Reply #1: the response by the professional pollster with real data killed Chris's idea pretty quickly -but no [View All]

[papau]

one should worry too much about polls almost a year out from the first primary votes.

In any case my take away was online polls are male better off folks - which favors Obama. And that from other posts on the site that Hillary is winning General Election matchups in states needed - and Obama is not - although this could of course be name recognition.

The posts in response on the site include this one:

(from the mydd assertion of a closer race) "Third, all national polls on Democratic primary preferences, no matter who those polls favor, are including an extremely wide net of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in their samples that is unrepresentative of the generally narrow Democratic primary and caucus electorate."

That right there should tell you something. Clinton is clearly MUCH more popular with rank-and-file Democrats than with Independents. Most Independents are either banned from participating or simply, by and large, don't bother to show in party primaries (historically.) That is a strong argument that Clinton's true numbers in all these national polls are actually underreported in relation to what groups actually end up truly showing up at the voting booth (vs. claiming that this time, surely, absolutely, honestly, they will do so.) Furthermore, the vast majority of primary voters and caucus voters are folks 55 and over. They make up more than half of primary and caucus voters. The poll numbers don't make mention of that all-encompassing voting block, the assumption is made that young voters will be showing up in gigantic numbers. That premise remains to be seen, but we KNOW who shows up faithfully every election cycle. IMO that favors Clinton more than most polls are able to capture.

Lastly, there is a very good chance that Rasmussen's polls are way off, that the "raised eyebrows" are caused by how much of an outlier that poll continues to prove itself to be. Even Rasmussen (perhaps embarrassed) explained that in his last poll, making mention that the race is not really as close as their polls suggest. Here is a direct quote from Rasmussen, which refutes the point (about Rasmussen) made in this diary:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/2008_democratic_presiden tial_primary

However, the race may not be as close as those numbers suggest. The Rasmussen Reports sample includes not only Democrats, but also independents who say they are likely to vote in a Democratic Primary. Among Democrats only, Clinton leads by eight percentage points, 39% to 31% (with Edwards at 15%). That's little changed from a week ago when Clinton led by eleven among Democrats in the survey.

Obama does better when independents are included because he currently holds a two-to-one advantage over Clinton among those potential voters. Both the number and the preferences of independent voters is more volatile than the preferences of core Democratic voters. Some states have open primaries allowing independents to participate, others allow Democrats only. If the current trends were to continue throughout the Primary season, Clinton would handily win the states allowing only Democrats to vote while Obama would be competitive in others."