About the close national polls between Obama and Romney

[MariaM83]

I was locked out of an earlier thread so was not able to respond to several questions.
(The thread was http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1417601 )

The point I was trying to make is that in many of the national polls over the past couple of weeks, such as in polls listed at the RealClearPolitics website, Obama and Romney are still nearly statistically tied. Many people do not interpret the margin of error correctly and are misled into thinking that one candidate's lead in a given poll is statistically significant when it actually isn't.

This DailyKos article provides an explanation of just how that works:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/04/1127559/-Why-The-Margin-of-Error-is-Important-in-Understanding-Political-Polls

Another explanation is provided under the section called "Keep Your Eye on What is Being Estimated" here:
http://www.whatisasurvey.info/chapters/chapter10.htm

At least one poster noted that there is a huge list of polls now that all give the edge to Obama, and I did want to acknowledge that if all of those polls were combined into one giant poll (a meta-analysis), there'd probably be a fair chance that Obama's lead would prove to be statistically significant. (However, I don't know that anyone has actually done that analysis, so it's speculation.)

Also, several posters noted that elections are based on electoral college votes, not national popular votes, and they provided links to the 538blog and ElectoralVote blog. I acknowledged in a later post in the thread that those were persuasive arguments.

I was just trying to make the point that it's important that Democratic supporters actually get out to vote in overwhelming numbers so that any attempts by the opposition to interfere with the lawful election process will be completely thwarted.


Finally, as a new poster, I was unaware that what I had said in one of my posts in that other thread would be viewed as disruptive.

Someone had said that since no Republican had ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, Obama is a shoe-in to win because he is leading strongly in Ohio, and other swing-states. I was trying to reply that historical precedents do not necessarily apply in this election because Obama is facing a kind and degree of hatred from certain members of the electorate (notably the Tea Party crowd) that have not existed in previous elections. I tried to sarcastically describe Obama as many of those opponents are fond of describing him. I think my attempt at sarcasm may have been misunderstood, or if it was not, I accept that I simply made a poor choice in trying to make a point. I certainly do not believe Obama is any of those things, and I never intended to offend anyone here or to be disruptive on the board.

I am sincerely sorry for that post.

[MjolnirTime]

1. Show us the National numbers without the South. It distorts everything when included.

[yardwork]

2. Getting out the vote is important, but the popular vote doesn't count in presidential elections.

U.S. presidents are elected by the Electoral College. That's why so many people responded to your thread that the swing states are what matters.

If the popular vote counted, then President Al Gore would have been sworn into office in 2001.

Read about the Electoral College and how it works here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_States%29

[hifiguy]

3. National polls don't matter

because of the electoral college. Rmoney is probably up hugely in the states where he is up - most of the old Confederacy and a few mountain states. That will skew a national poll. The President is pulling away in the crucial states that turn elections. His electoral vote advantage is significant and growing. The state-by-state polls are the only ones that matter. Nate Silver taught us that.

[renate]

4. I didn't see the earlier thread

Thanks for putting so much thought into this.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Here is the problem

When OPs continue to chide Democrats like children who are completely oblivious to the current electoral environment - and most notably, to do so to on a site where the majority are obviously interested enough and even activist enough to follow the politics and actually take action to ensure elected officials are held accountable and that rights are upheld.

The assumption appears to conclude that Obama For America is basically clueless and the tens of thousands of campaign volunteers and poll watchers are asleep at the wheel.

Finally, when one looks at "polls", one needs to look at the sampling and who is being sampled. It boggles the mind that the RW Rasmussen is suddenly now trumping all other polls to try to paint a picture that doesn't exist outside of the party that yells at empty chairs.

There are several sites that do overall analysis. However "national" polls are meaningless except for getting an overall feel of where things are. But it's the state polls that matter as they are the ones that provide the electoral votes.