I think this is the key phrase: “A *Time *magazine poll of likely Ohio voters last week showed Obama with a 2-to-1 lead, 60 percent to 30 percent, among those who have already voted.”
When the poll was done - last week - a million had voted, favoring Obama 2-1. As of now, a third have voted. Don’t know what the edge is anymore.
EVERYBODY can be questioned on their judgement when a toe-rag like RMN takes the EV of 49 states.
CNN has a poll which shows Romney up by 1 in Florida (and tied if you include third party candidates). The last four polls in Florida show a dead heat, in fact a tiny Obama lead of .25%. And this poll shows Obama up by 6 points among registered voters which means that his ground game has the raw material to pull off a victory. Nate rates Obama only at 38% presumably because of earlier polling and variables like “state fundamentals” but I honestly woudn’t be too surprised if Obama pulls this out of the bag.
Incidentally, Nate Silver will be doing a talk here in Chicago for the Humanities Festival on November 9th. Topic is “Baseball and Politics: The Numbers Don’t Lie”. I’ll be there.
I don’t answer my cellphone if I don’t recognize the number, either, but if a pollster left a message on my voicemail, I would call back. But then, I’m a political junkie and strong Obama supporter. A push poll would only amuse me.
It’s gonna be an Obama blow-out because the polls are easily underestimating the Latino turnout.
Wow, that was fun and easy.
It’s going to be an Obama blowout because Republicans will be staying home to watch the Finding Bigfoot marathon on Animal Planet.
Wow, this IS fun! Now I totally get why keep OMG & Adaher (et al) keep posting around here. It’s a good time.
So wrong. It’s the Ancient Aliens marathon that’s going to do them in. No red blooded Republican would be watching Animal Planet…get real!
It’s going to be a blowout for Obama because the guy at doublyskewedpolls.com adds an extra layer of gooey Democratic ID to the sample, and Obama has a 15 point lead.
Damn. I actually tried going to that url, hoping it was real. Now I’m sad 
I wanted to see an all Blue map except for like 8 states.
This is certainly possible (the NRO-inspired theory that early voting numbers are bogus because the percent reporting “already voted” is too high).
I would counter with two points. First, this is not the first time early voting has been used, nor the first time pollsters have asked about it. In 2008 (when almost 30% of Ohio voters voted early) the poll were spot-on (i.e. there was no “likely voter” error due to early voter reporting). In fact, the final RCP average in Ohio was O+2.5 - he ended up winning by 4. If early voting is skewing pre-election polls in Ohio this year, why didn’t they in 2008?
Second, the type of people that vote early likely have a decent amount of overlap with the <10% of people that actual answer polls (political junkies).
If you can show me some examples of pre-2008-election polls with abnormally large “early vote” subgroups that were ultimately biased towards Obama I’ll start putting a little more credence in this claim.
If we consider the 9 toss-up states (CO, IA, FL, NC, NH, NV, OH, VA,WI) as deciding the election, there are 512 different configurations of those states. Obama wins the EV in 431 of them, Romney in 76, and 5 end up in a tie… This 85% of the scenarios for Obama is what makes the path for Romney so narrow.
That assumes that each race is completely independent of the other, when in fact, Romney’s fortunes tend to go up or down in the states all at once. If Romney is actually up by 5 as Gallup thinks he is, then he sweeps all of those states.
I didn’t assume anything, these are just the permutations and it highlights the narrow margin within Romney must operate.
That’s true- if Gallup’s right, Romney will probably win. If the vast majority of the polls are right, then Obama will probably win.
An inconvenient reminder for Romney - in a June 2011 New Hampshire GOP debate, he supported defunding FEMA: Mitt Romney In GOP Debate: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States | HuffPost Latest News
Think a Super Pac is making an ad right now?
Obama dropped to 73% probably because of that Rasmussen Ohio poll. However there was also a late Mellman Ohio poll which shows Obama up by 5 which will probably raise him a point or so on 538. It’s remarkable how close the overall winning percentage tracks the Ohio one. Unfortunately 538 doesn’t give us the state-by-state history for the winning percentage but my sense is that the Ohio and national percentage are usually within a point or two of each other. You would certainly expect a high correlation but it’s been a bit higher than I would have guessed.
Anyway we are about to enter a zone of murkiness for a few days. The campaign is effectively suspended and polling will be erratic. I think Sandy is going to have a big impact on the election and we will just have to wait and see how it pans out.
In what way might Romney turn out to be a lot like Al Gore? By winning the popular vote but losing in the Electoral College: Examiner is back - Examiner.com
Boring, wealthy son of a politician?
Yes, 538 has long been reporting the chances (acc to it’s model) of either brand of electoral/popular flip. I’m actually surprised that the Romney pop/Obama elec number hasn’t been higher – I don’t think it’s gotten above 6 percent. My gut feeling is that the chances of this happening are more like in the 15 to 20 percent range.