FL: Insider Advantage: McCain with small lead in FL

[Sensei]

McCain hasn't spent any money on ads there.  Good decision by his campaign.

Either he or the RNC is advertising substantially in Florida, according to multiple posters here who have seen his ads on Fla. stations.

There's quite a few McCain commercials but way more Obama ads.

[??????????]

Yeah, they've certainly ran McCain ads here Agcatter and Spade are completely wrong on this one. And it was before the Olympic buy that I saw them. Haven't seen any since however.

[Gustaf]

No McCain or RNC buys in Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Montana, Georgia, North Dakota - states the Obama side claims they will try and win.  I believe it was the ultimate head fake and McCain didn't bite.

Obama has spent 12 million in those states.  It has not moved the polls in those states even without a response from Republicans.  Part of that is the fact that it's summer and most people tune political ads out.  They don't give a damn.  Obama flushed 12 million down the toilet but then, he had 12 million to flush.  McCain
made a good call to keep his powder dry and it appears to have been a wise move.

You're calling a swing state like Florida in early August?

Good grief, the conventions haven't even started yet. This discussion of "head fakes" is absolutely absurd.

You're sure you didn't mean to say "Good Lord, man"?

[Sam Spade]

SR, let's see if we can narrow down what you saw.  When were the ad(s) that you saw and on what channel(s)?

[Brittain33]

2) Trust that the real numbers in Florida are, at least, more Republican than the recent polling average, and at most, more Republican than the most Republican poll out there.

Was this true in 2000 or 1996?

[Beloni]

The election will be decided in Colorado, Nevada, NH in my opinion.  I expect McCain to hold serve in Va, Florida and Ohio and Obama to hold serve in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Obama will win in CO, NM, NV and possibly VA or OH  as well. He won't lose any of Kerry's states.
The bottom line: Obama - the next president of the US.

[Ronnie]

The election will be decided in Colorado, Nevada, NH in my opinion.  I expect McCain to hold serve in Va, Florida and Ohio and Obama to hold serve in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Obama will win in CO, NM, NV and possibly VA or OH  as well. He won't lose any of Kerry's states.
The bottom line: Obama - the next president of the US.

That's a bunch of wishful thinking on your part, don't you say?

[Sam Spade]

2) Trust that the real numbers in Florida are, at least, more Republican than the recent polling average, and at most, more Republican than the most Republican poll out there.

Was this true in 2000 or 1996?

I wish I could find any state polls of 1996 - they were very few and far between back then.

In 2000, M-D said Bush +2, Zogby said Gore +2 (after his tracking poll said Gore +10 the day before - lol), I think the St. Petersberg paper had Gore +3, but I don't remember.  Rasmussen was polling as Portrait of America back then, but I don't know whether he polled Florida.  Ironically, although his national poll was terribly off, his state polls were quite accurate.

My statement was true in 2006, though - less so than 2004 obviously.

[Brittain33]

My statement was true in 2006, though - less so than 2004 obviously.

Ok. I think I would need more datapoints (as we have with several years of N.J. and, to a lesser extent, Virginia polling wildly in the wrong direction long before Election Day) before we could call this a law.

In 2004, everyone acknowledged that polling in Florida was disastrous because the state had been hit with four hurricanes. Many articles said "no one knows what's going on there" when reporting on it. What was going on, that didn't get much reported or remarked on until after Katrina, was that FEMA was firing cash at Floridians like a firehose with lots of fraud and excessive benefits that people hadn't asked for. Among other things. At the same time, Florida's economy was still booming, and if anything employment was up as a result of the reconstruction boom. Jewish retirees from the tri-State area unexpectedly swung from the Democrats there as their friends and children did in New York and New Jersey. Finally, the profile of many parts of Florida matched the general profile of strong Bush regions--fast growing suburbs and exurbs with young families and weak ties to government, with a mix of religion and a dearth of union laborers.

Florida is a state where things can change quickly. The boom turns to bust. A mass migration turns to a trickle. The cost of living jumps. Communities change their ethnic make-up. I would hesitate to extrapolate from 2004 to future presidential elections as a "law," particularly when we can't extrapolate backwards with clarity, and I would also be reluctant to read any race with Katharine Harris in it as if it were a model for anything else. She did better because a lot of Republicans skeptical of her or outright embarrassed decided to vote for her in the end. This is not the kind of dynamic that moves a McCain from 48% to 51% or even from 51% to 54%.

I would say that we don't know what's going to happen in Florida, that McCain has an advantage vis a vis the national average, but that we do not have evidence to support the idea that Florida has a built-in Republican edge that is invisible to polls aside from M-D but will come out on Election Day. It's too much of a just-so-story from one election that has too many other possible explanations and not enough datapoints.

[Sam Spade]

My statement was true in 2006, though - less so than 2004 obviously.

Ok. I think I would need more datapoints (as we have with several years of N.J. and, to a lesser extent, Virginia polling wildly in the wrong direction long before Election Day) before we could call this a law.

In 2004, everyone acknowledged that polling in Florida was disastrous because the state had been hit with four hurricanes. Many articles said "no one knows what's going on there" when reporting on it. What was going on, that didn't get much reported or remarked on until after Katrina, was that FEMA was firing cash at Floridians like a firehose with lots of fraud and excessive benefits that people hadn't asked for. Among other things. At the same time, Florida's economy was still booming, and if anything employment was up as a result of the reconstruction boom. Jewish retirees from the tri-State area unexpectedly swung from the Democrats there as their friends and children did in New York and New Jersey. Finally, the profile of many parts of Florida matched the general profile of strong Bush regions--fast growing suburbs and exurbs with young families and weak ties to government, with a mix of religion and a dearth of union laborers.

Florida is a state where things can change quickly. The boom turns to bust. A mass migration turns to a trickle. The cost of living jumps. Communities change their ethnic make-up. I would hesitate to extrapolate from 2004 to future presidential elections as a "law," particularly when we can't extrapolate backwards with clarity, and I would also be reluctant to read any race with Katharine Harris in it as if it were a model for anything else. She did better because a lot of Republicans skeptical of her or outright embarrassed decided to vote for her in the end. This is not the kind of dynamic that moves a McCain from 48% to 51% or even from 51% to 54%.

I would say that we don't know what's going to happen in Florida, that McCain has an advantage vis a vis the national average, but that we do not have evidence to support the idea that Florida has a built-in Republican edge that is invisible to polls aside from M-D but will come out on Election Day. It's too much of a just-so-story from one election that has too many other possible explanations and not enough datapoints.

We can ask the Vorlon whenever he reappears.  Otherwise, you're just going to be unsure and that's ok to me. 

I know that he agrees with my rule because he's said so in the past, but since he's actually done internal polling for political campaigns in Florida before, he's quite a good source on this matter.

[Brittain33]

We can ask the Vorlon whenever he reappears.  Otherwise, you're just going to be unsure and that's ok to me.

Your certainty in your beliefs is fine with me, as well.

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I was not around for that first discussion (and don't know who the Vorlon is, as a poster) so I did not know this was based on internal polling, not data that are commonly available. I will defer to someone who has that kind of firsthand knowledge that I'm not in a position to evaluate.

[Sam Spade]

We can ask the Vorlon whenever he reappears.  Otherwise, you're just going to be unsure and that's ok to me.

Your certainty in your beliefs is fine with me, as well.

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I was not around for that first discussion (and don't know who the Vorlon is, as a poster) so I did not know this was based on internal polling, not data that are commonly available. I will defer to someone who has that kind of firsthand knowledge that I'm not in a position to evaluate.

According to him, fwiw, but I have seen no reason to doubt him in the past as one often should do on the Inet, Vorlon has conducted internal polling for political campaigns in two states - Florida and PA.  The PA campaign he said specifically before was Rick Santorum's campaign in 1994.