Gallup Tracking Poll Thread [Obama vs McCain]

[TheGlobalizer]

It just gets worse and worse, this is brutal.  I am going to get myself hammered on election night so I won't feel the pain that will be unfolding in front of my eyes.

Can you keep that up for 4 years?

I won't have to.  The Republican party always does better as the minority party unfortunately.  In a way I am looking forward to the Democrats being in control of everything.  It's all their in their court now, they will get the blame or credit for everything.  The pressure is on them.  No more Bush to kick around.  I basically feel like there is no where to go from this point but up.  The expectations for Obama are huge, there is no way he can live up to them.

We'll have to rebuild the way we did after 1992, and the way the Dems did after 2004.  We are going to have to "find our voice again".  I have faith that the American people are not going to like this experiment with socialism that is coming. 

I think it'll take longer than 2 years.  It'll be easy to drag Bush's disintegrating corpse behind the bus for a few more years.

[J. J.]

It just gets worse and worse, this is brutal.  I am going to get myself hammered on election night so I won't feel the pain that will be unfolding in front of my eyes.

Can you keep that up for 4 years?

Try two.  Folks, what happens in 2010?

The deluge?

Try something that will happen regularly. 

[MODU]

It just gets worse and worse, this is brutal.  I am going to get myself hammered on election night so I won't feel the pain that will be unfolding in front of my eyes.

Can you keep that up for 4 years?

Try two.  Folks, what happens in 2010?

The deluge?

Try something that will happen regularly. 

Bowel movements?

[J. J.]

It just gets worse and worse, this is brutal.  I am going to get myself hammered on election night so I won't feel the pain that will be unfolding in front of my eyes.

Can you keep that up for 4 years?

Try two.  Folks, what happens in 2010?

The deluge?

Try something that will happen regularly. 

Bowel movements?

Well, at you age once in ten years might be correct, but that's not the one I'm thinking of.

[Tender Branson]

Sunday - October 26:

RV:

Obama 51% (nc)
McCain 42% (nc)

LV (Expanded):

Obama 52% (+1)
McCain 43% (nc)

LV (Traditional):

Obama 50% (-1)
McCain 45% (+1)

[Ty440]

LV (Traditional):

Obama 50% (-1)
McCain 45% (+1)




  Keep going baby 

[Reds4]

Weird that the traditional and expanded would move so differently on one day.. yesterday they were virtually the same..

[Alcon]

Weird that the traditional and expanded would move so differently on one day.. yesterday they were virtually the same..

My guess is a lot of this is rounding stuff from bouncing around.  After all, 54.51%-44.49% changing to 54.49%-44.51% is going to look like a two-point shift.  It's not necessarily indicative that the underlying numbers changed that much.  Sometimes, a +/-1% can be more significant than a +/-2%.  Rounding's a whore.

[Ronnie]

Bleh

[Democratic Hawk]

Bleh

Don't be so downcast, Ronnie, McCain has closed in on Obama's lead on the likely voter, traditional model. If you're feeling down take a look at Zogby

Dave

[Ronnie]

Bleh

Don't be so downcast, Ronnie, McCain has closed in on Obama's lead on the likely voter, traditional model. If you're feeling down take a look at Zogby

Dave

Yippee, it's probably statistical noise.

In any case, I would be very content if McCain would be able to lose by a couple points, just so people like Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman might have a chance.  I have written off McCain actually winning this thing, though.

[MR maverick]

Bleh

Don't be so downcast, Ronnie, McCain has closed in on Obama's lead on the likely voter, traditional model. If you're feeling down take a look at Zogby

Dave

Yippee, it's probably statistical noise.

In any case, I would be very content if McCain would be able to lose by a couple points, just so people like Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman might have a chance.  I have written off McCain actually winning this thing, though.

Why?

[Ronnie]

Bleh

Don't be so downcast, Ronnie, McCain has closed in on Obama's lead on the likely voter, traditional model. If you're feeling down take a look at Zogby

Dave

Yippee, it's probably statistical noise.

In any case, I would be very content if McCain would be able to lose by a couple points, just so people like Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman might have a chance.  I have written off McCain actually winning this thing, though.

Why?

Because McCain is sucking in polls, and I don't think he will be able to make up the margin in 8 days.

[© tweed]

10/27/08

RV

Obama 52 (+1)
McCain 42 (nc)

LV expanded

Obama 53 (+1)
McCain 43 (nc)

LV traditional

Obama 50 (nc)
McCain 45 (nc)

[Lief 🗽]

Good. I was worried for a bit that the Rasmussen drop wasn't an outlier.

[Eraserhead]

nice

[elcorazon]

probably just the weekend bounce.  i'll let you know by thursday if this is real or not.

[J. J.]

probably just the weekend bounce.  i'll let you know by thursday if this is real or not.

No change it traditional, and Obama does tend to do a bit better on Gallup over weekends.  No great decline, however. 

[Kalimantan]

probably just the weekend bounce.  i'll let you know by thursday if this is real or not.

LOL. great snark!

[Nym90]

Interesting article posted on the Gallup website about how their likely voter models work:



Turnout in typical presidential elections is related to a voter's current interest in the election, self-reported intention to vote, and previous history of voting.

Based on these relationships, Gallup has in past elections successfully created a pool of likely voters (the "traditional likely voter" model) using data on an individual voter's values on these dimensions. The vote intentions of this pool of likely voters, measured in the final survey before an election, typically provide a more accurate representation of the final popular vote outcome than is accorded by the polled vote patterns of all registered voters. For example, in 2004, Gallup's final poll of registered voters before the election had John Kerry leading by 48% to 46%. Among likely voters, defined using Gallup's "traditional" likely voter model, George Bush was ahead by 49% to 47%, a margin quite close to the final popular vote outcome.

The voter turnout pattern in the 2008 presidential election may end up following exactly the same tendencies that have occurred in previous presidential elections. If so, the "traditional" likely voter model will provide the best estimate of the final popular vote.

By many accounts, however, turnout this year has the potential to follow somewhat different patterns. New voter registration is reported to be up significantly in a number of states, and news accounts discuss the evidence that the new registration is disproportionately Democratic. Gallup also has monitored significantly higher enthusiasm about this year's election among Democrats compared to Republicans. Given that Barack Obama is the first major-party black candidate in U.S. history, it would not be unexpected to see unusually high turnout among black voters, and there continues to be discussion of unusually high registration and turnout among young voters.

These considerations have led Gallup to develop a second likely voter model ("expanded model") that takes into account current vote intentions but does not incorporate past voting behavior. This model assumes there will be significant numbers of first time or infrequent voters in the final electorate pool, and that past voting history is less important as a predictor of voting.

Thus, at this point, Gallup is providing users of our data with several ways of modeling the electorate, taking into account different assumptions about turnout. The base registered voter model reports the current vote intentions of all registered voters -- the data Gallup has been tracking all year. The "traditional" model assumes that both past voting history and current voting intentions are important determinants of likelihood of voting. The "expanded" likely voter model assumes that current voting intentions are the important determinant of likelihood of voting, and that past voting history will not be the factor that it has in previous elections.

Gallup is monitoring a number of the elements that comprise the likely voter models in order to detect any historically unusual patterns that would suggest traditional assumptions about turnout may not apply this year. One key will be the effort to see if certain subgroups of the population, including young people and minorities, are disproportionately likely to report being registered to vote and disproportionately likely to report high levels of interest in the campaign, and self-reported intention to vote compared with previous years. This monitoring will provide the best empirical estimate of the turnout patterns that will occur on Election Day. The analyses of these indicators will be reported periodically at gallup.com.

[Nym90]

It is certianly odd that the "expanded" model has fewer voters than the "traditional" model. It obviously makes the term "expanded" a misnomer, but the only explanation I can gather is that if someone has voted very regularly in the past but says they are not enthusiastic about voting this year, they may be included in the traditional model but not in the expanded model. Gallup has ascertained there are more voters that fit this description than there are that have not voted in the past but say they are enthusiastic about voting this year--these folks would be included in the expanded model but perhaps not counted in the traditional model.

[Torie]

Pretty substantial movement today.

[Reds4]

Interesting

[Lunar]

Pretty substantial movement today.

Bradley Effect?

[Eraserhead]

Damn, must have been some insanely pro-McCain sample.

I wonder when the traditional model numbers become the Drudge headline...