Rasmussen Tracking Poll [Obama vs McCain]

[kevinatcausa]

Indeed.  If Obama manages to outperform Kerry markedly in the both the critical group of "Women" and that of "Men Only", I like his chances against McCain

[kevinatcausa]

All other things being equal, I would expect the shifts in the daily samples to be about 1.7 times as large as those in the three day average (and about Sqrt(n) times as large as those in an n day average). 

However, I'm not enough of a statistician to be sure about what assumptions I'm making for the above statement. 

[kevinatcausa]

On other thing:  

If there's a problem in the reverse engineering of daily samples from three day averages, it would most likely manifest itself in an error in the daily estimates having period three (meaning that an error in one day of a three day average would automatically propagate itself every three days down the line).  

To put it differently:  Random noise will tend to not have any recognizable cycles.  Methodological error will have a cycle of length three.  If your data has a conspicuous cycle of that length, there likely is an error somewhere.