noise convert

Anyone who checks pollster, fivethirtyeight and realclearpolitics a minimum of 15 times a day will have heard a lot of talk about "sampling noise" over the last week or so. The concept is that, shockingly enough, random samples of several hundred of people or so may show slight differences that do not actually reflect any national trend. As this idea is primarily invoked to dispute the notion that Obama's lead is in the polls is shrinking, my immediate reaction to any references to such "noise" is something along the lines of "SHIT, the lead IS narrowing and the liberally bent websites like pollster and fivethirtyeight are trying to deny the reality of the imminent doom the impending election will bring when McCain some how manages not only to hold on to all the Republican states, but also miraculous to win Pennsylvania!" However, after yesterday's panic (spurred primarily by the Rasmussen poll shrinking to 3 points, the closest it's been in over a month), the polls seem to have returned more or less to normal. Obama's back to leading McCain 51-46 in Rasmussen, bringing it back to the range where it's been for the past 35 days or so. Zogby shows Obama ahead by 7 (50-43), up from their 5 point margin yesterday. his lead in the traditional voters model on Gallup is also back up to 5 points (50-45).

The fact that Rasmussen shows Obama's lead returning to a 5-6 point margin is particularly relieving. They are one of the more reputed pollsters, they use the largest sample size, have had the least fluctuations and Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight considers them to be one of the best (certainly the most reliable daily tracker), which surely has some effect on my opinions. Moreover, Rasmussen remains the only site I have visited recently (perhaps ever) that regularly displays McCain/Palin advertisements, giving me a strange sense of confidence in the accuracy of reports I read of Obama gaining or holding steady in the polls. So, in conclusion, I am beginning to have some degree of confidence in this whole noise theory and will try, in future posts, not to react in sheer panic to slight day-to-day changes which occur only in some portion of the polls.

thank you, rasmussen

Obama's up 54-44 in New Mexico.

Obama's lead in the national polls is shrinking - will the state polls follow? Also, why is no one polling New Mexico?

Much as I am loathe to say it, with Obama ahead by a scant 3% in Rasmussen's national poll today (the closest McCain has come to the Democratic candidate in over a month), the national lead may in fact to be shrinking (although the Zogby poll shows Obama's margin up a point . The state polls, however, seem to paint a much rosier picture (which is perhaps the primary reason why I am not having an epileptic fit at the moment). Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado have all had at least two polls come out in the last two days showing Obama up by 7 points or more. A recent Nevada poll by the Associated Press shows Obama up by an unprecedented 12 points and one by Suffolk shows him up by 10 (although the Rasmussen only has him up by 4). Given the fact that Obama needs only to win one of these states if he holds on to Pennsylvania and New Mexico (which looks fairly likely at this point), although he would be left with a dreaded 269-269 tie (which would be decided in his favor by the Democrat-led House) if he picked up just Nevada, things are not looking so bad. Furthermore, despite the claims that "no really guys, Pennsylvania is SUPER close, I promise" by conservatives and liberals alike, five of the last eight polls released show Obama up by 12 points or more (the other two have him ahead by 9). Rasmussen alone has him up by a modest 7 points (53-47), but notes that almost all of the tightening in the race is due to increased support for McCain rather than declining backing of Obama (and the 53% majority clearly surpasses Mr. Greener's over 50 threshold in order to secure an Obama victory); perhaps all those undecideds are merely breaking for the white guy a bit early. New Hampshire, despite McCain's declaration of love last week, was shown to be favoring Obama to the tune of 18 to 25 percentage points in the two latest polls (margins closer to those in the traditionally liberal bastions of Massachusetts and California than to those in your average swing state).

But the question remains: are the state polls going to follow the national ones? Probably not. Or, at least not in Ohio, Florida or Pennsylvania. The reason state polls tend to be slow on picking up national trends is because they are (typically) taken less frequently than the national ones. As the election nears, the poor voters in OH, FL and PA are probably being asked about their presidential preferences nearly as often as voters on the national level (these should be at most a day behind, since the polls released from those states reflect people who were polled as recently as Monday, versus yesterday for the national polls) . The places where we should be more concerned are the less traditional swing states, such as Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and Missouri where polls reflect voter preferences from around two days prior to the most recent national polls. And then there might be some real surprises, such as North Dakota and New Mexico, neither of which has data more reflecting opinions more recent than October 15th. North Dakota, I admit, I somewhat understand, who would have thought that a state whose major population trends are an increasing elderly population paired with a high level of out-migration of young people (although there has also been some consolidation of population in cities) which hasn't voted for a Democrat since LBJ trounced Goldwater in 1964 would be in play? The lack of polling in New Mexico, on the other hand, seems a bit bizarre (especially considering that it has a history of being a competitive state in recent years). Although New Mexico has trended toward Obama since every poll since mid-September and all but three since last February, a lot has change in the past two weeks. I'd like to see some polls reassurance that the October 13th Rasmussen poll indicating a 13-point Obama lead is part of a continuing trend.

the al qaeda candidate

So, I was fairly shocked to hear that Al Qaeda was endorsing John McCain for president. Naturally, this is excellent news for Obama (Barack gets Powell endorsement; McCain gets that of the most hated group in the country, not to mention the fact that it undermines his "tough stance" on the terror issue). I wasn't surprised because i don't think Al Qaeda would clearly benefit from his presidential policy with an influx of new recruits due to the continued war hawk policies of the Bush presidency (they almost certainly would), but rather because i thought they were a heck of a lot cleverer than that. After all, in 2004, the Osama Bin Laden endorsement video may have lost Kerry the election (it clearly didn't help). At the time, I assumed this was a rather brilliant move on the part of Bin Laden to ensure that Bush would get reelected; the man's no idiot, he knows his support of a the automatically weak-on-terror Democrat would be potentially crushing to the campaign, resulting in the reelection of W. and the continuation of war hawk policies that drive alienated and disenfranchised Arab and North African youth further into the arms of Islamist militant groups. so, what does it mean that Al Qaeda endorses John McCain? Are they secretly pushing for an Obama victory (which, according to at least some in this country, would lead to some sort socialist Islamist state) or are they genuinely hoping for a McCain presidency? I would probably say the latter (and only partially because I'm a leftist pinko from an anti-American part of the country). While the Osama Bin Laden tape was widely released, this endorsement was listed only on a password protected website. Clearly, some dissemination must have been intended (otherwise why post it at all?), but had they wanted to have the same effect on the American population at large, they obviously could have staged something more dramatic (and may still, for all I know, but let's certainly hope that they won't).

Are all those "undecideds" really closeted McCainites?

We were all wondering who they were (God knows, I was), those undecided voters, and Bill Greener gives us an interesting, if infuriating, answer in his article today in Salon. He suggests that they are all going to vote for McCain. Further, he declares, unless Obama is attracting at least 50% of the vote in key swing states, he is likely to lose them because all the undecideds are white racists who are unwilling to admit that they're actually voting for McCain (I think he phrases it more along the lines of how undecideds "trend" toward the white candidate, but be that as it may); he cites two gubernatorial and two senatorial races where two non-incumbents (one black, one white) were running against each other in 2006. The problem, of course, with his argument is that much of it isn't exactly true. First of all, Greener cites a single poll in two of the cases (he refers only to a single Survey USA taken the day before the election when discussing the Ken Blackwell-Ted Strickland gubernatorial race and again with the Harold Ford vs. Bob Corker senatorial race) as opposed to referring to any sort of general trend in the polls. Furthermore, Greener's claim that "as of this writing, Barack Obama is not polling consistently above 50 percent in a number of electoral-vote-rich swing states, including Ohio and Florida" is misleading at best. Four of the last six polls in Ohio show Obama receiving between 50 and 53% of the vote (the remaining two show him at 49%). The polls in Florida are much tighter and less conclusive, but also potentially irrelevant (as are those in Ohio). Obama has been doing so well in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia, where all but one of the last seven polls show Obama receiving between 51 and 54% of the vote that he doesn't actually have to win either Ohio or Florida to carry the election. Nate Silver also gives an excellent rebuke of Greener's argument here.

Undoubtedly the Democrats could still blow this election, but I doubt that it will be because of flocks of undecided voters secretly fall asleep musing dreamily about the prospect of McCain and Palin in the White House.

Assassination attempt envy?

In more frightening news, two skinheads are now being held by the Feds on charges of plotting to go a national killing spree in which they would murder 88 black people (14 by decapitation), culminating in an assassination attempt on Barack Obama. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist movement, 88 standing for Heil Hitler (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet) and 14 as representing an influential white supremacist mantra: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The Obama campaign has yet to comment on the development, but the big question is how the McCain camp may react. After Ashley Todd's attempt to link Obama supporters with racial/political violence and McCain's claim that he has heard himself be called a terrorist at Obama rallies (really, John? Which rallies were these, exactly?), I can only imagine what kind of story may be concocted about anattempt to murder John McCain, undoubtedly involving some militant anti-American black power movement led by Reverend Wright or perhaps a resurrected Weathermen movement headed by Ayers.

Wait, seriously? Pollsters don't call cell phone users?

So... just when I had almost been convinced that Obama's lead in the polls was not merely some figment of our collective liberal imagination, and that we might in fact be headed not only toward victory, but perhaps toward some sort of colossal land slide (yes, that blue state sandwiched between Ohio and Illinois would be Indianna) where even Arizona is no longer completely safe for McCain, a poll comes out showing Obama ahead in Minnesota by a scant five points in a St. Cloud State University survey. More terrifying still is the fact that the poll shows him ahead 42-37 - is this really suggesting that 21% of Minnesotans are actually undecided or voting for third party candidates? To my relief, the poll appears to have been taken from 10/14 to 10/22 and the two more recent polls by Rasmussen and Big10 Battleground show Obama's lead comfortably into the double digits (with him receiving well over half the vote). However, the most perplexing part of the entire thing remains the fact that 15% of those polled on the St. Cloud survey were cell phone users (apparently no one else has picked up on the fact that most people who graduated high school or college in the post-cell phone era never bothered to get landlines). So, the one poll that actually talks to a representative sample of 18-30 year olds is the one who shows a shrinking lead for Obama? Confusing to say the least (although, evidently the cell phone users polled did strongly prefer Obama). But who knows, maybe McCain will manage to pull in the youth vote after all.

Meanwhile, although Gallup and Rasmussen are finally showing Obama to be pulling even farther ahead in the polls, the Reuters/Zogby/CSPAN poll shows that his lead has shrunk from 10% to 5%. Anyway, my faith in all of these groups has been so severely undermined by their inability to take into account the telephonic preferences of my generation that perhaps I should just start ignoring the polls altogether, the way McCain seems to be doing.

But the most important development for the Obama campaign in this week of surprise endorsements is, of course, the one he received from the New York Times on Thursday. Never saw that one coming (but apparently Obama is only the eight straight Democrat the Times has endorsed for presidency, so you know, must have been a close call).

A startled Ken Adelman throws his support behind Barack Obama

Of all the bizarrely bad things that could have happened to the Republicans today, I think few people saw Ken Adelman's endorsement coming (Adelman, evidently, could hardly believe it himself). Adelman, a lifelong arch-conservative and typical Republican foreign-policy war heavyweight/war hawk (depending on how partisan we want to get here), has been palling around with the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz since he campaigned for Goldwater (although if his effect on the LBJ-Goldwater election is any indication of his political clout, this may in fact be a blessing in disguise for the McCain campaign). Regardless, this is not an endorsement that the right can brush off as merely another "black guy supporting the black guy" or an embittered member of the Bush Administration trying to rectify his legacy. But the kicker, perhaps, is the rationale behind Adelman's support (shockingly enough, does not appear to be due to a wild change of political philosophy after over 40 years as a devoted member of the right-wing faithful). George Packer of the New Yorker reports that, in a series of email correspondences, Adelman cites concerns about McCain's temperment and judgment as the major reasons for his decision to support Obama, despite his broad disagreements with virtually all of Obama's policies. What better way to drive home the Obama campaign's subtle or not-so-subtle tactic of painting McCain as too erratic to lead the nation in crisis.

Despite declarations from some conservative blogs that this endorsement means that the end is nigh for the McCain campaign, I am not nearly so optimistic. Endorsements rarely have much of an impact at all (Oprah's evidently seems to be the exception, but I remain skeptical) and the primary effect of this one may just be to dishearten/enrage the Republican base, or at least create some level of righteous indignation. Moreover, as part of the generation who was weaned on the bitter, bitter defeats (?) of 2000 and 2004, there are few things I believe more strongly in than the Dems ability to blow any election under any circumstances. But here's hoping that Adelman will swing a couple of staunch conservatives in Ohio with reservations about Obama's foreign policy credentials...