Battleground polls "universally bad news" for McCain; "numbers are startling"

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Polls Show McCain Leaning into a Headwind
By Dan Balz

A big batch of battleground polls came out early Thursday and brought almost universally bad news for John McCain. The Republican nominee's path to the presidency is now extremely precarious and may depend on something unexpected taking control of a campaign that appears to have swung hard toward Barack Obama since the end of the debates.

There were eight polls of Midwestern states produced by the Big Ten Battleground Poll group. Obama not only leads in all eight states by hefty margins but has improved his standing since the last time the group surveyed these states. The numbers are startling. Obama leads by 12 points in Ohio, by 11 points in Pennsylvania and by 13 points in Wisconsin. In Michigan, where McCain's campaign has pulled out, the lead is 22 points. In Indiana, a strong red state, the Obama lead is 10 points, which is larger than in other recent polls.

Quinnipiac University released polls of three battlegrounds that it has been surveying regularly this cycle -- Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Obama leads in all three. In these surveys, Obama's lead in Pennsylvania is 13 points. In Ohio, which is a must-win for McCain, the lead is a whopping 14 points. The one bright spot for McCain, if you can call it that, is Florida, where Obama's lead is just 5 points and slightly narrower than it was the last time Quinnipiac surveyed the Sunshine State. But that's not really a bright spot. McCain can't afford to lose Florida any more than he can afford to lose Ohio.

There may be quibbles with the particular margins in particular states, but the direction of these surveys is consistent with almost all national polling. National polls show a race in which Obama's lead is approaching or slightly into double digits....

The Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll has been holding steady around 10 points this week. The Gallup track has it between 5 and 8 points, depending on its model for determining the most likely voters. Pew put it at 14 points. The NBC-Wall Street Journal Poll showed a 10-point lead for Obama earlier this week.

Peter Hart, who helps conduct the survey, said that "what has been a tight and competitive race for six months has suddenly and dramatically opened up in Barack Obama's favor."...

***

Immediately after the debates, some national polls hinted that the race might be tightening, but this week, the weight of evidence is that Obama continues to hold a solid lead nationally and in the states where it counts most.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/23/polls_show_mccain_leaning_into.html?hpid=topnews

[FreeState]

1. Just for reference - Quinnipiac ranks in the top 10 of accurate polls

[mwb970]

2. Gee, the Columbus Dispatch is kind of an outlier. /nt

[SuperTrouper]

Where is "America's Most Acurate Poll" (LOL) IBD/TIPP?

[FreeState]

8. Here is a post in them from the same source as the list of pollers

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/whats-wrong-with-this-picture-aka-nate.html

That's right ... IBD/TIPP has John McCain ahead 74-22 among 18-24 year olds. Who knew the kids were groovin' on J-Mac these days?

IBD/TIPP puts an asterisk by this result, stipulating that "Age 18-24 has much fluctuation due to small sample size".

Indeed, there may be some fluctuations when looking at small subgroups like these. That's why I generally don't pick on a poll if, say, it has John McCain winning 18 percent of the black vote when he's only "supposed" to be winning 7 percent or whatever. Fluctuations of that magnitude are going to be relatively common, mathematically speaking. In fact, they're entirely unavoidable, if you're taking enough polls and breaking out the results amongst enough subgroups.

But fluctuations of this magnitude are an entirely different matter.

Suppose that the true distribution of the 18-24 year old vote is a 15-point edge for Obama. This is a very conservative estimate; most pollsters show a gap of anywhere from 20-35 points among this age range.....

...

What are the odds, given the parameters above, that a random sampling of 98 voters aged 18-24would distribute themselves 74% to McCain and 22% to Obama?

Using a binomial distribution, the odds are 54,604,929,633-to-1 against. That is, about 55 billion to one.

So, there is an 0.000000002% chance that IBD/TIPP just got really unlucky. Conversely, there is a 99.999999998% chance that one of the following things is true:

[Jennicut]

3. Zogby interactive=crap

Quinnipiac has always been a good poll.

[HughMoran]

6. Zogby interactive = filthy garbage not even worth noting

He really should stop publishing such utter garbage.

[HughMoran]

5. Interesting

I wonder why those clowns at IBD/TIPP don't show up there?

[leftynyc]

4. Why people are obsessing over national polls

is beyond me. If 2000 taught us anything, it's that popular vote means nothing. The Obama campaign has been going for an electoral victory (as they did for the primaries) in a systematic and very effective way. These polls look great for our side. But the election will be all about turnout. Every four years I hear how the youth is going to save us. I'm still wating.

[ErinBerin84]

7. Chuck Todd

is now saying that all the state polls are inaccurate bc they over-sample Democrats? And then he said "oh, you can trust network polls...not so much the state polls though, since we aren't doing state polls anymore." Ok...so what the fuck are we suppposed to look at?

[sarahdemva]

9. maybe they are trying to help mccain

the state polls look so bad for him they wont do them anymore.