HappySqurriel said:
MontanaHatchet said:
HappySqurriel said:
I'm not so sure you can say that Obama is almost certain to win at the moment ... at the moment, the margin of error of most polls still has John McCain winning and (as it has been pointed out many times) there are reasons to believe that Obama may suffer worse from people saying they will vote for him (in polls) and then voting for his opponent than McCain will.
Right now I would say that it is more likely that Obama would win if the vote was tomorow but, with a month left and only really having to get 1% to 2% of voters in a couple of battleground states to switch their vote, McCain could still win this election.
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I have to wonder where that logic was when McCain was leading in dozens of polls. Are people scared of being judged by a random pollster? If someone asks you who you'd vote for over the phone and you respond with a candidate they don't like, will they track you down and kill you? I'm not entirely sure of how these polls are conducted, so I wouldn't know. As for the battleground states, McCain would have to win nearly all of them to beat Obama in electoral votes. I'm sure McCain "could" win the election, just like I said it was "almost" certain. It would be pretty difficult for him at this point.
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I really don't know what the deep psychological reasoning that professionals would give you ...
Human beings are hardwired for social interaction, and it has been demonstrated that the same portion of your brain that responds to physical pain responds to social rejection. Most people will have faced social rejection a similar number of times as they have faced physical pain, and they would (probably) have produced defence mechanisms to protect them from being rejected. If an individual fears that there is a possibility of being rejected by the pollster if they said "I plan to vote for McCain" their defence mechanism may kick in and they might respond "I'm voting for Obama" or "I haven't decided yet".
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Hmm, I guess it's pretty subtle then. This could be equally true of Obama supporters, though. If you're an Obama supporter in a big red state (Texas for example) you would probably be ashamed to admit it, even to a pollster. But the only real way there would be more people that would be scared of saying McCain is if Obama was more popular in the first place.
