Silver: "Race is tightening" meme is oversold"
Mike Bonsiero ?@Bonzi777
.@fivethirtyeight Can you please write something about the misappropriation of margin of error to claim races within the margin are tied?
Nate Silver ?@fivethirtyeight
That said, "race is tightening" meme is oversold. Of 8 national polls published today, only one (CNN) moved by more than 1 point.
= new reply since forum marked as read
A couple of polls that showed Romney ahead or tied in previous polls are now showing Obama ahead.
The Politico/GWU/Battleground and the WaPo/ABC poll now have the President up by two points.
A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll of likely voters shows President Barack Obama ahead 49 percent to 47 percent, a point closer than a week ago and still within the margin of error. A tracking poll will be performed each week, and the results released each Monday, through Election Day.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81830.html
The President lost a point from the last poll, but Romney was down by only one point and ahead by two points in the previous polls.
http://www.politico.com/polls/politico-george-washington-university-battleground-poll.html
The WaPo/ABC poll actually shows Obama gaining a point among likely voters, although he lost a point among registered voters.
WaPo/ABC poll: Obama up 2 points nationally, up 11 points among swing-state voters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021444351
CNN shows Mitt up a point, and Obama down three points, which is supposed to be because the bounce is fading.
Battle for presidency remains close in new CNN poll
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/01/battle-for-presidency-remains-close-in-new-cnn-poll/
The general consensus is that this will be the last presidential election where TV advertising plays a significant role. Nevertheless, this election cycle will see most political advertising directed to television. So there's over $1 billion in potential ad revenue the media companies are frantic to get their hands on (a portion of which will be dutifully laundered back to our corrupt congress via "campaign contributions."
So they have to pull out the stops to get people to tune in so they can sell their eyeballs to the advertisers.
It's a familiar recipe: Fake polls, meaningless polls (i.e., national polls, RV polls, online polls,) opinion pieces masquerading as news, etc.
And remember that virtually all media in in the US is owned by a group of five gigantic corporations.
Here's an example: This morning, AP was running a piece saying that Obama and Rmoney were in Denver a day early to practice debating and "to get used to the high altitude." It was as if they were describing the preparation for an athletic event. This shows how the media has been portraying this: like a sporting event, complete with "color commentators" and each "side" has its own "cheering section." It really is a joke -- completely unserious and devoid of merit.
