Nate Silver: Summing up the Polling

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October 8, 2012, 6:54 pm
After Conventions, Follow the Bouncing Poll Numbers

By NATE SILVER
After a summer in which the polling in the presidential race was exceptionally stable — with Barack Obama generally holding a lead of about two percentage points in national surveys — the numbers since the party conventions have been a wild ride.

Mr. Obama got a bounce coming out of Charlotte, and it had some staying power — with his national lead appearing to peak at about five or six percentage points. But polling released immediately after the debate seemed to suggest that Mr. Romney had drawn into a rough national tie.

By the weekend, however — after the release of a favorable jobs report last Friday — Mr. Romney’s bounce seemed to be receding some. Tracking polls released on Monday by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports actually showed a shift back toward Mr. Obama, although another poll by Pew Research showed Mr. Romney with a four-point lead among likely voters.

Polling data is often very noisy, and not all polls use equally rigorous methodology. But the polls, as a whole, remain consistent with the idea that they may end up settling where they were before the conventions, with Mr. Obama ahead by about two points. Such an outcome would be in line with what history and the fundamentals of the economy would lead you to expect

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http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

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