If polls are biased against Dems by just 2 points, odds are even they'll hold the House

[BurtWorm]

According to a MoveOn e-mail (quoting NYTimes) I received:


Dear MoveOn member,

If you read one thing about the election today, read this:

The New York Times' chief polling analyst just wrote, "If our forecasts turn out to be biased against Democrats by just 2 points overall, the party becomes about an even-money bet to hold the House." (And then they'd almost certainly keep the Senate, too.)

So a Democratic gain of 2 percentage points is enough to stop the takeover of Congress. And historically, a strong get-out-the-vote push can deliver at least that much on Election Day.

That's why this weekend MoveOn members are gathering at more than 350 call parties nationwide for a huge final push to turn out volunteers for Democrats in key races. And we'll have some fun watching highlights of Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity before hitting the phones.

There's a "Restore Sanity Party" near you in New York on Saturday. Our goal is to make 100,000 calls to other MoveOn members asking them to volunteer—but to do that, we need 709 more people at parties.

This election is still very winnable, and this weekend is the most critical of the entire election season.

Link to join phone banks this weekend:

http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?action_id=229

[Cal33]

1. Yes, this election is still very winnable, if we make sure that there

is as little voting fraud as possible. Have you read this thread "Polling is a hot topic around here,"
which will be some 30 titles below yours? It's written by an active poll-taker. You'll be hearing
from the horse's mouth - at least from one professional on how polling is done.

Since the news media is 90% Republican-owned, it's quite possible they deliberately exaggerate
the numbers of the Repubs. This will give them a big leeway to practice election fraud, including
jacking up their numbers through Republican-made electronic voting machines.

Too many Dems. pay little attention to Repub. fraudulent ways. I think Neocons have never won
any election honestly. Their whole philosophy (if one can call it such) is built on fraud and lies.

[BurtWorm]

2. kick

[BzaDem]

3. I think its more than 2 points -- maybe 5 or more. It would be unprecedented if we were to hold

the House facing a generic result of -4, and most polls have us at around -9. So it may even be more than 5.

And the thing about 5 point leads among polling averages (as opposed to single polls) is that they have very little margin of error due to random sampling. You would need totally systemic errors in methods that are infecting all pollsters (but for some reason didn't affect the same pollsters in 2008 and 2009).

Is it possible? Yeah. The Sun might also explode tomorrow. While the former is more likely than the latter, that doesn't mean it's likely unfortunately.

[Qutzupalotl]

5. Dems are tied in generic poll:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x491792

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Indeed

Why I said the other day we might narrowly keep the house.

[edhopper]

6. I hope for the best

but fear the worst.