Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

FWIW, the point remains the same if you only look at the polls from December - but mind, the samples start getting very narrow if you do that.

If you only look at the December polls, Obama starts doing clearly better than Hillary in these match-up polls, but is still easily outdone by Edwards:

Against Giuliani

Hillary +3.9% (7 polls)
Obama +5.6% (7 polls)
Edwards +3.3% (3 polls)

Against McCain

Hillary -4.7% (3 polls)
Obama 0.0% (3 polls)
Edwards +3.7% (3 polls)

Against Romney

Hillary +6.0% (6 polls)
Obama +10.6% (5 polls)
Edwards +17.0% (2 polls)

Against Huckabee

Hillary +6.0% (6 polls)
Obama +9.3% (6 polls)
Edwards +11.8% (4 polls)

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realjohnboy wrote:

Voting by mail is becoming increasingly popular. I heard a couple of days ago that between 40-50% of votes in both the Repub and Dem primaries in CA will be done by mail. (NPR)
The ballots will be mailed out right after the IA caucuses and the NH primary and must be received back before the CA primaries in early Feb.

One effect of this could be that candidates will have to start actively campaigning in a state well before the primary. By "actively" I mean heavily with perhaps the loss of the luxury of keeping some powder dry until the last week or so.

And the candidates, while in IA or NH, have to be aware that there are people in CA who within a few days will have their ballots on their desks.

To tie this in to the topic of this thread, I wonder, Nimh or Cyclo or whomever, if there is any way to find out (by tally or by polling) how many ballots are returned immediately; or within say 15 days; or right before the date of the primaries. If it is the first case, then IA and NH become even more important because if X did well and Y didn't, the momentum factor spills over into CA very quickly.

Oh, interesting stuff! No, I dont know the answer to that, but it's definitely an interesting point, hadnt thought about that yet.

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Geez, I really have no idea about that. I never thought about it.

I'll look around

Cycloptichorn

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I'm still looking for more... maybe the transcript will come out for what I just saw Matthews say and I can find it there. But I did find this:

Here's a Zogby poll from December 20th -- the day that Obama made the comments you quote -- that shows him beating all possible Republican nominees, while Hillary would only beat Romney or Thompson.

Quote:

Released: December 20, 2007

Zogby Poll: Obama Leads Top Republicans

Telephone survey shows fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards would defeat some GOPers, lose to others

UTICA, New York - Illinois Sen. Barack Obama would defeat all five of the top Republicans in prospective general election contests, performing better than either of his two top rivals, a new Zogby telephone poll shows.

His margins of advantage range from a 4 percent edge over Arizona Sen. John McCain and a 5 percent edge over Arkansas' Mike Huckabee to an 18 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the survey shows. Against New York's Rudy Giuliani he leads by 9%, and against Fred Thompson of Tennessee he holds a 16 point edge.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1404

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This must be it... NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 12-14 through 12-17:

Obama 48%
Huckabee 36%

Obama 49%
Giuliani 40%

Clinton 46%
Giuliani 43%

Clinton 46%
Huckabee 44%

Found it here:

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08gen.htm

More about it here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22327166/

Summary of pertinent part:

Quote:

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Wait, that's not all.

Continuing with Polling Report:

USA Today/Gallup Poll. Dec. 14-16, 2007

Obama 51%
Giuliani 45%

Obama 53%
Huckabee 42%

Obama 57%
Romney 39%

Clinton 49%
Giuliani 48%

Clinton 53%
Huckabee 44%

Clinton 52%
Romney 46%

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08gen.htm

(Last several posts were cross-posted to the Obama '08 thread as well.)

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OK, so a little analysis...

This seems well borne out, rather than "patently wrong":

Quote:

According to recent polls, Obama does much better against the republicans than Hillary does, so her electability point is out the window.

Obama said something more general.

Quote:

right now among all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates I do better in a general election match ups than the other candidates.

Two of the three polls I've referred to don't include Edwards. The third, Zogby -- which was released the day of Obama's comments (note "right now") -- does included Edwards, and Obama does better than Edwards in it.

There is also the aspect that Hillary is running in large part on the electability angle -- known quantity, already vetted, etc. So the fact that Obama does better than her is significant.

Additionally, Edwards is in third place in most measures (with the exception of Iowa, where the big three are virtually tied), and is not the main person Obama is running against for the Democratic nomination.

So I think a third option needs to be added to nimh's choices between characterizing Obama's statement as "misinformed" or "deceitful" (not to mention "wrong.") Perhaps "accurate"?

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sozobe wrote:

So I think a third option needs to be added to nimh's choices between characterizing Obama's statement as "misinformed" or "deceitful" (not to mention "wrong.") Perhaps "accurate"?

I'd go with accurate, yes.

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sozobe wrote:

So I think a third option needs to be added to nimh's choices between characterizing Obama's statement as "misinformed" or "deceitful" (not to mention "wrong.") Perhaps "accurate"?

No.

Look it, individual polls show varying results. Thats why it's never good to go on one or the other poll.

You have come up here with this poll, that poll, such a poll that lines up with what Obama said. Of course I know about the Zogby poll, et cetera.

But look it: what I did was to aggregate ALL such polls that came out since 1 November; and then again, in case some more recent development plays a role, ALL such polls that appeared in December.

I gave the data on how many such polls have been done for all three frontrunning candidates in those time frames; and I gave what the AVERAGE of those polls are.

The TOTAL of recent polls show Obama's assertion to be flat out wrong, whether you look only at the last three weeks, when on average he did better than Hillary but worse than Edwards, or at the last month and a half, when he did equal as Hillary, and worse than Edwards.

OK, so what do you want to go on? A couple of individual polls that confirm your preference, or an aggregate average of ALL such polls, in two given recent timeframes? Which do you think is more reliable?

Surely the Obama campaign has someone who is able to track the polls and calculate the averages, so their candidate doesnt go out making some false claim on the basis of cherrypicked polls? And if it does, why did he do exactly that anyway?

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Three weeks is an eternity in this race.

He said "right now."

You can parse it about averaging etc., but I really think it's too far to call what he said (or what the supporter said) "deceitful" OR "misinformed."

That's three different polls -- as far as I can tell, 3 out of the 4 most recent polls, with the outlier being Fox -- that say variations of the same thing. Obama does better than Hillary in general election match-ups. That means nothing?

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sozobe wrote:

That's three different polls -- as far as I can tell, 3 out of the 4 most recent polls, with the outlier being Fox -- that say variations of the same thing. Obama does better than Hillary in general election match-ups. That means nothing?

Oh come on. He didnt say that he did better than Hillary, he said that he did the best among all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates. That includes Edwards. The polls you brought in defense include exactly ONE poll that has the numbers for Obama and Edwards - and it's Zogby, of all pollsters.

You think that's OK, to claim you do better than your rivals in the polls on the basis of exactly one recent poll showing you do better than your one of the two rivals targeted here?

It's cheap, and yes, it's misleading.

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I'll go ahead and average them, with the Fox one included -- that's 4 recent polls, all published in a span of days before Obama's remarks.

AVERAGES (four polls; Zogby, FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, and USA Today/Gallup Poll. )

Obama 49.3 avg (3 polls)
Giuliani 41.3 avg (3 polls)

Obama 55 avg (2 polls)
Romney 37 avg (2 polls)

Obama 48 avg (4 polls)
Huckabee 38.75 avg (4 polls)

Obama 43.5 avg (2 polls)
McCain 43.5 avg (2 polls)

Clinton 45.6 avg (3 polls)
Giuliani 45.6 avg (3 polls)

Clinton 49 avg (2 polls)
Romney 45 avg (2 polls)

Clinton 47.25 avg (4 polls)
Huckabee 43.5 avg (4 polls)

Clinton 42 avg (2 polls)
McCain 48 avg (2 polls)

Averaging them, Obama still does better than Hillary.

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Not buying it, sorry. It seems like a reasonable thing to say, given that spate of polls.

Are you still standing by this, too?

nimh wrote:

His argument already is made often by his supporters; here's a random example from the comments to a Marc Ambinder blog thread I was just reading:

Quote:
According to recent polls, Obama does much better against the republicans than Hillary does, so her electability point is out the window.

For the record: this is simply not true.

According to recent polls, that seems to be exactly the case.

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I mean, let's go back to the data here.

There's been three recent polls that included both Obama and Edwards in the match-ups: Rasmussen (on different dates between 2 December and 11 December), CNN (on 9 December) and Zogby (on 14 December).

Note: the "three weeks is forever" argument doesnt count here; all three polls were done around the same time.

Here's how Obama and Edwards did in comparison:

Code:



       Rasmussen   CNN    Zogby 

   



Versus Giuliani



Edwards    0        9       1

Obama      0        7       9



Balance    0        2      -8    -> Obama better by 6





Versus McCain				



Edwards             8      -4

Obama               0       4



Balance             8      -8    -> Obama and Edwards equal





Versus Huckabee		



Edwards    4       25       6

Obama      4       15       5



Balance    0       10       1    -> Edwards better by 11

				



Versus Romney				



Edwards            22      12

Obama      4       13      18



Balance             9      -6    -> Edwards better by 3





Versus Thompson

				

Edwards                    16

Obama                      16



Balance                     0    -> Obama and Edwards equal

Now compare again::

Above: Obama better by 6; Obama and Edwards equal; Edwards better by 11; Edwards better by 3; Obama and Edwards equal.
Obama: "right now among all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates I do better in a general election match ups than the other candidates."

Obama is wrong if you look at the last three polls in which both he and Edwards appeared.

Obama is wrong if you look at the average of all polls this month.

Obama is wrong if you look at the average of all polls since 1 November.

Obama is right if you look at the last Zogby poll.

Your call.

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Cross-posted... Obama seems to be right if you look at the average of the four most recent polls before he made his comments.

Does anyone doubt that the person he's gunning for is Hillary? That those comments are directed at her supposed electability as compared to his?

He could have said, "It really looks like I'm doing better than Hillary -- bunch of recent polls about that -- but it's just one poll where I do better than Edwards" but is that realistic? "Right now."

Still seems like "deceitful", "misinformed," and "wrong" (oh and "cheap" is the latest) are all still way too strong for what happened.

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sozobe wrote:

Three weeks is an eternity in this race.

First, on a sidenote, this is nonsense in this specific case - and not just because that one single poll that showed Obama doing better than Edwards (Zogby's) itself is from one and a half weeks ago, and two concurrent polls showed the opposite.

We're not talking about Iowa and NH here, where people are playing close attention and the numbers are changing rapidly. We're talking national polls, which are still very stable in the absence of all too close voter attention. E.g.: at Nov 1, the pollster.com trendline had Hillary at 44%, Obama at 22%, and Edwards at 12%. At Dec 1, it had Hillary at 44%, Obama at 23%, and Edwards at 12%. And now it has Hillary at 44%, Obama at 25%, and Edwards at 13%.

We're not talking some drastically changed race here; the national numbers have hardly budged at all. There's no reason beyond mere projection to see one pollster's divergent finding that Obama does better than Edwards in match-ups as evidence of some new political reality rather than just statistical noise.

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sozobe wrote:

Are you still standing by this, too?

nimh wrote:
"According to recent polls, Obama does much better against the republicans than Hillary does, so her electability point is out the window."
For the record: this is simply not true.

Sozobe, did you actually read this post of mine at all? The second of the two I posted on this subject, before you wrote any of your responses?

I wrote:

nimh wrote:

FWIW, the point remains the same if you only look at the polls from December - but mind, the samples start getting very narrow if you do that.

If you only look at the December polls, Obama starts doing clearly better than Hillary in these match-up polls, but is still easily outdone by Edwards.

And then I did the averages.

So now, two pages and eight posts later, you find yourself at the same conclusion. If you only look at the polls from this month, Obama does do better than Hillary; but he still does worse than Edwards. Which would still make his statement that he does better "in recent polls" than "all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates" flat-out wrong.

Now, if I understand you correctly, you suggest two defenses for Obama.

____________________________________________________

Your defense #1: Taking all December polls is not recent enough, and Obama did say "in recent polls". And look, he did do better than Edwards in that last Zogby poll; so what should he have said?

Sozobe wrote:

He could have said, "It really looks like I'm doing better than Hillary -- bunch of recent polls about that -- but it's just one poll where I do better than Edwards" but is that realistic? "Right now."

But you miss or ignore the basics here, which I posted right above. There were three polls around the same time that included both Obama and Edwards.

Zogby polled on 14 Dec. CNN polled on 9 Dec. Rasmussen rolled out its polling of the various Obama and Edwards match-ups on 1/2, 5/6, 10/11, and 12/13 Dec. Those from 12/13 Dec. I forgot to include in my table, by the way: they show Edwards beating Huckabee by 12 points, against both Edwards and Obama beating him by just 4 points on 1-2 December.

Three sets of concurrent results. One of those (Zogby's) showed Obama doing better. But in the same week, CNN showed Edwards doing better (the graphs of which were posted on your own Obama thread by Thomas). Rasmussen showed them both doing around equally well.

So even just taking into account the very last polls, Obama's statement that he does better "in recent polls" than "all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates" is just plain wrong. Cherrypicking one poll from three concurrent ones because it's the only one that proves your point is, yes, misinformed at best or deceitful at worst.

And so you would agree, too, if any other candidate were concerned.

And again, if you include a little bit more than just the very last three polls out (and read up on pollster.com about why not doing so leads to irresponsible rhetorics), Edwards actually does better - as he has done fairly consistently. Which makes Obama's claim all the lamer, in context.

____________________________________________________

Your defense #2: Paraphrasing: well, Edwards isnt relevant, everyone knows that he didnt mean Edwards.

Sozobe wrote:

Does anyone doubt that the person he's gunning for is Hillary? That those comments are directed at her supposed electability as compared to his?

This is just lame. If a major candidate claims, quote, "among all Democratic nominees or Democratic candidates I do better .. than the other candidates", when one of his two main rivals does no worse than him if not better, that's just lying.

I mean, Obama and Edwards are running very close in Iowa, where Edwards still has a good shot at victory; we're not talking Bill Richardson here.

He stiffed Edwards on this. And if Hillary had done something like this, you would have been all disapproving of it too, instead of excusing it.

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OK, you seem to answer here the question I had on the other thread.

Will have to come back to the other stuff later.

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nimh wrote:

Rasmussen rolled out its polling of the various Obama and Edwards match-ups on 1/2, 5/6, 10/11, and 12/13 Dec. Those from 12/13 Dec. I forgot to include in my table, by the way: they show Edwards beating Huckabee by 12 points, against both Edwards and Obama beating him by just 4 points on 1-2 December.

Like I just mentioned, I forgot to include the extra poll Rasmussen did on 12-13 December in my table. It was more good news for Edwards.

Here's an updated table:

Code:

            Rasmussen     Rasmussen      CNN    Zogby    

           12/2 & 12/6   12/11 & 12/13   12/9   12/14



Versus Giuliani



Edwards         0                          9      1

Obama                          0           7      9





Versus McCain				



Edwards                        7           8     -4

Obama                                      0      4





Versus Huckabee		



Edwards         4             12          25      6

Obama           4                         15      5





Versus Romney				



Edwards                                   22     12

Obama           4                         13     18





Versus Thompson

				

Edwards                                          16

Obama                                            16

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Away from the whole debate between Soz and me, there should be one important and eye-catching observation about the table above. It's the sheer variation between the numbers involved.

In light of that, I owe the lessons from Fbaezer and the pollster.com bloggers this additional, relativating, post.

The variation is huge, both when you compare the data for each race from polls that different pollsters did at the same time, and when you compare the data from successive polls by the same pollster.

The background is complex. There is random statistical variation. There is the usual role of "house effects", especially the differences in how pollsters assess and weight for who are "likely voters".

But aside from these two standard explanations, there are two more.

One explanation is that these are numbers for the margin between two candidates. That means the variation automatically doubles. For example: if one candidate polls 44% and the other 50%, the margin is 6. If each of those candidates wins or loses just one percentage point, the margin could increase or decrease by 2.

Now take into account that the margin of error is usually something like 3%. That means that each candidate might in fact be 3% higher or lower, just as a matter of course regarding statistical variation. So when the candidates poll in at 44% and 50%, they might in fact respectively be at 41-47% and 47-53%. Which means that the margin between them could in fact be anywhere between 0% and 12%! The inherent volatility is much greater than with one candidate's polling numbers.

The other explanation has to do with the volatility inherent in asking people to choose between hypothetical opponents. Republicans right now are focused on their primary; Democrats on theirs. Interest in, and knowledge of, the other side's candidates is relatively limited. When focused with a whole bewildering series of possible match-ups, rather than with just the one clear choice they'll be faced with once each party's nominee is established, the answers respondents give become more of a crap shoot.

So, beyond all the quibbling we had here right now, there's an underlying lesson. Of all the polls you get out there now, these match-up polls are perhaps the one you have to take with the biggest grain of salt of all. Which means that with these polls even more than with any other ones, it's madness to go on just the one, two or three polls.

The only really reliable things you can conclude, when looking at the longer timeframe over which the campaign has unfolded, are basically that:

Up till the summer, Edwards and Obama were doing significantly better than Hillary.
Ever since, the differences between how the three fare are marginal. That is to say, the differences that occur for each from poll to poll are often bigger than the differences between how each candidate fares within one. That makes trying to define which one does best fairly arbitrary.
When looking at how the Democrats match up against the various Republicans, there is a clear pattern:

- Giuliani for a long time did best. He was the only Republican who regularly beat the Democrats in these match-ups at least until July; after that at least he did least badly.

- In the last month or so, Giuliani's performance has been dropping further, while McCain's seem to have improved somewhat, though it's still hard to tell until there are more polls.

- Both are doing much better than Romney and Thompson, who fare very badly in match-ups against any of the three Democratic frontrunners.

- Huckabee's numbers are in flux; he started at Romney-like levels, but has since picked up, in some polls to Giuliani-like levels. Hard to say much until more polls appear.

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