| damkira said: USA Today/Gallup polls have pretty much been skewered toward McCain since Obama won the nomination. The daily Gallup poll has McCain up 3 points and the Rasmussen has a tie. That is pretty much to be expected after the Republican convention. I'm won't be too concerned about it unless the lead holds. |
What he said. Rasmussen and Gallup are much better indicators. I watch this stuff everyday, and the most skewed polls so far have been Zogby and the USA Today/Gallup polls.
Hotline/FD (usually skewed towards Obama) is pretty unreliable too.
This is what I mean. There is about a 10-point difference on average. That is too much to show that there aren't some serious problems with the polling method. It isn't within one of those other polls margin of error:
| Time | 07/31 - 08/04 | 808 LV | 46 | 41 | Obama +5 |
| AP-Ipsos | 07/31 - 08/04 | 833 RV | 48 | 42 | Obama +6 |
| CNN | 07/27 - 07/29 | 914 RV | 51 | 44 | Obama +7 |
| USA Today/Gallup | 07/25 - 07/27 | 791 LV | 45 | 49 | McCain +4 |
| Pew Research | 07/23 - 07/27 | 1241 RV | 47 | 42 | Obama +5 |
| Democracy Corps (D) | 07/21 - 07/24 | 1004 LV | 50 | 45 | Obama +5 |
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
