Today's Numbers - October 27
Even Ted Stevens is still a safer bet than McCain:
Mondays are a wonderful time around here. As you can see, damn near everyone updated their numbers today. We've seen the first new maps in a week from Election Projection, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Todd, and Steve Lombardo (of LCG--Lombardo Consulting Group). And with these updates comes a continued uptick in Obama's lead, reflecting the small but steady improvement in the state polls over the past week.
The national polls actually ticked down a little for Obama compared to the past couple days, but it remains to be seen whether this is a sampling issue or actual change. I'm guessing it's sampling--after all, today's tracking poll releases include predominantly weekend respondents, who can differ systematically from respondents who can be reached during the week. Many pollsters believe that these differences can be compensated for by weighting respondents according to demographics, but this doesn't entirely solve the problem; as we see in data on the differences between cell-only respondents and landline respondents, basic lifestyle choices can have effects that are not properly accounted for by demographic weightings. Comparing those who are home to answer the phone on weekends with those who are not, we would imagine the latter group to have less traditional jobs, be located in more socially-active areas--they could even be out volunteering on a campaign!--and all these factors could lead to the weekend samples being less favorable to Obama for reasons that cannot be dealt with simply by weighting.
As a quick semi-scientific analysis, look at the Rasmussen numbers over the past few months Looking at the Sunday to Monday change in the last 10 weeks (since the start of Convention season), we see that Obama lost ground to McCain in 5 of those instances, stayed even in 3, and improved in only 2. The sample size is not big enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but it's more likely than not that weekend polling does have an effect.
And on the win prediction front, Obama continues to creep up slightly, but McCain's floor hasn't moved much since I mentioned it two days ago (down about a point on average). There's not much hope for a McCain comeback at this point, especially with early voting under way, heavy, and looking to favor Obama's demographics. The remaining hopes for McCain are, as a I said before, resting on some kind of screwup. But with courts shooting down efforts to illegally remove voters from the rolls, those hopes are looking pretty slim at this point. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the data work for that lawsuit in Colorado.)
So with that, sitting here near two in the morning, I'll leave you with a parting thought:
OMFG! ONE WEEK TO GO! And a good thing, too, because these last two years have probably taken ten off my lifespan.
Mondays are a wonderful time around here. As you can see, damn near everyone updated their numbers today. We've seen the first new maps in a week from Election Projection, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Todd, and Steve Lombardo (of LCG--Lombardo Consulting Group). And with these updates comes a continued uptick in Obama's lead, reflecting the small but steady improvement in the state polls over the past week.
The national polls actually ticked down a little for Obama compared to the past couple days, but it remains to be seen whether this is a sampling issue or actual change. I'm guessing it's sampling--after all, today's tracking poll releases include predominantly weekend respondents, who can differ systematically from respondents who can be reached during the week. Many pollsters believe that these differences can be compensated for by weighting respondents according to demographics, but this doesn't entirely solve the problem; as we see in data on the differences between cell-only respondents and landline respondents, basic lifestyle choices can have effects that are not properly accounted for by demographic weightings. Comparing those who are home to answer the phone on weekends with those who are not, we would imagine the latter group to have less traditional jobs, be located in more socially-active areas--they could even be out volunteering on a campaign!--and all these factors could lead to the weekend samples being less favorable to Obama for reasons that cannot be dealt with simply by weighting.
As a quick semi-scientific analysis, look at the Rasmussen numbers over the past few months Looking at the Sunday to Monday change in the last 10 weeks (since the start of Convention season), we see that Obama lost ground to McCain in 5 of those instances, stayed even in 3, and improved in only 2. The sample size is not big enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but it's more likely than not that weekend polling does have an effect.
And on the win prediction front, Obama continues to creep up slightly, but McCain's floor hasn't moved much since I mentioned it two days ago (down about a point on average). There's not much hope for a McCain comeback at this point, especially with early voting under way, heavy, and looking to favor Obama's demographics. The remaining hopes for McCain are, as a I said before, resting on some kind of screwup. But with courts shooting down efforts to illegally remove voters from the rolls, those hopes are looking pretty slim at this point. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the data work for that lawsuit in Colorado.)
So with that, sitting here near two in the morning, I'll leave you with a parting thought:
OMFG! ONE WEEK TO GO! And a good thing, too, because these last two years have probably taken ten off my lifespan.
posted by Andrew at
1:01 AM
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