polling

Short answer: No.

I put together the following chart that includes 1) the RCP average lead for Obama, and the Daily Kos/Research 2000 average nightly lead for Obama. Some notes: 1) The R2K poll is shifted one day before the release date so that it matches the night the polling was done. And yes, I know Daily Kos numbers are bogus -- they don't intersect the RCP average once and show a +30 point favorability advantage for Obama over McCain (WTF?), when RCP shows +8. But they do show trends, and are the only ones that release nightly numbers, useful in pinpointing when shifts occurred. 2) RCP is shifted three days back, one day back to match R2K, and then two days further back to reflect the median date on which the polling was done to make it as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as possible.

What the chart seems to indicate is that Palin's network interviews were either not a factor, subsumed by other ginormous developments (e.g. the financial crisis and the debate). The blue line is the RCP lead and the red line is R2K:

Palin's Charlie Gibson interview was released on the night of 9/11 and the impact likely would have been felt on the 12th and 13th. Though this was a period in which the McCain bounce was undergoing natural slippage (not to mention the Fannie & Freddie collapse on the 7th), R2K shows McCain moving back into the lead on the night of 12th before Obama took the lead on the 13th. Given how pro-Democratic the R2K poll is, perhaps this was a temporary 9/11 anniversary effect.

Both R2K and RCP show Obama's numbers accellerating starting on the 13th and 14th, with him moving into an outright lead in the RCP average, culminating in a new plateau for Obama on the 15th. That was the weekend in which Merrill was sold and Lehman Brothers collapsed. This is generally considered to be the point the financial crisis began in earnest.

The next relevant milestone was the AIG collapse and the Paulson Plan announcement on the 18th and 19th. R2K shows this as the beginning of a slight McCain revival, while the RCP seems to indicate this augured in a period of continued slippage which lasted through the 25th.

Palin's Katie Couric interview made news on the 25th.

Indeed, Obama did jump from a 4 point lead on the 25th to an 11 point lead on the 28th and 29th, inflated numbers which haven't yet been fully factored into the RCP tally. But what else happened here? Umm... the first debate. Could it be that a debate watched by 52 million people where Obama is generally seen to have done well could have had more of an impact than a network interview news of which was probably buried by that first debate -- not to mention McCain's abrupt reversal on attending?

So, to sum up, the most important impacts on recent polling were:

1. The Lehman/Merrill collapse (9/13-14)
2. The first debate and fallout (9/26-28)
3. The AIG bailout (9/18)

I don't see Palin on the radar screen of any of this. And I'd trust these numbers more than I'd trust the op-ed elitists.

John McCain has a slight 3-point lead in Michigan over Barack Obama (46-43) according to the Inside Michigan Politics Poll conducted by Lansing-based Marketing Resources Group  and released Tuesday Sept. 23, 2008.  The poll surveyed 600 likely voters Sept. 15-19 and has a MOE of 4.1 percent.

Key findings in the poll (from MRG's release):

• Obama enjoys strong support among women (+2%), young voters (+16%), African Americans (+89%) and in Metropolitian Detroit (+9%).
• McCain remains strong among blue-collar men (+10%), white males (+29%), conservatives (+62%) and in West Michigan (+12%) and in Flint/Sagnaw/Bay City Area (+8%).
• McCain's Fav/Unfav ratio is +14 (Down from +27 in March).
• Obama's Fav/Unfav ratio is +10 (Down from +24 in March).

More info on Marketing Resources Group here and Inside Michigan Politics here.

(Truth In Advertising Alert: I am Communiction Director for MI GOP)

There's no question that the polling average first pioneered by RealClearPolitics has demonstrably improved media reporting on polls. Media outlets have been forced to walk back on the inherent fraud of reporting on their poll as the most important and/or only recent poll. Outliers are no longer reported on as Holy Writ. The result is a much more stable and accurate picture of the race.

Still, there's still something wanting about the overall state of polling today. Despite the tremendous technological advantages allowing us to reach more respondents cheaper either through robocalling or the Internet, we still don't have a real-time picture of the election.

The current RCP average includes interviews taken from September 9th, 10 days ago. Is this really a reflection of where the race is today? Do we really have to wait until the Tuesday after a convention to assess what the bounce was?

The Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll points the way in some respects. They are releasing results from individual nights. And these results are well within the 5.1% margin of error, and don't evince much of the jumpiness pollsters warn us about in one night samples. The last three nights were Obama +5, Obama +8, and Obama +8. I may think the poll overall is 2-3 points too pro-Democratic, but even skewed polls usually get the trendline right.

What if all pollsters would release similar one-night figures and we were able to aggregate these into an RCP or Pollster-style average? Wouldn't that eliminate a lot of the uncertainty of low sample sizes in the same way that RCP eliminated the uncertainty of CNN hawking its relatively high MOE poll while NBC/WSJ did the same?

This at least has the advantage of being an apples to apples comparison. The current polling averages encompass polls taken on different dates, often not overlapping.

We'd still have rolling samples, but as a political operative, I want to see the immediate impact of the financial crisis on the polls. Pollsters have told us that these one-night results are supposedly invalid, because of 1) low sample sizes, and 2) swings caused by one day news stories.

Averaging solves the first part, and -- excuse me -- aren't the one-day swings relevant in that they are possibly leading indicators of lasting shifts? If the media's time horizon for covering the campaign is a single news cycle, isn't it only fair that we measure the campaign that way too? And aside from AB/EV, Election Day is a single day event -- not a three-day composite.

Second, I'd like to see an RCP-style average for demographic groups. Though I don't deny there has probably been an Obama shift the last few days, have white women really swung eleven points in a week? I don't think we can make that contention without seeing the RCP/Pollster average for white women. Because pollsters can't hawk their topline data as a unique product anymore, they focus on the closely guarded crosstabs, which are even less accurate than a single poll. An RCP style average for key groups would give us a real (and fascinating) picture of how different groups have really shifted over time.

Jerome Armstrong notes another phenomenon in the polling. Indies are breaking hard for John McCain. First, he notes this picture from Gallup:

Then notes the same pattern in other polls:

CBS: McCain is ahead by 55-25 among Independents.

Hotline: McCain is ahead by 45-32, among Independents.

Here, there are two theories. The first is that these are real independents. The second is that these are disaffected Republicans ("rehab Republicans" in the McCain campiagn's schema of target voters). These would be Republicans who disaffiliated from the GOP but like McCain and, perhaps, Palin. If the second theory holds, we probably will keep these voters. If the second is going on, we won't know for a little while.

But Jerome closes on an important point:

Under this sort of scenario, the only possible way Obama could be ahead, or tied, is if party ID dramatically favors Democrats on election day. It hasn't in any of the recent election years.

One of the questions that will be endlessly debated will be whether the convention provided John McCain with a bump up or a bounce (coming back down). You can imagine mechanisms for how a convention could do both. As Patrick pointed out, George W. Bush's 2004 convention bump gave an enduring lead in the polls.

For example, the Democratic convention likely provided some permanent consolidation of the Democratic base. Hillary Clinton supporting voters probably came home in some part to Barack Obama. These will likely result in a sustained increase in Obama's floor vote. The convention provided a moment for Hillary-supporting core Democratic base voters to return ot the party's fold.

Turning to the Republicans, we see a similar mechanism in play that might result in a permanent increase in McCain's floor. From the new ABC/WaPo poll, we note the cross-tabs of white women

White women have moved from 50-42 percent in Obama’s favor before the conventions to 53-41 percent for McCain now, a 20-point shift in the margin that’s one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preferences. The other, also to McCain’s advantage, is in the battleground Midwest, where he’s moved from a 19-point deficit to a 7-point edge.

White women supporting McCain could be attributed to any number of factors. The most obvious is Palin's star appeal, but also McCain's focus on service.

But another possibility is that white women are simply coming home to the Republican party. In CNN's 2004 exit poll, George W. Bush beat John Kerry 55-44 among white women.

In other words, white women voters who should be (or at least easily could be) Republican voters are now back to supporting the Republicans this cycle. Don't look for this dump to turn into a temporary bounce. This is a real phenomenon with a real mechanism, not some temporary blip caused by a whirlwind of media.

Every now and then I have a "Panasonic moment"---similar to their slogan that they were "slightly ahead of our time"

That feeling came again when I read PowerLine's Paul Mirengoff opine as follows: 

Bounce Wars

My column in the Sunday Examiner takes a look at the upcoming conventions. I've thought for some time that Barack Obama will receive a considerable bounce from the Democratic convention and that John McCain will receive a smaller one. Now I'm not so sure.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/08/021268.php

So, I copy verbatim (aside from some fixed typos) an e-mail I sent to various people on April 12, 2008  entitled "Bounces are so 20th Century"

Chuck Todd is a very bright guy who knows the past. So he is selling the idea of Obama getting a huge bounce from a Democratic convention.

 

I'm not seeing it. 

 

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/11/215744/027

 

Bounces were the result of independents and soft partisans finally tuning into the political process in late summer. As a result, the party holding a convention would get a sudden influx of support, much of which it was bound to pick up eventually anyway.

 

This year, however, the average voter has tuned into politics far earlier than in the past A July 2007 USA Today story pointed out that even 20 months out from the election, voters were starting to tune into the presidential race http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070307/a_poll07.art.htm With the long march of the Democrats to the nomination there has not been a respite in political news, and the attributes of the candidates has been discussed continuously 

 

Even in 2004, while it appeared Bush got only a slight bounce out of the NYC convention, it quickly resolved itself to a narrow--but reliable-- Bush lead. In that year it was apparent that the electorate was polarized, and anti-war or pro-life voters unlikely to consider the alternatives.  While the field may be more "open" this year it is offset by the early start. 

 

http://pollingreport2.com/wh2004a.htm#2way (I still believe Bush could have managed the 8 point win he had in the 10/16 CNN poll if he had not botched debate #1, but)

 

There was a clear bounce for Gore in 2000 http://www.pollingreport.com/wh2genT.htm but let's ask why

a) he had been off the campaign trail for months

b) He had been in Clinton's shadow

 

I would say in that era of peace and prossperity there was less attention paid to politics, and the sense of "Clinton fatigue" certainly caused the low information voter to arrive late to the game.

 

Same for the previous elections (without the Clinton fatigue). There were long gaps in the election calendar and even Bob Dole was a relative unknown to much of the nation compared to the incumbent president. I would say Barack Obama right now is a better known person to the average voter than Dole was in 1996 even being Senate Majority Leader

 

So we have a more polarized electorate that in the past, and fewer low information voters late in the process. What else has changed--technology. The Internet, blogs, 24/7 cable TV and YouTube now make the stage managing of a national convention far less relevant that the massive unfiltered amount of raw information available to the consumer before and after the convention. It's like comparing the Sun to CO2 for the earth's temperature

 

Finally, there's is serious bad blood in Dem ranks and while I recall Carter getting some bounce out of overcoming Teddy Kennedy. many of Teddy's "industrial Democrat" supporters were quick to jump ship once Reagan appeared rational and reasonable   

 

My money is on Obama being no more than 6 points up on Mac leaving Denver. That will be the best day of his campaign.

 

Four months have passed and virtually every expectation I had then has come to pass. But  now it's starting to become conventional wisdom  

Lou Barletta is up over crooked, machine Democrat Paul Kanjorski in a new internal poll that they released.

Paul Kanjorski (D-inc): 41 (42)
Lou Barletta (R): 45 (47)

Normally, we wouldn't discuss internal polls, but it is all we have, and, as the left-leaning Swing State Project notes, it is all that we have:

although the numbers are probably best served with a grain of salt, it's sort of telling that we haven't seen rival numbers from Kanjorski or the DCCC. In fact, Kanjorski's response to the poll doesn't exactly inspire confidence:

A Kanjorski campaign spokesman declined to comment on the poll.

That's the exact same response that Kanjorski's camp gave in June. Weak, sir.

We are going to win this one. As I previously noted, the Dems are runnign scared. So give Lou Barletta some money.

Jonathan Martin gets a new Michigan poll via the Detroit News:

New poll numbers out from the Detroit News have the Michigan race between Obama and McCain very competitive with a chunk of voters still on the sidelines.

Obama is up 43-41, but 12% of voters said they're undecided.

My gut is that if undecideds are that high, John McCain is President.  Michigan is a lot of electoral votes and we saw throughout the primaries that Obama never really closed well. The undecideds always broke hard against him.

Obviously, it is far too early to be making statements like this,  but this and this New Hampshire poll suggest that McCain is very much in this.

Oy.

So, first we learn that the Obama money juggernaut isn't all it's cracked up to be. (Sidenote to Allah: $100 million in September/October isn't impressive if the HoDean DNC is broke and third parties like Progressive Media USA are going bellyup.)

And now we just might be getting a race again. The last three polls are Obama +3, Tied, +3. The Pollster.com average is down to +2.7 for Obama. Obama had peaked at about 6 point lead nationally:

Bill Clinton was consistently ahead by 10-20 points after his convention (which was about now) in his race against George H.W. Bush. He was up by the same amount against Bob Dole throughout the '96 elections. He won both elections by much more modest 5 and 8 points, nearly 10 points less than his polling lead. In 2004, Bush closed about 3-4 points ahead of his summer polling average. I think there's a credible argument to be made that media coverage shaped these poll numbers before voters made their final decisions.

Sean Oxendine has described how elections have closed towards the candidate who is the "established product." So if one were to take an informed view of history, one would have to conclude that Obama has little margin for error, especially if his money advantage isn't going to be that huge.

This just in from CQPolitics.com: 

Obama-McCain Dead Heat in Ohio

Ohio is shaping up to be, as usual, extraordinarily competitive in this year's Presidential election, according to a Survey USA poll released today that has Barack Obama leading John McCain 48-42 percent. But since the margin of error is +/- 4.2 percentage points, the two candidates are statistical tied.

Obama and McCain's support is mirrored among opposite demographic groups. For example, McCain leads 58-35 among men, and Obama has the majority of support from women, 59-35 percent. An age breakdown has Obama ahead 52-41 percent among voters under 50, and McCain beats Obama 51-41 in those over 50. McCain wins conservatives 83-13, while Obama leads among liberals 84-15 (Obama also has a 55-36 lead with moderates).

There are a few demographic areas where this pattern doesn't quite hold; McCain peels off significantly more Democrats than Obama wins Republicans (20 percent and 13 percent, respectively), but Obama makes up this gap among independents, among whom he enjoys a 45-39 edge, though a large 16 percent are undecided.