Obama up 8 points

[KrazyHorse]

Either there's been some sort of radical shift in heartland opinions in the last couple of days or both Quinnpiac and Big Ten(whoever they are) are total idiots....or they have a new likely voter (are those LV numbers?) model.

[Ramo]

I suspect that they're using early voting to tweak their LV models. And early voting in the states that keep track of the relevant information does look ridiculously favorable to the Dems...

[KrazyHorse]

I worry about old LV models...but I also worry about using early voting to tweak LV models. Early voters are the most enthusiastic and proactive voters. By measuring the propensity of, say, college students to vote by measuring early voting among college students you may overestimate. Say 20% of college students are really pumped to vote for Obama and so they vote early (and often?). The rest are a bit blase about the whole thing and have the same propensity to vote as historically...now compared to the rest of the population students can have a much higher propensity to vote early, yet still have a lower propensity to vote overall.

I don't know, and I suspect that none of the pollsters do either.

[Guynemer]

Quinnipiac is typically one of the most respected and trusted pollsters, but... wow. No effing way Obama is up 14 here in Ohio.

[KrazyHorse]

It's a likely voter model (Q is) They don't seem to have any numbers on registered voters...

[EPW]

From 538:

AM Polls Show Surprisingly Large Leads for Obama

New polling this morning from the Big Ten polling consortium and Quinnipiac University present a view of what the world might look like if Barack Obama wins in a landslide. The Big Ten polls have Obama ahead by double digits in ten Midwestern states: he leads by 10 in Indiana, 11 in Pennsylvania, 12 in Ohio, 13 in Wisconsin and Iowa, 19 in Minnesota, 22 in Michigan, and 29 in Illinois. Quinnipiac has Obama ahead by 14 points in Ohio, 13 points in Pennsylvania, and 5 points in Florida. The thing to recognize about polls like these is that they may tell us less about the individual states and more about where the particular pollsters are calibrating the horse race. The numbers you see in our current state-by-state projections assume that Obama will ultimately prevail on election day by about 5 points. But what if Obama were to win by 10 or more points instead, where several pollsters now have the race? You'd probably see results which look something like these. So the best way to regard these numbers is in the same way that you might have regarded the Pew poll from earlier this week, which had Obama at a +14 nationally. If you regarded that number as an outlier -- and I wouldn't blame you one bit if you did -- you should probably regard these numbers as outliers too. If you regarded that number not so much as an outlier but as a best-case scenario -- and that's how I tend to regard it -- you should probably regard these numbers as a best-case scenario also. With that said, the trendlines in these polls are interesting. Quinnipiac has had a slight (1-2 point) Democratic lean this election cycle, but only in the last month or so have they started to produce some of these "shock and awe" numbers for Obama. And when the first round of Big Ten polling was conducted in mid-September, it had not been particularly favorable to Obama.

[Zenn-La]

Dang.

[Arrian]

Using early voting results for a likely voter model seems silly to me. The early voters are likely to be energized Dems. The far less energized Reps will still vote, but will mostly vote on 11/4. Imran excepted, of course.

-Arrian

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Arrian
Using early voting results for a likely voter model seems silly to me. The early voters are likely to be energized Dems. The far less energized Reps will still vote, but will mostly vote on 11/4. Imran excepted, of course.

-Arrian

It's silly, but no more silly than assuming that because young people and blacks tended to vote less than others it means that they will vote less this time around.

In other words, we don't know how the Obama candidacy will affect voter turnout among Democrats. Anybody who tells you that he knows is a liar (or needs to present some compelling evidence).

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Quinnipiac is typically one of the most respected and trusted pollsters, but... wow. No effing way Obama is up 14 here in Ohio.

You are way too pessimistic sometimes.

[Guynemer]

Pessimism and realism have been equivalent when it comes to national politics over the last several years, MrFun.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Guynemer
Pessimism and realism are equivalent.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Punishing people via trade is overrated. Drop all trade barriers unilaterally...

QFT.

[Lancer]

http://news.aol.com/elections/article/new-ap-poll-shows-roughly-even-race/197375?icid=100214839x1212016683x1200728573

Presidential Race Tightens, AP Poll Says
By LIZ SIDOTI, AP
posted: 6 HOURS 9 MINUTES AGOcomments: 12185filed under: Election News, Barack Obama, John McCainPrintShareText SizeAAAWASHINGTON (Oct. 22) - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.
The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.

[Zkribbler]

Drop all trade barriers unilaterally...

Give us your toys, covered in lead paint! Give us your anti-freeze toothpaste! Give us your products made by enslaved children!

We only care about the price tag!