If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

Note the military vote thing in this poll. AP story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website:

nimh...good evening, and thanks for your continuing interest in our election process.

I'm having a little trouble with your posting @ 3:49 pm (my time) from Quinnipiac University. I have never heard of them before. I clicked on their website and there was a lot of stuff but I'm a bit dubious...
I am a veteran and anti-Bush but I seriously doubt that he is losing the military vote as badly as that supposed poll suggests. I smell a rat. -rjb-

Oh the Quinnipiac polls are reputed enough, and their numbers generally end up somewhere pretty much in the middle of those of the other polls - I've never detected a bias, neither in their Bush approval rates nor in their national Bush vs Kerry numbers.

But of course, to isolate a specific section of voters like the military or vets, within a state poll, might make the subsample really quite small, and thus the margin of error quite high, so some caution is due for sure.

Then again, two earlier polls from after the Convention had Kerry doing much better than one might have expected among vets - the CBS poll even had him leading Bush among them. So who knows?

Realjohnboy:

The newspapers have been publishing Quinnipiac College polls for years, on a variety of subjects. I've never found them to be the most accurate, or the worst either.

Another small college that puts out polls that are respected is Marist College, a small Catholic school just up the Hudson from New York.

One thing that should be mentioned, to reinforce Nimh, is that state polls can be very volatile. They can go up and down several points in a matter of days. Every time the group of people you study gets smaller-like going froma national survey to a state survey-the chances for the opinion to swing from one side to the other goes up.

I remember reading about Michigan, a big state, a couple of elections ago. The same poll showed a swing of some five points from one day to the next. It's crazy, I know, but the smaller the group you study, the more the results swing back and forth quickly.

Realjohnboy:

Since you are a veteran who is anti-Bush, may I ask you a question? Have the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, the anti-Kerry veterans, affected your thinking one way or or the other?

I have begun to lean toward the notion that the anti-Kerry Swift boat vets might really hurt the Republican cause. But I would like to hear from an anti-Bush vet on the issue.

A state poll doesnt necessarily have fewer respondents than a national poll though. I mean, if its an actual state poll, rather than, say, the numbers from a certain state or group of states from within a national poll, but I dont think you ever see that. And if the state poll doesnt poll fewer people than a national poll, it should be just as stable or reliable, I didnt mean to imply otherwise. If there is a huge difference from a Michigan poll one day to a Michigan poll the next, it's probably because they were from different polling agencies with methodologies that worked out very differently. Just like the different national polls often differ greatly from each other.

What is always a problem though is working with subsamples. Say, a poll asks 700 or 1,000 respondents, from across the country or just from the one state. The write-up then specifies, "among Hispanics the numbers for Bush were even worse", or whatever. Then realise that said conclusion is based on the subsample of Hispanics among those 700 or 1,000, ie perhaps 100 people. Same if you isolate any given age group, or for example military families. Such subset-info can be very interesting, but considering the smaller numbers they're based on, are also quite relative and volatile. If they say, this poll shows Bush doing quite badly among elderly, blind Hispanic vets, dont take it all too seriously.

Thank you nimh & kelticwizard for confirming the legitimacy of Quinnipiac College and its polling. I admit my ignorance; I had never heard of that school before. I apologize to any friends/alum of that institution.
I remember quite a bit of the statistics classes I took. You explained it well, nimh.

Re the question you asked me, kelticwizard, here are some very quick thoughts re Kerry in VN. Short answers (as brief as rjb can be), trying to stay faithful to the topic of the thread:
1) I am a dyed-in-the wool liberal Dem;
2) I was graduated from college 6/68 and enlisted in the Army...I would have been drafted;
3) Many of my friends from college and high school avoided the draft. Most of my HS football team ended up with doctors' certificates citing bad knees (=4F) or they managed to find slots in the National Guard. Those positions didn't just go to rich, white guys like Mr Bush. They also went to the sons of influential people in every community in the US: politicians, businesspeople, journalists, union leaders.
Hang on, I'm getting to Kerry. Trust me.
4) So I was in VN from 4/69 - 6/70 with a combat engineer battalion; part of the 101st Airborne Div.
I was the company clerk. Not the most dangerous job compared to the other guys (who, because of para 3 above were disproportionately black, Hispanic or poor whites).

One day I was in a four-man chopper with the pilot, my boss (1st Sgt) and his boss (Sgt Major), watching some work being done on the ground by my friends. They started to take some sniper fire so we flew around for a bit shooting our M-16's into the general vicinity of the source of the activity until the Cobras could come in with big guns. And they were shooting back at us. Have you ever been shot at? It was very surreal.

5) The next day I typed up recommendations for medals for my boss and his boss and submitted them up through the paper channel. Medals in VN were handed out like candy. particularly to career soldiers or others who wanted something special on their resumes.

Did Kerry really deserve all of the medals he got? I doubt it given what I've said above. But he didn't give them to himself; they were all approved by someone higher up and the Swift Boat ad people probably got their share of the candy.

Does it matter? Probably not. As nimh noted, you get a group (veterans) and then a sub-group (VN era) and then a sub-sub-group (Hispanic VN vets)...

Sorry for the long post. Back to our regularly scheduled topic. Thanks for reading this -rjb

Valuable perspective, thanks rjb.

Bored with the medal stuff.
I'm voting for Bush. Never mind why. I have a few medals from Viet Nam. I was with an infantry platoon in the Marines and I consider them little more than souveigners or punctuation marks. I know they mean a great deal more to other people both military as well as civilians. I just don't put too much value upon them other than it was thoughtful of people to think enough of me to award them to me. I am thankful for this.

I am currently a volunteer supporting a Republican in his endeavors to become the new Mayor of this city in November. Wouldn't you know, up pops this neo-vet group all laden with heroes against John Kerry and what they have deemed his dubious medals and the action he saw. They want us to know they are the real, full-blown, gung-ho, bonafide medal wearing heroes unlike Kerry. No, they will have you believe that they REALLY rate their medals and as an extra benefit even though this is simply a non-partisan mayoral race they are going to do us a favor by blowing their horns in our action. Nice of them.

I am not about to fill out some stupid form that one of these guys created providing them with a brief SRB of what I did, where I was, what action I saw and what medals I have. It is simply none of their business.

If they are happy to be fodder for this nonsense let them. I wish they wouldn't though. I have some friends that feel more patriotic, evidentally, by challenging somebody elses medals.

This baloney will be over with on November 3rd.

Thanks Jack - another valuable perspective. And welcome to A2K.

Mr Webb: Wecome to A2k. Um, what's an SRB?
Thanks, rjb

Sorry to usurp this topic, nimh. Let's get back to the polls and the pretty charts. I'm looking forward to your tracking what happens as we get close to and into the Repub convention.

As usurpations go (usurpations? whatever), this one is uncommonly interesting. (That's directed to both rjb and Mr. Webb.)

Yes it was. Don't hesitate to expound ...

Meanwhile, the CBS poll out today (or yesterday?) does not look good for Kerry.

In the two-way match-up, Kerry's lead is down to 3 points, 47 to 44. For a CBS poll thats not good; two and a half weeks ago, it was 49 to 43, in early and mid-July, 49 to 44, in late May, 50 to 40. The silver lining is that the flux is purely in Kerry's numbers; Bush's have hit a 44% ceiling since mid-March.

Moreover though, the same poll had Bush's job approval at 46%, while 45% disapproved; the first net positive since late March.

Also from that CBS poll, as MSNBC reports ...


The attack ads are working ...

Meanwhile, off-topic but a baffling statistic nevertheless ...

Of course they are that's why the FEC filing today to influence the weekends news cast away from the Swifties charges.

Ehhhhhhhh...

Kerry up 50-41 in Ohio. Latest Gallup.

Ohio is one of the states where the Swift boat liars have been running the most ads.

People simply aren't going back and forth from Bush to Kerry (IMHO). They are going from one candidate to undecided and venturing out from there.

And the point is clear that political advertising ought to tell at least as much truth as a detergent ad.

Can I take credit for the Ohio thing?

See, everyone I talk to says "wow, she makes so much SENSE!" and they like instantly switch to Kerry! I'm tellin' ya!

[surveys audience, notices they aren't buying it]

Wont it just focus more attention on them? I mean, I'm all with Kerry on this one, but I dont quite see why they choose to make a hullaballoo about it - wont that just fan the flames, attract more airtime for the charges, etc?


Huh, thats a weird poll. Unlike any other Ohio poll in the last five months, according to the list you linked in, and two near-simultaneous polls have Kerry leads of 2% and 3% - one of which by ARG, which tends to poll pretty favourably for Kerry.

For all its stature, Gallup has come up with some volatile polling results lately - just compare its recent Bush lead in the national poll that was some 10% out of sync with all the other polls in the same timeframe. Trippy.

It will in a way now that you mention it.

Kerry will be the best advertisement the Swifties could have gotten.

Oh, ah, Soz! Hadnt seen your post there. Uh, yeah, absolutely - the Gallup poll is uncontestable proof of your campaiging prowess and overall persuasiveness, common sense and charm! ;-)