Lies, Damned Lies, and Polls

Look, everyone needs to stop freaking out about daily tracking and snap opinion polls. Yes, if you poll people shortly after Jeremiah Wright's rather  ... ahem ... colorful sermons hit the airwaves, and ask people "does the inflammatory rhetoric and puppy mutilation of Barack Obama's pastor make you more likely or less likely to vote for him?", the majority will say "less likely". But most of the public has not seen Obama's response (, and we don't know how long they'll really remember Wright's speeches. You have to believe that "prominent black guy says kooky things that frighten White America" was something Team Obama gamed out in 2002 when he started running for Senate, so I'm sure we can expect a series of strong responses on the issue. On top of all this, Rasmussen has a history of giving right-leaning slants to its questions, so the one-time poll results is really not all that surprising.

As for daily tracking polls, they almost never move more than two or three points in any one direction. The best thing to do is compare the average of the tracking polls from one week to the next, which gives enough time for a longer upward or downward trend to take hold.

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

I remember people hanging on every tick of the tracking polls back in the fall of 2004.* And like you say, Nick, those ticks turned out to be totally meaningless; the only thing that meant anything was the larger trend.

*Hell, I did a bit of it myself. But it cured me of doing it this time.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

In 2006, the only one-day trends that stuck were the day that Bush gave his "things are going better" speech in ... mid-september? And then Mark Foley. Other than that, the polls just sort of bumped along, and you couldn't tell one day from the next.

[Shock Mouse]

Shrug, the point of the Obama candidacy was that he wasn't even supposed to be close. Not long ago he was beating McCain by 6 to 11 points. Now some polls have him losing by that much. This isn't the small swing of daily changes, this is a huge change. I'm certainly willing to give it time to see if the larger trend bears out, but if it does I'm worried.

I also don't think it will just go away as Wright fades in salience. This debacle is a direct result of the bitter trench-warfare HRC and Obama are engaged in at this moment, and that environment is going to continue for months.

Lastly, I think the superdelegates in the end will go for whoever is polling the best against McCain. Yes that may not be the best way to judge electability, but it's certainly the sort of simple analysis high ranking Democrats go in for. And if HRC is outpolling Obama in June, there's a very strong argument for nominating her.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Where's the poll that has him losing by 6?

At the same time, even though the primary contest will last another two or three months, there's five months afterwards. If HRC is outpolling Obama by a substantial margin in late August, there might be a strong argument for nominating her.

[Shock Mouse]

Today's Rasumussen tracking, Obama losing by 6: http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

All the Clinton camp has to do is keep a generally corrosive atmosphere that has Obama constantly playing defense and his surrogates getting angry and bitter. Then they bring him down to their level, and he doesn't ever really recover. I reckon they are pretty good at that.

This current downturn might not last but a) it is a real down turn and b) there's a good chance it will.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Yeah, I'm convinced rasmussen tracking is just hokum. It fluctuates way more than any other polls. Again, let's take a look at it next Saturday and see where thingis are.

[low-tech cyclist]

What Nick said. There'd be times, a few months back, when Edwards would jump from 13% to 17% in the Rasmussen tracker. If that had been a real increase, that would have been huge for Edwards. Fortunately, I knew better than to regard that sort of jump as meaningful until it didn't wither away over the next few days.

So let's see what happens, 'kay?

[Shock Mouse]

Well, in case anyone is checking this thread now that a week has passed: checking in on RCP:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

Rasmussen still has Obama down, now losing to McCain by 8. You could say it is inaccurate, but you can't really say this is the result of imprecise and continuous swings.

Additionally a couple other polls post-speech have Obama down significantly. Yes one of them is Zogby and I'm always happy to discard him, but otherwise definitely looks like a downturn for Obama.

Now yes, it's 8 months till the election, a lot can and will change. But this has been a very real drop.

Interestingly, in most of these polls Hillary has dropped too (though not as much). Which either means this is more a McCain rise, that the negative atmosphere of the Dem primary is sliming them both, or we just see a bunch of Obama partisans and HRC partisans not supporting the other. Whatever the reason, it's clear that the continued Dem primary is really hurting us (in polls at least).