January, don’t ya know!
Now where’s me saber?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Here’s a poll for ya, AFY!
NEW YORK, The Borowitz Report, The New Yorker Magazine—
G.O.P. Presidential nominee Mitt Romney finally got some good news today as he found himself ahead of President Obama in a poll of N.F.L. replacement referees.
The survey, which immediately lifted the spirits of the Romney campaign, was taken among replacement refs on the field during N.F.L. games that they were supposed to be officiating last Sunday and Monday.
According to the poll, if the election were held today the replacement refs would have Mr. Romney beating President Obama by a score of 14-12.
By a wide majority, the replacement refs “strongly agreed” with the statement, “I’m pretty sure I’m right about this but I need to talk it over with some other people first.”
Desperation. The Uncle can smell it. The main stream polls are an accurate reflection. At this point.
The polls must be not only denied, but attacked as wrong! Not so much because of we “people who don’t count” voters. No, not at all. It’s because of the bet.
Who is going to donate that $50,000-$1,000,000 to a candidate that isn’t going to win?
Perhaps the rate of head count of the RR boys’ (yes a shameless allusion to the term “railroad”) $10,000 a plate dinners might prove a more meaningful insight to popularity, or lack thereof, than Barack’s moving his convention venue inside due to concern for attendees, uh, deaths due to lightning? The right did speculate that the Democrats couldn’t fill the seating. This election, it appears, by the polls today, that the Ds will be filling the seats of a number of positions, including seats in the Senate as well as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Night Chicago Died…pay poor poll tax of 10 cents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman
Chicago, Desperado, how much did Obama’s Senate seat cost George?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtJ27y_9LOg
“If it doesn’t pass the smell test, it is probably not true. We keep being told that Obama is leading, that the race is close at best, that voters have accepted a ‘new normal’ for unemployment, that the economy is improving, that the price of gas means nothing, that Romney is making fatal gaffes. We were even told that the 9/11 attacks which left our ambassador to Libya dead made Romney look bad. Every week is a good week for Obama and a bad week for Romney according to the media. Now we’re told that this week’s polls are showing Obama creaming Romney in the swing states.
It smells fishy, and it is fishy…..
….Romney doesn’t need to get Democrats to change their minds in order to win by a landslide. He does need to motivate and register his own voters. The Democrat media hype is designed to sabotage our morale and sap Republican energy for getting out the vote….
….it is nonsense….Romney is doing very well at this point, better than Reagan, better than Bush. It’s time to cut the moaning and get to work.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/can_the_democratic_psyops_boost_obama.html#ixzz27gnDpFPb
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
It matters little it Romney or Obama wins. They may look different but they are twins.
I am voting for Jill Stein. A vote is more than making a line on the ballot. It is a statement of belief.
The victory for Jill Stein will not be in whether she wins or loses but in the great number of people who have voted their beliefs and not their fears. In joining with the people in the Green Party I can continue to work for causes with people of good will who will promote peace, protect the environment, support human rights and all the other projects that will make a better society.
My vote does not take away a vote for Obama or Romney. I would not vote for either of them. One cannot subtract a sum that was not there.
I am responsible to live up to my own moral code, sense of justice to do good when I see it and to do no evil.
To me sending drones from one’s drone kill list is immoral. I consider this to be a crime against humanity and to be a war crime. If I voted for a man who uses this list I would be complicit in commenting this crime. I choose not to do that.
I support trial by jury and will not vote for a man who supports indefinite detention as Obama does.
I have a longer list of reasons not to vote for Obama but the two mentioned above are sufficient to say no.
The victory for the Green Party is in the number of people who stepped out of the box and are willing to create a new society to create a better world.
Is it about the takers and the makers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio&feature=player_embedded
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I’s knows it ain’t Valentime day yet but I thought I’s share this with me lefty friends a little early:
“Seven states changed status since last week’s Electoral College map, with four moving in Mitt Romney’s direction and only three moving toward Barack Obama. Mr. Romney saw Georgia move from “lean” to “safe” Romney, New Hampshire change from “lean” Obama to “toss up,” and New Mexico and Pennsylvania both shift from “safe” to “lean” Obama. Mr. Obama saw Oregon shift from “lean” to “safe” Obama, Wisconsin change from “toss up” to “lean” Obama, and Arizona move from “safe” Romney to “lean” Romney…..
http://www.rove.com/election
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“For all of the wishful thinking in the mainstream press about President Obama’s positioning 40 days before this election, Obama’s approval rating looks remarkably similar to what it was on this date in 2010 — shortly before his party lost a historic 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats. On September 27, 2010 — exactly two years ago — Rasmussen Reports showed Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters to be minus-3 percentage points…….
Today, Rasmussen Reports shows Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters to be minus-3 points……..
…..So, two years after the biggest Republican gains in the House since before World War II, Americans remain every bit as unimpressed with the way Obama is handling his job as president as they were then…..
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-approval-rating-mirrors-2010_653137.html
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
I suspect many of us are pretty sick of reading various partisan interpretations of polls, economic data and international events. I wonder if any of you can recommend good non-partisan analysts in any of these areas.
.
Non partisan polls (and that goes for statistics also) are as real as;
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=fairies+pictures&view=detail&id=18F46A05A877B8125C6AA06732331B47FBE44ED0&first=1
anytime you have to assume anything your assumptions are always guided by your bias, don’t ya know!
AFY!!
John, What’s the point in citing data? Someone will accuse it of being partisan. Owl, I have a very sick feeling that we on the Left are playing along with a Right-wing orchestrated campaign by abandoning Democratic pols. AND YES I KNOW they’re not perfect and they’re wrong on some issues, but that has been true form the beginning of time. Things actually can be worse. And we shoot ourselves in the foot when we say otherwise and act accordingly. Three words: Gore/Bush/Nader.
And may I add it was Gore who was the key guest at the last 350.org event, not Nader.
“I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not. You know, when I first started in politics – and for a long time before that – everyone on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly, because they were SOBs to everybody. Which is exactly what they should be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were essentially equal-opportunity people…..
…But the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances…..
But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.
And it is a threat to the very future of this country if we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/29/mainstream-media-threatening-our-country-future/#ixzz280RBMFdQ
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
AFY–this idea that the press is going over some new slippery slope is hogwash. The press keeps changing as society and technology change. The “press” of the founding fathers was nothing like the “press” of today–at that time, virtually every newspaper in existence was the tool of some political faction, with no pretense to objectivity or honesty. The First Amendment was originally designed to make sure every faction could have its newspaper without fear of being silenced by the faction in power.
The idea of “balanced” or objective reporting was born of technology. Morse invented the telegraph. Thrifty newspaper owners used that technology to create a “wire service” called the Associated Press, which provided reports to a variety of newspapers with a variety of political agendas–hence, its reporters had to learn the ability to write dispatches palatable to all these papers.
Eventually, a small group of institutions dominated the news landscape: TV networks, and in most places, a single newspaper. They too strove for “balance” or whatever you want to call it, in order to please as many and offend as few potential customers as possible.
But that approach began to break down with the advent of cable tv alternatives, and in recent years the internet has completed the process. We can now get our information filtered and refined by people who share our point of view. I don’t know if that’s a healthy development, but it is similar to what was normal in the 19th Century. And people can always “change channels” with a click of a mouse button, or even peruse source materials on governemnt websites.
I’m not sure Americans have ever had more opportunities to be well-informed than they are today. We probably have never had more opportunities to provide ourselves with a healthful diet either, but not everyone chooses to be well-informed or well-nourished.
“Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all.”
Thomas Carlyle
Why is it the most important of all; because it is the watchdog, but if it becomes one in the same with one of the other three estates it becomes a watchdog no more!
IMHO the argument today as with in anytime; has it, the 4th estate, remained independent in whole or in part, of course technology has opened up new horizons, and the press is surely on that cutting edge but if our alphabet media is dominated by one particular point of view or slant, IMHO they will have cease to be of the importance of which Burke referred to which IMHO also would be an injustice, don’t ya know!!!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Of course. But can anyone argue they are being force-fed liberal bias? Just change the channel, dude.
The far left may not have a cable channel to call its own–but they have plenty of other ways to both receive and broadcast messages in tune with their beliefs.
To me the problem is NOT media bias. It’s the breakdown of consensus. I’m not even talking about political consensus, which has never existed. We no longer have a reality consensus. Everyone now feels entitled to his or her own set of facts.
“Everyone now feels entitled to his or her own set of facts.”
I’s reckon that makes us all the same; media and non media, don’t ya know!
Methinks if whenever an R gets back in the whitehouse that in itself will once again insure that the so called mainstream media will become part of the 4th estate agin! But not being there all the time could and can one day be a problem, IMHO!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Do you think Fox News has done a thorough job as an Obama watchdog, AFY? Do you think they will be equally thorough if Romney pulls this one out?
All media is bias! Fox included, they have their token liberals just like the ABC’s, NBC’s CBS’s, etc have their token conservatives.
There is only one Fox and many more of the other and if it was the other way around; we should all be concerned about the lack of watchdogs if the conservatives happen to get back in power.
The 4th estate is important and they should be barking loud in unison about all the other estates often and as much as possible!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!