Rasmussen daily GE graph for 7/23/08 - Obama 45, McCain 42 (O up 2)

[DavidDvorkin]

Rasmussen daily GE graph for 7/23/08 - Obama 45, McCain 42 (O up 2)

With leaners, Obama 47, McCain 45 (O up 1, M down 1)














These Rasmussen graphs are all contained on one Web page at http://www.dvorkin.com/rastrack.html


Gallup: http://www.gallup.com

Rasmussen links:
Data in tabular form
Discussion

[mediaman007]

1. These polls have to be shady. Bush* is at 28% approval, McCain is

a worse candidate than Bob Dole, and Obama has solid Democratic support and is hitting on all cylinders on the overseas trip. Yet its only 45% to 42%!

I'm thinking it should be more like 58% to 35%.

I guess the media needs a horse race to sell advertising and fill time. But with no major blunders and tired opposing candidate, Obama should be up much more than 3 points.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. I'm surprised, too, but I'm assuming these polls are accurate

Rather, as accurate as the polling companies can make them. Whether they're sampling correctly and their voter models are correct, I have no idea.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Bears repeating

I've argued before that I don't think that Rasmussen and the other pollsters are deliberately biasing their results to show a closer race than the reality. They may indeed be way off, but I don't think it's on purpose.

Why? Not because I think the people who run the companies are objective, let alone on our side. We know that some of them are pro-Republican. Rather, it's because they're pro-money and pro-success. Their income depends on their reputation for reliability. These published political polls are their advertising, and the closer their polls are to the eventual election outcome, the more business they'll get for their smaller, often business-oriented, less publicized polls.

The counterargument would be that the domestic Axis of Evil already knows the outcome of the election already, because they're already programming the voting machines, and Rasmussen and the gang are being told what numbers to produce now in order to make that election outcome more believable. But that would expose the plot to a lot of people, increasing the chances of exposure.

[mvd]

4. They could easily skew things without being found out

Rasmussen has been consistently closer than any other poll it seems - including Gallup. The only reasons I could see for a close race are FEAR and McCain not being defined well yet. But I don't buy the fear argument that much with the bad economy. And Obama has been running a good campaign where he is defining himself well. I don't think racism could bring it this close either.

[MarjorieG]

5. Negative campaign against Obama just begun. Numbers reflect...

that not enough truth-telling on McCain, as well as where the numbers will eventually be placed for funny numbers later and the result of that negative campaign. Far worse than we've ever seen.

I trust our campaign, but the push back will be enormous.