Do NOT Fall for this Bogus AP Story
"The race is DEAD EVEN"!
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/10/ap_presidential_poll_all_even.php
TPM put this on their home page taken from Drudge's daily attempt to find any single little outlier or to cherry pick numbers from any skewed poll to show hope for his faithful GOPers.
Don't be fooled. Open up the full report and read it.
In the national poll, Obama LEADS BY 10 points over McCain. The problem lies in the AP making the same mistake that Gallup occassionally does in that they are using patterns from the past 2 presidential elections to derive estimated on who will vote.
So their LIKELY VOTERS is what shows a 1 point Obama lead. HOWEVER, that is using a formula that is based on a much higher GOP and evangelical turnout from 2000 and 2004 not taking into account the new Democratic registered voters or young voter who will vote predominately Obama.
That accounts for the difference in national polls vs. likely voters and the AP (along with Gallup's "traditional" model) has it wrong.
*** UPDATE ***
Here is a GREAT link with information from Nate Silver further debuking this poll with a method that the MSM (and I'm affraid to say TPM did, too) fail to use: analysis and data!!
http://www.americablog.com/2008/10/new-flawed-ap-poll-claims-mccain-and.html
The AP's sampling had 44% that were evangelical/born again Christian!! LOL!
Thanks for talking me off the ledge (or, in my case, a deck balcony overlooking my back yard).
I know that the AP has a vested interest in manufacturing a close race.
October 22, 2008 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
And if you watch the polls from a site like RCP, you will note that they selective switch between all voters, likely voters "traditional" and newer models. It appears to be slightly random and creates the impression of daily movement in the numbers.
October 22, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also, notice the byline is Liz Sidoti who is out of the Washington AP bureau which is headed by Ron Fourier. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081022/ap_on_el_pr/ap_poll_presidential_race
Both of them have been on the mccain bus for a long time. Liz is she of the give him (mccain) his favorite donuts persuasion during an interview. http://www.jedreport.com/2008/06/ap-scribe-who-s.html
October 22, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think there are going to be attempts to bring the polls tighter in reports whether or not true in order to provide cover for cheating/voter supression...
I encourage everyone to write the Obama camp and their representatives letting them know that we are prepared to wait however long it takes to count every vote and fight every provisional ballot challenge in order to win this election.
I hope the results will be so overwhelming in Senator Obama's favor so that it won't be necessary but it is possible that many states will have so many voters pushed onto provisional ballots for stupid reasons and if we are willing to be patient and go through the process of counting them it may make the difference between winning and losing a state.
I live in CO and I expect Obama to win but it could be close. I am guessing there will be that the republican turn out may be low because of the Palin pick. We do have a lot of college students and new voters that were purged because of checking against DMV records etc. and there could be a high number of provisional ballots.
I just had the idea that we should ask the press to give us provisional vote totals as they record the regular vote results so that we could know how many 'outstanding' votes need to be accounted for.
October 22, 2008 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
October 23, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've noticed this curiously fact-free narrative of a tightening race all over the place lately. I'm not sure if it's an actual, nefarious attempt to provide cover for a soon-to-be stolen election, or just an attempt on the part of the media to keep the horserace hysteria going for another week and a half.
October 23, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know about "fall" for it, but it certainly should be a reminder that it's not over until Nov. 5th at the earliest. The Republicans will fight tooth and claw for any state where the margin of victory is under 3%.
We're closer, but we're not done yet. Still some hard work left between now and Nov. 4th.
October 22, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stood in a long line today in Seminole County Florida, near Orlando. This PUMA is spanking Howard Dean and voted for McCain. Many, many McCain buttons on shirts, with hundreds of people early voting.
We voted for Hillary and you stole our primary vote to machine NoBama in. No thanks!
The AP poll is right! Bradley affect my toes. We are not race determined, but thanks for implying that. We are teaching you a lesson. Go to the new agenda web site, or puma pac. NoBama, no thanks. For the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country!
He's likable enough, but look, no thanks!
October 22, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Florida PUMA, you need to get over it. The only person you've hurt is yourself.
October 22, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
So now when I lose my health care benefits and pay more taxes because of the breaks McCain will give to large corporations, can I send you the bill for being goofy enough to vote for a Republican just because you have hurt feelings?
October 22, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's so nice to know that you people don't matter. You and your ilk are a small, defeated fraction of society.
Go cry some more. We feed on your tears.
October 22, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Congratulations. Self-destructive idiot.
October 22, 2008 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
WTF!
October 22, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
How sad for you that you think it is smart to cut off your nose to spite your face. Which is precisely what you did. If we ever do elect a woman, I certainly hope she is brighter than you.
October 22, 2008 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
My guess is that you were never going to vote for Hillary anyway or you've gone off your meds for toooo long now. The cognitive disconnect required for a rational Hillary supporter to vote for McCain/Palin is huge.
October 22, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
No joke, I haven't heard the word PUMA since August. You are a dying breed sir.
October 22, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if you were paying attention over the past couple of months, but Hillary was campaigning for Obama, not McCain. She also encouraged her supporters to support the Democrat candidates.
Which of Hillary's platforms are embraced by the McCain-Palin team?
In other words, this was just a grudge match for you. Don't you have to be an adult to vote?
October 22, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't listen to them PUMA! You Go Girl! McCain is going to WIN and show all those mean people who dared to vote differently from you! He will WIN WIN WIN! In fact, I think you should throw a big party at your house on Election Night for all your PUMA friends so that you can all dance the night away while you toast McCain's surprise upsest! Be sure and hire a band and spend lots and lots and lots of money on liquor and decorations because it will be THE event of the year and it will totally be worth the expense.
October 22, 2008 10:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only person you potentially teach a lesson is yourself. I say potentially because you are obviously impervious to learning.
You were a Republican all along.
October 23, 2008 3:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The perfect avatar for a puma:
http://30reasons.org/index.php?p=archive&id=1
October 23, 2008 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary would be SO proud.
October 23, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Playing with PUMA's is like feeding trolls. They have been MIA for so long many of you are either forgetting your toilet training or your keyboard fingers are nostalgic (warning signs include humming tunes like "Staying Alive" in your head).
They were never for Hillary. If Hillary was the nominee they would be writing in to blame Bill for the tragic beating of the young attractive news anchor in Little Rock.
October 23, 2008 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pumas are critically endangered in Florida, and largely extinct elsewhere in the Eastern US. Their situation has only worsened since the Democratic National Convention.
October 23, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Their methodology is indeed suspect, but I don't know if I'd be so charitable as to call it a mistake. AP has a history of this sort of thing.
October 22, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well your description of the AP poll does make a lot of sense. Coincidentally, I was just polled by AP at 8:30 pm EDT. The poll took about 5 minutes. Most of the questions were typical poll questions, slanted a bit for the Virginia Senate election as well. But then they went off on stunningly racist questions such as whether blacks make "good neighbors" or are "boastful" and whether black leaders have "pushed" enough at the national level! It was like a poll from the 1950s in Mississippi. Disgusting and horrible.
October 22, 2008 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
They're testing your "Bradley" factor to determine if they think you would actually vote for a black man.
October 22, 2008 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least now we have an answer as to why Obama's support shrunk by 3 and McCain's grew by 6 after their likely voter models were applied. Basically, the AP is assuming that people are both liers and closet racists, and they're controling their data to reflect that.
And even with that, there are still some fundamental red flags with the internals of this poll that are, to put it mildly, curious. I'll take this poll for what it is: the most "optimisistic" senario for the McCain campaign.
October 23, 2008 6:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I like your comment. I think that no matter what anyone individually comes away with from these numbers, the fact that I find disturbing is that news outlets take the AP for their word on face value. Yet it appears that their polling company is now essentially creating "interesting" ID mixes to create polling results that are unnatural but meant to keep the public tuned in.
October 23, 2008 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why has AP changed from IPSOS to Roper in the middle of the campaign? Was IPSOS not providing the right numbers? Wasn't Roper the outfit that gave us President Dewey?
With their new GfK bosses, maybe the Roper organization is still clueless.
October 22, 2008 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Make it look like a horse race. Please. I'd rather have an ulcer now, than wake up Nov. 4th knowing Palin is in the chain of command. I really don't care how skewed the polls are. The result will be the result, and it has to be Obama. 13 more days.
October 22, 2008 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Palin is having to give her clothes away after the campaign, you know they're not expecting to win!
October 23, 2008 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm feeling I want Stevens to get off. If he's indicted, then the office will be open and who wants Palin for senator from Alaska....or anywhere.
October 22, 2008 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
That fellow Walt, whom she fired, should run for Senator or Governor. Palin is toast. Burnt toast.
October 23, 2008 1:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
An even scarier thought:
Using the poll internals, I calculated the party ID distribution that they are using for the likely voters model.
34%D, 28%R, 38%I
Although the ratio of democrats to republicans is reasonable, they have independents as a oddly large category. Also in the AP story over their poll they sate that Obama only has 8/10 support from Dems, while McCain has 9/10 support from Reps, and the Ind are split 50-50.
If I use the combination they are suggesting (without any undecideds) and weight it by party ID distribution, you actually get something even more scary...
51% McCain
49% Obama
My best guess is that they ended up with a very odd sample that doesn't fit any of the other samples by the other pollsters.
*I should also note that the poll average party ID weight is currently around 38.2%D, 31.7%R, 30.0%I.
October 23, 2008 1:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very good analysis. However, you cannot blanketly take the ID breakdown based on party affiliation. It is only skewed in a very minor sense in this AP/gfk poll.
What GFK did here was to instead use inaccurate and unnatural demographics. There is a VERY good chance that both the R and I voters in this sampling made up 95% of the Evangelicals. That skews the numbers way too much to McCain.
If you want a more accurate sampling of reality, gfk would have thrown out the over abundance of Born Agains and would have ended up (rough estimates) more like a 4-5% Obama lead among likelies.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Even in this planted report, Obama LEADS ALL VOTERS by 10%!!
October 23, 2008 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ya know what... let's all act as though it IS that close...work harder, make calls, drop literature, contribute money, time, effort... get as many people to the polls as is humanly possible. Don't let it be even remotely close...
October 23, 2008 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
+1!
October 23, 2008 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just Remember:
If McCain/Palin wins we are doomed.
And to the FL voter above: It's obvious you are what is known as a "low information" voter.
You voted for McCain/Palin because you are a Republican. Anyone who supported what Hillary stood for could never (and I mean never) vote for the McCain/Palin ticket.
So quit telling lies. You were never a Hillary supporter. In fact, you vote totally insults Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I'd be ashamed if I were you.
October 23, 2008 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Way to go PUMA. Very proud of you to brave all the bees coming out of their hive and attacking you.
The beehive won't discuss the issues with you. They just call people "idiots" and tell them to keep crying.
October 23, 2008 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
On the Internet, no one knows you're a PUMA. Or a troll.
October 23, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure glad I'm not the only one who noticed this!!! I also love the long boring story about how Texas favors McLame by a large margin and goes on to laborously explain all the numbers behind it...
October 23, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with those who say that any news about a close race will be important to help remind people that they need to show up at the polls.
October 23, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
However, my silly local repub paper had the AP poll story as the big top headline this morning.
Unfortunately, there will be plenty of readers that will not read the story, just the headline.
Fortunately, I am hearing anecdotally from a number of folks who to my surpise are going to vote Obama...mainly the Palin decision and economy.
Keep working to the election!!
October 23, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
By putting forth these silly bogus reports, the GOP will create an air of legitimacy when they steel the election by the thinnest of margins on Nov 4.
October 23, 2008 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's been a growing fear with me, too. Already there are reports at early-voting sites in West Virginia that Obama votes were switched to McCain via computer balloting. I also notice the media is lining up cover stories for a (stolen) election: the "Bradley Effect", Joe the Plumber's miraculous effect on white male voters, the supposed ebb of financial panic. I think the crest is too big this year; the fraud would be too pronounced to hide if we're in landslide territory. But we never know...
October 23, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
You've got the important point, wvbiker, that other MSM (local papers, TV networks, etc.) use this (because they take stuff straight from AP) and headline the "dead heat" story without getting into the "technical stuff" that would explain that these results can't (shouldn't) be used on their own.
October 23, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
It appears that Obama's support among 'likely McCain voters' is neck-and-neck with McCain's.
October 23, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it amazing that even with 99% of the media being 100% Obama that still some truth seems to find its way through. Everyone is so ready to blame the economy on the current administration, but they tend to forget that a warning was giving as early as six years ago and the democrat in charge of fannie mae/freddie mac chose to say that all was fine and there was nothing to worry about; well I guess he was wrong. A democratic lead congress was warned and chose not to do anything about it. Now we're expected to believe that 95% of the people won't be taxed; please open you're eyes. Corporations don't pay tax; sure they are taxed, but they only pass off those higher taxes to those 95% that weren't supposed to be taxed in the form of higher prices. Secondly, raising taxes at a time when your economy is in trouble is ludicrous! You will shut down small businesses, send big companies elsewhere where taxes are less and cause even more job loss further crippling your economy. On this poll issue; all polls are skewed one way or another depending on the questions asked at the particular time; it's our jobs as concerned Americans to look at the voting records for ourselves and not believe all the hype, but do our own investigations and think for ourselves where we can make our OWN informed decision...not believe what someone tells us to believe!
October 23, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice job pasting the talking points together without any paragraph spacing or duplication. Nice work! Amazing the feats that can be accomplished with copy & paste!
Now, do you have any original thoughts you would like to share with us?
October 23, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
No copy and paste was necessary; remarks were tyed out myself after not only listening to "independent" news services, but after also doing my onw personal research. Any economist worth his or her salt will tell you the same thing; "you don't increase taxes when your economy is in trouble". Now can you explain how you can trust a persons judgement that not only funded a corrupt organization such as acorn, but volunteered to work for them. Mr Obama was correct when stating that he was not hired by them, he didn't have to be, because he volunteered. Also, how can you be a member of a church for twenty years and not know where your pastors values lay, I know mine; do you? Lastly regarding Mr. Ayers, it has nothing to do with the fact that Mr Obama was eight when Mr Ayers did the bombings; it has to do with the fact that he still associates with and promotes him now that he is an adult and knows exactly where he stands, but just choosing to look the other way.
October 23, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
from Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute (as quoted from TheHill.com today):
October 23, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ever since that remarkably partisan critique of Obama's convention acceptance speech by the AP's Babbington, I've begun to wonder if GOP influence has penetrated the AP to the extent that it is coloring their output. I've seen other examples since then of the AP seeming to parrot GOP talking points with regard to this election. And now, this B.S. poll, which at best could be called an outlier and at worst an outright lie. So I guess I have to take what I hear from the AP with the same ration of salt I reserve for Fox news. Another one bites the dust--gone the way of the WSJ. What a world, what a world...
October 23, 2008 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't forget that Rupert Murdoch sits on the board of AP!!!
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/07/the-ap-rupert-m.html
October 23, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
My daughter saw the AP poll this morning and was concerned about it...also because of her fears they are working to legitimitize a stolen election...again!
I sent her the above article to reassure her. It doesn't mean they won't try everything possible to steal it, though.
I'm not an evangelical but let's all pray anyway please.
October 23, 2008 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cajun man - good to see that there are some other people on here not drinking the "kool aid" of Obamanomics. I love how he's going to give "tax cuts" to 95% of Americans when less than half of America pays taxes today! But maybe Obama will flip-flop again. After all, he said that he might not raise anybody's taxes IF the economy slows down. (Aren't we already in a recession, Barry?)
October 23, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink