Lies, #@%*$# Lies, and Opinion Polls - - Newsweek Does It Again
About the Author: I am an ex-urbanite who escaped the city life and has lived for the past 27 years in a rural, mountainous area of Virginia that in colonial and early-American times was part of the "Backcountry." Politics: Democrat by tradition, but moderate-to-conservative views on most issues; I fit the description of "traditionalist." Please visit my Web site, Backcountry Notes, at http://www.backcountrynotes.com/ Read more from this authorOn Friday, October 24, Newsweek released yet another MSM-sponsored poll showing Barack Obama with a double-digit lead over John McCain. As usual, the poll over-counted Democrats and seriously understated Republicans in order to skew the results.
The MSM-sponsored polls on the Real Clear Politics listing on Friday included Newsweek (Obama +12), CBS News-NY Times (Obama +13), and NBC News - WSJ (Obama +10). But the non-MSM tracking polls paint a very different picture. Here are the tracking polls as of Friday, October 24:
| Rasmussen Reports | 10/21 - 10/23 | 3000 LV | 2.0 | 52 | 45 | Obama +7 |
| Gallup (Traditional)* | 10/21 - 10/23 | 2406 LV | 2.0 | 50 | 45 | Obama +5 |
| Gallup (Expanded)* | 10/21 - 10/23 | 2365 LV | 2.0 | 51 | 44 | Obama +7 |
| Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby | 10/21 - 10/23 | 1203 LV | 2.9 | 51 | 41 | Obama +10 |
| Hotline/FD | 10/21 - 10/23 | 766 LV | 3.5 | 50 | 43 | Obama +7 |
| GWU/Battleground | 10/19 - 10/23 | 1000 LV | 3.1 | 49 | 46 | Obama +3 |
| IBD/TIPP | 10/19 - 10/23 | 1008 LV | 3.0 | 46 | 42 | Obama +4 |
With an aggregate of more than 9,000 respondents, these polls put Obama’s advantage at somewhat more than 6 points - - but nowhere near the MSM polls’ double-digit average.
When you look into the Newsweek poll figures, you find the following weights for respondents by political party: Republicans, 299 respondents, 28.2%; Democrats, 380 respondents, 35.8%; and independents, 381 respondents, 35.9%. This represents too few Republicans and too many Independents.
Rasmussen takes a separate set of polls to determine partisan weighting for its Presidential election polls. For polling data released during the week of October 19-25, Rasmussen’s partisan weighting targets were 39.7% Democratic, 33.0% Republican, and 27.3% unaffiliated, and for the preceding week they were 39.3% Democratic, 33.0% Republican, and 27.7% unaffiliated. These numbers a clearly a different mix of voters than the breakdown used by Newsweek. Some recent polls have shown likely-voter breakdowns of Republicans 34%, Democrats 37-38%.
NOTE FOR OBAMATROLLS: I know that the tracking polls have Obama ahead of McCain; I can read. My point is that the MSM polls may be unreliable and tend to exaggerate that lead.
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Tags: mainstream media, McCain, media bias, msm, Newsweek, Obama, polljunkie, Polls, Rasmussen, tracking polls
Obama spent $22 million on pollsters in September. I plead with everyone to NOT buy into the polls. People are afraid to admit they are not voing Obama. It has been discovered that government computers were used to breech the privacy of Joe the plumber’s personal confidential records. Vote McCain and save our country
An oversampling of Democrats is also going on in state polling. Recent Battleground polling in Ohio and Pennsylvania sampled Democrats at rates of 42% and 47% respectively. No wonder the polls showed Obama with a double-digit lead in each state. So not only are Republicans being undersampled as you pointed out, Democrats are being largely oversampled in many cases. Good article!
It is over. McCain lost my family of independents. Three of them are retired military officers (Go Navy)! We are fiscal conservatives and liberal on the social issues. Why vote Republican? We would get neither. The Republicans should dump the Christian right and embrace Libertarian values. Just a footnote I signed up on both the Obama and McCain websites to volunteer and get emails (It is a great way to keep up on things)…I get called EVERY FRICKEN DAY and receive 5 emails from the Obama camp and have yet to receive a phonecall from McCain and have received a grand total of 2 emails in three weeks. I drove by the Republican Campaign offices here in my heavily R district…the Democratic office had so many volunteers they had them set up outside on the sidewalk making phonecalls on their cells and the Republican office had TWO old ladies answering the phones, this was on a Saturday afternoon two weeks before the election!
The difference in sampling is likely due to the difference in the percentage of voters registered for each party in the state. The Democrats simply have more registered voters and a true random sampling has to–by definition–reflect that.
So lighten up, please.
Drew: Party registrations have nothing to do with it. The numbers are calculated on the party identifications stated by poll respondents.
Another ‘liberal’ Gallup poll has Obama beating McCain by 9 points among RV and 8 points among LV - same as Rasmussen. Are THEY in the tank for Obama too? 8-9 points is pretty darn close to double-digits.
Maybe that Newsweek poll isn’t quite so ‘biased’ after all…
I mean seriously…are you REALLY whining about someone showing Obama up by 12 instead of 8-9? Need I remind you that Reagan won a 44 state landslide in 1980 while winning the popular vote by a little more than 9 points?
8 points…9 points…12 points…all amount to Obama romp over McCain.
With a filibuster proof congress led by Reid and Pelosi. What is to stop Obama from pulling a Hugo Chavez.
A closed mind is like a locked door, unless the right key is found, nothing enters. Unfortunately for many the key will be hindsight.
Frank Marshal Davis
Ayers
Rezko.
Wright.
Dohrn
Odinga
ACORN
The New Party
All Radical Marxist/Socialist links in Obama’s
chain that launched his political career, and
unlike the theory of evolution, there are no missing links.
Davis, a known, avowed Communist Mentored Obama
as a teenager shaping his social views, and fostered his hate for whites.
The rest of the Radical Associations reinforced
Davis’s teachings, and the Socialist NEW PARTY launched Obama’s career.
Obama, selected, tutored, groomed, scripted,
and financed by Radical Marxist/Socialists to become
the puppet leader of the UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF AMERICA If you do not believe associations shape the
character and judgement of a person, why do you
NOT let your child hang out with the local street gangs and crack heads. All of the people I listed are linked together, all share the same values, all are long term and continious Associations of Obama. They are not just random accidental associations with whackos that everyone encounters occaisionally
How pitiful that conservatives remove any and all posts that discredit their points-of-view. Poor little Jay…can’t debate the point, so he removes the rebuttal instead.
I’ll say it again…until you remove the post, that is. Are Rasmussen and Gallup, both of whom have Obama leading by 8-9 points, also in on the Newsweek Obama ‘bias poll’ action?
Exactly what advantage is it to the “MSM” if the polls show a big Obama lead which you claim does not exist? Wouldn’t logic tell you that a close race plays to THEIR advantage, because it’s more of a story?
Just askin’. Not that logic has much to do with all the rabid lather this campaign is causing in some folks.
Obama lead on Rasmussen (+8), Gallup(+7.5 av.), Fox(+9), ABC(+9) and Hotline(+8) now all within 1% of each other. If the race isn’t tightening, the poll differences certainly are.
I assume this is just a coincidence though and has no relationship to reality. Maybe Fox are in the tank for Obama.