Ok Folks...Three stinky polls have it closing

[Laura PourMeADrink]

cnn
rasmussen
national journal

should I change my name to "handwringer"?

How in the living hell can he be catching up?

[Lex]

1. The popular vote polls are practically meaningless. Look at the Electoral College counts

and the swing states stacking up in Pres. Obama's favor.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. I know. But there is definitely a correlation

[Lex]

11. If Romney is getting more support in already red states, and Obama is getting more support

in already blue states, then that makes no difference but will show a close overall numbers race.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. Yes, but do you know that to be true?

[Lex]

14. Are you looking at the swing state polling?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

24. unfortunately. chuck todd saying Fl and VA have narrowed. nt

[HubertHeaver]

2. Yes, change your name to "handwringer"

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. It's going to be a close race

Keep working, donating, door knocking, and the like.

[Jon Ace]

5. '76 close or 2000 close

I'm leaning towards '76

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. Yes, of course. I just don't understand how this man could even

be within 10

His 47% remarks should totally disqualify him'

Guess the swing states are the only ones seeing it over and over again

[oswaldactedalone]

18. Right!!!

Get it done! Thugs have their people out, be sure you do what you can to help Obama and Dems!!

[hrmjustin]

7. he is not closing in the state polling so don't worry yet. Besides the debate will make...

... thinks clearer.

[progressivebydesign]

8. Yes, you should. Handwringer. (R)assmussen? you're concerned about that???

Seriously?? National Journal? WTF us that?

He's NOT catching up. calm yourself.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

15. you forgot cnn

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. oh and nbc (spread narrowed tonight)

[GoCubsGo]

32. CNN, NBC, ABC...

Funny how those polls were conducted by the very people who need this election to be a "horse race" in order to get ratings, ain't it?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

33. yep...thinking you could tie it to the debate coverage too

[B Calm]

9. If the republicans are going to

steal this election, then they have to make it appear as if the candidates are close in some polls!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

13. EXACTLY...something's rotten in denmark

[Riverman]

10. Needs to Be a Close Race! Democrats MUST Organize the Massive Get Out the Vote Drive, Especially

to help the Senate, Congressional and all local races state legislatures, statewide officers like Secretary of State - city councils, school Districts, Water, Fire and Sanitation District Boards - they all matter and we need to get good people elected up and down the ticket.

(Yes, look at the Electoral College and the Swing states - Obama looks like he has very good leads where it counts ;&gt

[The Wielding Truth]

16. The media will not let R/r go down.They keep coaching them."If they do this they can win.They need

to do that to win." R/r are who they are.Propping them up and giving them combat and debate tips will not change their windmill personality.They dismantle labor and national economic security. They are heartless greedy fools.

This should be the national talk and the truthful unveiling by the press. It is a corrupt managed horse race for campaign money and a good close race for show. We again are being coned and it is very harmful to our stability as a strong democracy.

Barack Obama must be given every vote and all the support we can muster!

[ProSense]

19. The President lead by 11 points in

Nevada and 8 points in VA.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021453881

[sofa king]

20. It's the last boost before they have to start calling it straight.

If my deeply cynical prediction is correct, very soon now the pollsters like Rasmussen are going to have to start readjusting their likely voter models to reflect something closer to the reality that exists, rather than the one they are trying to shape.

They have to do this in order to retain the reputations they probably don't actually deserve. If their day-before prediction falls too far outside of the actual results, they're screwed for maybe the next four years.

So this is one of the last polls they can "push," and they're trying to take advantage of the bump in the polls a challenger often gets in the debates. The result will be the illusion of Romney closing the gap... in hopes that bandwagon voters will hitch to that and produce some imaginary momentum.

But it's not going to work and within a week these same polls are going to start showing the most dramatic widening gap in favor of President Obama--exactly because they've been boosting the other side all year long.

Suddenly we'll see supposedly perplexed talking heads musing about why Romney is clearly losing voters at an alarming rate. Maybe they'll credit the President in the debates, but part of it will be hand of attempted election theft reluctantly pulling away from the prize it can no longer snatch without getting caught.

But what do I know? I'm not a pollster, just someone who thinks The Man controls some of the polls, but not all of them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Two points

1.- polls are a picture of a momemt in time

2.- Polls go up and down

This is why trends matter, and the only poll that truly matters is on election day.

[Quixote1818]

22. They are doing this to get people to keep tuning in. They need a horse race

I keep my eye on www.intrade.com/ which has it as a 75% chance Obama will win. Indrade is almost never wrong.

[onenote]

23. If that's true, why did they have any polls showing Obama with a lead?

Why not show it staying very close?

It gets tiresome around here when everyone loves the polls when they show the President's lead growing, and then those same polls are suddenly corrupt when they show his lead narrowing.

This election is still at an early stage. It just doesn't seem that way because the repub nominating process was so drawn out and heavily covered.

The President is doing better than expected in swing states, which is great. But they're called swing states for a reason and they are not so solidly in the President's column at this stage that we can get complacent or start pretending that polls showing movement in the results are part of some grand conspiracy.

[brooklynite]

25. Here's something to be aware of...

...the polls are going to close...again

...the poll are going to expand...again

Fixating on individual days is silly.

[oswaldactedalone]

26. Meanwhile

Florida and Virginia show tightening today and we haven't seen the negative flamethrowing TV ads yet. It will be close nationally and some swing states might flip. Don't think most of them will though. The Prez needs a strong showing tonight and must win the after debate fallout. What will the Thug mouthpieces seize on in an effort to sink him?

GOTV people!!

[KaryninMiami]

27. It is disturbing indeed

Not surprising considering the amount on ads being dumped. Here in Florida, it's one Obama or Democratic PAC commercial to there of theirs and theirs are brutal. It's pretty overwhelming. What I cannot figure out is how so many would be changing their minds at this point. I am still concerned.

[ananda]

28. Actually, 3 very stinky rightwing polls.

nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

29. Here is what Nate Silver said today,

"There is a slightly clearer trend in our “now-cast,” our estimate of what would happen in an election held today, where Mr. Obama’s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has fallen by 0.7 percentage points over the past two days.

If the race has tightened by more than that amount, we’re going to have to start to see more evidence of it in the state-by-state polls. But perhaps Mr. Romney has a bit of a tailwind heading into the first debate on Wednesday." http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

In other words the national polls are not supported by the state polls, and as long as there is a discrepancy it is not time to freak out.

[KharmaTrain]

30. Good!

Let's not get complacent...there's a little more than a month to go and a lot of voters to get to the polls...the ones that really matter. Let's hope that there are plenty of "hangwringers" who feel this election isn't a done deal and these numbers give them the incentive to work a little harder...or for others to get on the phones, start knocking on doors and trying to find ways to help get the highest possible turnout for President Obama and all Democrats on Election Day.

[Spider Jerusalem]

31. You should probably disregard Rasmussen, first of all

they're well known to have a bias that favours Republicans (by as much as 6 points in the last cycle).

See the following:

Rasmussen is still regarded with some suspicion by political reporters and strategists. The pollster conducts polls in a brief, four-hour window, uses only published telephone numbers and routinely weights results for party identification — a practice most public pollsters shy away from.

Rasmussen, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Fix, has shrugged at the doubters.

“If I really believed for a moment that if we played by the rules of (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) or somebody else they would embrace us as part of the club, we would probably do that,” he said in 2010. “But, number one, we don’t care about being part of the club.”

Rasmussen has had both good years and bad years, according to various pollster ratings. While its track record was pretty good in the middle of last decade (2004 and 2006) and average in 2008, after the 2010 election the New York Times’ Nate Silver labeled Rasmussen “biased and inaccurate.” Silver calculated that Rasmussen missed the final margin of the races it polled in the 2010 midterms by an average of 5.8 percentage points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/17/rasmussen-the-gops-cure-for-the-common-poll/

[DemocratSinceBirth]

34. Best To Look At Aggregate Polling

President Obama has a three to four point lead in national polls and leads of varying margins from quite small to significant in the swing states.

That's it.