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Timmah! on 08 September 2008
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akuma587 said:
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

Congrats on finding one time in July when they were way off.

I just went through the polls for the last several months, and the USA Today/Gallup poll is not as far off as you would suggest in the vast majority of cases, and in many cases they had Obama higher than other polls, you found one instance to suit your argument.

Is it not significant that on Tuesday of last week, USA Today/Gallup had Obama up by 7, but as now, the same poll has McCain up by 10? That's a 17 point swing on the same poll within just a few days. I generally am not a fan of polls, but I saw a 17 point swing as somewhat significant.

Here's the data from the last round, they were pretty close then. Looks like CNN was way off, though.

CNN 08/29 - 08/31 927 RV 49 48 Obama +1
Hotline/FD 08/29 - 08/31 805 RV 48 39 Obama +9
CBS News 08/29 - 08/31 781 RV 48 40 Obama +8
USAT/Gallup Tracking* 08/30 - 08/31 1835 LV 50 43 Obama +7