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October 13, 2008 - 6:09am.
Sixty-four percent of voters now view Obama favorably, up six percentage points from early September, according to the poll taken after Tuesday night's presidential debate. Nearly a third of voters have a better opinion of the Illinois senator because of his debate performance while eight percent have a lower opinion of him, the poll found. Twelve percent of voters have a higher opinion of Arizona Sen. McCain after the debate, while 26 percent said they had a worse opinion of him. The final debate on Wednesday at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, will be the last of three face-offs between the two candidates before the November 4 election. According to the poll, 52 percent of voters now strongly favor McCain, down seven percentage points from early September. More than half of respondents, 59 percent said the Arizona senator has been mainly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues, up from 48 percent who said the same thing in August, the Post reported. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said Obama has been mainly addressing the issues. On taxes, an issue McCain has been aggressively highlighting, Obama has gained a significant lead over his opponent. According to the poll, Obama now leads McCain 52 percent to 41 percent on the question of who is trusted to handle taxes. In late September, the candidates were near even on that question with Obama ahead of McCain by two percentage points, 48 percent to 46 percent. The poll of 1,101 adults, including 945 registered votes, was taking Wednesday though Saturday. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points for the full sample and three-point-five percentage points for the sample of 766 likely voters. Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited
Capitol Hill Blue's columnists, blogs and reader comments Capitol Hill Blue is an independent, non-partisan news site that belongs to no political party and subscribes to no political or philosophical point-of-view. Our columnists are welcome to their opinions but readers should understand that their views do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of this web site. We also welcome comments to selected opinion columns and in our popular ReaderRant discussion forum. Please remember, however, that we believe in civility on this web site and comments may be reviewed, moderated or removed if we feel they contain obscenities, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitic remarks or attack other posters. Our goal is reasoned discussion on issues facing this nation and we do not feel that goal is served by personal attacks and by seeing how many cute adjectives you can attach to an elected official or politician's name. Copyright © 2008 Capitol Hill Blue
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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leading his Republican rival John McCain 53 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, according to a Washington Post-ABC News opinion poll released on Monday.
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"According to the poll, 52
Submitted by pondering_it_all on October 13, 2008 - 1:10pm."According to the poll, 52 percent of voters now strongly favor McCain, down seven percentage points from early September."
That's got to be a misprint: I know it was in the original Reuters release, but it doesn't match anything else in the article. If 52% now "strongly favor" McCain, there's no way Obama would be ahead by 10 percentage points.
Maybe somebody should ask Reuters for a correction or clarification?
Just as I suspected, Reuters
Submitted by pondering_it_all on October 13, 2008 - 1:33pm.Just as I suspected, Reuters messed up. Here's the original ABC version:
"One apparent result of these factors is a drop in McCain's favorability rating, to 52 percent, a loss of 7 points since the Republican convention; 45 percent now see him unfavorably, a new high for McCain in polls since 1999. Obama's rating, meanwhile, is 64 percent favorable, near its high and up 6 points in the same time frame."
The margin of error is plus
Submitted by woody188 on October 14, 2008 - 1:25pm.The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points for the full sample and three-point-five percentage points for the sample of 766 likely voters.
It's been a while since stats class, but I recall +/-3% or more means the poll can't be considered an accurate prediction of anything.
Actually not correct. The
Submitted by gazelle1929 on October 14, 2008 - 4:39pm.Actually not correct. The absolutely best explanation I have seen is in a book called Super Crunchers, by (oh my I had not noticed the coincidence before) a guy named Ayers or Ayres.
But here's how I understand it:
Unless they specify otherwise pollsters use a confidence level of 95 %. Other common confidence levels are 90 and 99, but pollsters will make a point of telling you of that fact.
What that means is that in the case of someone who is leading by 53 to 47 percent with a 3% margin of error, you can have 95 % confidence that the leader would get poll results somewhere between 47 and 56 percent in 19 elections out of 20. BUT! these swings of + or - 3% are based on a bell-shaped curve. The most likely result is going to be a win by 53 to 47 percent over the opponent; the further you get from that central point the less likely there will be such an outcome. To a statistician a 53 - 47 lead is close to a landslide.
So far as I know no talking head has ever explained this in public, and sometimes I doubt if there are many who understand it. That's why so many of them will take the intellectually lazy way out and try to tell you that it's a statistical dead heat. It's not.
The guy who wrote the book above has an excellent description of this which even made sense to me, and I'd have gotten the book out and given a better explanation. But I leant the book to a friend. It's OK, though, I have his eldest daughter as collateral.
One doesn't need polls. Just
Submitted by Hoosier_CowBoy on October 14, 2008 - 6:32pm.One doesn't need polls. Just watch the level of BS put out by the McCain bunch to tell how far behind they are.