Why the polls are wrong & John McCain will win

If you've been following Pollster.com or FiveThirtyEight, you probably think that Barack Obama is a shoe-in. On the one hand, Kathryn Lopez's cherry-picking of polls in The Corner is not impressive. But, I've found some data which strongly suggests that there is a major systematic bias and flaw in all the polls which is grossly overestimating the support for Obama. My results and analysis are below....

BOOOHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SHOCK POST!

Sorry, I just like scaring people, and there are many spooked & nervous liberals & Democrats right now. Too tempting & too easy....

Update: If you're stupid, you might find this persuasive, Turners.

Tags

More like this

A couple of weeks ago, it was impossible to find a pundit or poll maven who saw a Trump victory as a possibility. I made the audacious claim at the time that this was incorrect, and I've been taking heat from it since then. Much of this widespread misunderstanding is ironically caused by the good…
Aww, poor Intelligent Design creationism is feeling unloved. Or perhaps it's jealousy. David Klinghoffer, that clueless ideologue at the Discovery Institute, is whimpering that blogging scientists aren't paying enough attention to his brand of creationism. Darwinian scientists who blog -- in other…
Now that we've apparently elected Nate Silver the President of Science, this is some predictable grumbling about whether he's been overhyped. If you've somehow missed the whole thing, Jennifer Ouellette offers an excellent summary of the FiveThirtyEight saga, with lots of links, but the Inigo…
I recently heard a pollster remark, “When you give conservatives bad polling data, they want to kill you. When you give liberals bad polling data, they want to kill themselves.” That attitude has been well on display recently in the right-wing freak out over Nate Silver's website. Silver…

note to self: stop clicking on your posts on culture 11...

By yupsterism (not verified) on 03 Nov 2008 #permalink

It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that the polls are systematically biased towards Obama if their sampling of independents doesn't take into account that this time around a substantial number of them are ex-Republicans who were just fed up of Bush and the congressional GOP.

I'm not saying that it is the case or that it will be enough to close Obama's 6 point advantage even if it were true.

Cruel. Very cruel. But funny!

By ctenotrish (not verified) on 03 Nov 2008 #permalink

I said to myself: April first already?

By John Emerson (not verified) on 03 Nov 2008 #permalink

Before we get too complacent, let's recall that no one predicted the Reagan landslide in 1980.

history is important, but it needs to be strongly modulated by context and noting differences in the "moving parts." analogies which are only superficially similar simply mislead. e.g., partisan polarity has increased a lot since 1980, there are many more polls than there were then, and the information about these polls flows really freely. finally, remember john anderson. and so forth. obama could lose. but the volatility of the electorate has decreased since the late 1970s (the post-60s realignment arguably didn't finish until the '94 elections) and polling has gotten more robust.

p.s., and reagan really caught in the final 72 hours from what i recall. we aren't seeing that right now, there are 24 hours left....

such a dick.

okay, i laughed...

By tevebaugh (not verified) on 03 Nov 2008 #permalink

Reagan landslide in 1980

If 51:41 is a landslide then a landslide is withing a reach for Obama.

not really. look at the map. john anderson + less regional skew in party strength = substantively different dynamic. analogy: clinton wouldn't have won montana in '92 if not for perot.