Frank Newport of Gallup says on MSNBC " After Labor Day and after the two conventions are over

[Motown_Johnny]

there isn't a lot of change historically; which is surprising"


This was in reference to Obama's lead at this point. He seems to be suggesting that Obama's current lead will hold through election day.


Gallup has his lead at 4% now, and we all know how good the electoral map looks for us.

[Kber]

1. So Palin's NOT a game changer?

Well - there's still the debates to get through, but I'm liking our chances this year!

[HereSince1628]

2. Is a 4% lead beyond the margin of GOP cheating that is expected?

Just wondering how much cushion is actually required for a Democratic victory

[Meshuga]

4. No kidding! n/t

[ClassWarrior]

6. Nope. We need to make up the rest. So get thee to a phone bank!!

:hi:

NGU.

[KharmaTrain]

10. It's Still The Same Game...Win The Most States...

Beauty Pagent numbers are fun to watch, but mean nothing on Election Day. It's still which candidate wins the most Electoral Votes and the polls to watch are at electoral-vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com...which have shown Obama over 270 votes for a while. Right now Senator Obama still is holding all the Kerry states of 2004 (and now, the Gore states of 2000) and the battle is being fought on "red" ground...Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Nevada. Even Florida is still very winnable.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but there's still a lot of work to do...getting voters registered and to the polls. The ace in the hole, outside of either Gallup or the corporate media is the large ground effort going on by the Obama campaign...blowing away what Camp Gramps is doing. It's pretty simple...the party that gets out its vote, wins...and why Palin was selected...without the GOOP energizing their base, they not only will lose, but lose big time.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. The Obama campaign is focusing on electoral votes, not popular votes

and these national polls don't reflect individual state voting patterns, nor do they reflect the "all or nothing" nature of the electoral college. I.e., Obama and McLame may be "close" in a state, but if Obama is 1 vote over, he gets ALL of the delegates from that state (it's not proportional).

Looking at state polling, Obama's electoral lead seems to be hanging in there so far, assuming Obama can truly maintain the Kerry states and there isn't massive lying to pollsters by poll participants (cross fingers), AND the couple of new Dem-leaning states hold to flip his way. Toss-up states going his way would be icing on the cake.

[high density]

17. As we learned in 2000, a national lead doesn't matter.

[KansasVoter]

3. I hope that is true!!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. Gallup

Gallup used to have graphs of all the presidential races going back to I believe Truman...

I had it linked and then they changed the URLS...

Does anybody have it?

[nevergiveup]

7. He should tell that to Michael Dukakis

[bigdarryl]

8. Gallup is full of HORSE SHIT!!!!! they got it wrong with Carter vs. Reagan

on the eve of the 1980 election they had the election dead heat sounds familiar.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. Are You Sure?

Gallup has predicted the correct winner in every election since 1936 I believe...That's why I am looking for the graph...

We can debate if they got it right in 00 because they showed Bush beating Gore 48%-46%...

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Gallup predicted Dewey to win in 1948.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. My Bad

Major Miscalculations

Because of this premature halt to operations, they missed the collapse of support for minor parties which had been in the campaign. People shifted to support the major parties, and especially, the incumbent. Truman won substantially.

This was a severe blow to the polling industry and to Gallup. Just as straw polls lost credibility in 1936, the "quota sampling" technique, which had been used by all three top pollsters at this time, was called into question in the wake of this fiasco.

"Quota sampling" involved selecting numbers of people within specific categories such as a certain percentage of working males, a percentage of farmers, etc. and obtaining their opinions on issues. After this embarrassing prediction, the use of "quota sampling" was no longer trusted to provide accurate results. Despite scientific procedures, Gallup predicted incorrectly and tasted humiliation. It is reported that he lost between 30 - 40 accounts for his American Institute of Public Opinion.

http://modern-us-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/george_gallups_gaffe

"The three top pollsters: Gallup, Archibald Crossley, and Elmo Roper, all believed that votes would not change much prior to election day and they stopped polling and interviewing several weeks before election day."

DUMB

[Captain Hilts]

9. Folks here HATE Gallup. I don't particularly like them because they're sloppy...

[Motown_Johnny]

13. The point is... that historically, whoever is winning after Labor Day tends to win

which is exactly where we are now



So if you assume that Obama is ahead in the polls now (and discount some of the inaccuracy of a late Repug convention and the bump that will fade). Then things look better for us than might otherwise be suggested.

[Captain Hilts]

15. I understand that. nt

[Motown_Johnny]

20. It has nothing to do with Gallup's data. It is a historical view of post labor day standings

compared to election winners.



If people don't like Gallup they can use other polls. Obama is ahead in most of them, and once the repug convention bump flattens back out he should be ahead in all of them again.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. Why

They certainly have a lot more resources than Zogby or Rasmussen or whomever to do a good job...Their samples are huge...

[Captain Hilts]

21. They are fairly sloppy on balancing their data - such as party I.D. -

this is why their surveys swung so dramatically in 2000.

Folks here think they're part of a right-wing conspiracy of pollsters. Zogby's actually a Democrat.

[TexasObserver]

19. Palin is a Turnout ploy and a female vote gambit for the GOP

They needed the base, particularly the fundie base, motivated and active. She seems to have done that.