gergroy said:
nuckles87 said:
gergroy said:
PDF said:
Obama has this locked up. What will be interesting is if Romney wins the popular vote. |
I don't know, a lot of these polls out there are all within the margin of error. It will come down to voter turnout. I wouldn't say Obama has it locked up, but I would say he is the favorite to win.
|
Margin of error only matters for individual polls. In polling composites, the margin of error is reduced SIGNIFICANTLY. Right now most swing state polls and national polls are moving in Obama's direction. The consensus is that Obama is going to win. So long as the people who say they are likely voters actually vote, of course.
There have been instances when the polling consensus has been off, but the vast majority of the time when most of the polls begin to move in one direction, THOSE are the polls that are right. Not the handful of outliers that see something else.
fivethirtyeight.com is now seeing a 91.5 % chance of an Obama victory come tomorrow. The forecast has been moving in his direction since mid October, and this is by far the highest rating he's ever had on the site, and it's all because of the direction of the polling.
Romney's only real shot is that the polling consensus is simply wrong, and the handful of pollsters showing better numbers for him are correct. Ohio and several other state polls would need to be biased toward Obama by about 3-4% for this to happen.
There is always that chance, of course, which is why Romney still has an 8.5% chance of victory. It would just take the numbers to be wrong by an unprecedented amount.
|
being off by 3-4% is hardly unprecedented
since we are going off of averages, lets look at realclearpolitics 2008 numbers
Colorado
RCP 5.5 Obama Actual 8.5 Obama +3%
Iowa
RCP 15.3 Obama Actual 9.3% Obama -6%
Michigan
RCP 13.5% Obama Actual 16.5% Obama +3%
Nevada
RCP 6.5% Obama Actual 12.4% Obama +5.9%
New Mexico
RCP 7.3% Obama Actual 14.7% Obama +7.4%
Pennsylvania
RCP 7.3% Obama Actual 10.4% Obama +3.1%
That is just from the swing or lean states in 2008 that were off by more than 3%. There is definitely a precedent for these polls being off by 3% or more.
|
Not my point. It would be unprecedented for the vast majority of state and national polls to be pointing in one candidate's direction and BE WRONG. What most of these polls did was just underestimate Obama's margin of victory, which could have been affected by Republicans simply not going out to vote because they were going to lose. The only states that actually flipped in Obama's direction despite the polls were Indiana and North Carolina, where he was behind by less then a percentage point and won by less the one.
