The post-convention bounce is now moving in the Republican direction, but with an enormous spread in estimates. A Gallup/USA Today (9/5-7) has an enormous 10 point McCain lead over Obama, 54%-44%. In contrast, Gallup's tracker over the same days shows a 5 point McCain lead, 49%-44%. Now would be a good time to note that the tracker is a registered voter (RV) sample, while the Gallup/USAT is a likely voter (LV) sample. LV samples typically are more favorable for Republican candidates, so at least some of this difference is probably due to these different sampling frames. We'll no doubt be talking a lot about this issue in days ahead.
But other polls on the same days show a tied race. Diageo/Hotline has the race 44%-44% and CNN has it 48%-48%. And Zogby's Internet poll done 9/5-6 puts the race at 50%-46%.
All of these are much better for McCain than the 5-9 point Obama leads we saw in the immediate aftermath of the Democratic convention.
So it looks like both parties got nice convention bounces.
Our trend estimate is still hungry for more data. The standard, blue line, estimate is now less persuaded that Obama had a convention bounce OR that McCain is getting one either. That is standard behavior of our estimator which is designed to be a bit conservative when faced with conflicting polls and short term changes of trend.
But that is why we have our "sensitive" estimator for comparison. The red line is a trend estimate that is about twice as sensitive a the blue line. It is considerably quicker to respond to short term changes and to fewer polls. The down side is it will often chase random noise.
Since there is good reason to believe convention bounces are real, it is reasonable to think that the red line's indication that the race has indeed tightened is probably a real signal in the data, and not just noise. On the other hand, the Gallup 10 point McCain lead is out of the range of any other current polling data. So "red" may be chasing that outlier just a bit more than is good for him. As the figure makes clear, red and blue usually agree quite closely after enough data are in hand, but can diverge especially when data are sparce.
A prudent approach is to wait for a few more post-convention and post-weekend interviewing polls to see just how big and how sustained the RNC bounce is. But both estimators agree we have ourselves a real horserace now.
4 comments:
Thanks for the clarity.
Good to see "Ready Red" and "Steady Blue" reappear after some time. I hope to see regular updates in the next few weeks with Red alerting us to a possible new trend, and Blue providing a sober perspective.
Am I the only one who is tired of the idiots who get elected to be president? All we can do is go for the lesser of 2 evils every time anymore. It's a catch 22, either get a jerk or doesn't care or another jerk of doesn't care. They only talk about whose done what wrong, whose slept with who or whose kid has slept who with who. As if any of that matters. They make promises they never keep. If you email their office you get a form letter and signed up for their stupid newsletter, as if yeah that's what you wanted. You didn't want someone to read what you wrote, no way. You spent 20 min or so writing an email to them, because you wanted a form letter back. Perfect. They talk about how they are the best for this reason or that reason but its all lies. We all know its lies, but we only get so many people that even bother to try because no one really wants to. No sorry they do want to but for ALL THE WRONG REASONS. They want the power, they want to be recognized, and they want to be the popular kid on the playground for a change. They don't want to help, they don't want to make things better because they all have the money that doesn't get taxed, they don't need to work, and they have NEVER lived paycheck to paycheck. They have no idea what its like to worry about how the bills will get paid. Why not actually have someone who cares, who really gives a damn. Because those people aren’t allowed to run, we don’t have the money. We don't have our own PLANES. WHAT THE HELL DO THEY NEED A FREAKING PLANE FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My god what the hell is wrong with these people. They say how they are just regular people well I'm sorry but us regular people DON’T HAVE FREAKING PLANES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELLO! They are such idiots. If only there was such a thing as a rich person who cared about others then maybe we could have a president who really did care. But we all know that won't happen.
This is great! I look forward to future updates of this graph, too. This has to be one of the better big picture looks at the polling that I've seen.
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