The tight race

Posted at 5:05 PM on September 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

A commenter in a thread on polling last week took me -- and the rest of the media -- to task for mentioning national poll numbers when, in fact, we elect our presidents via the electoral college. The post was about the gains the McCain campaign has made in the last few weeks.

The commenter is right of course, which is why this piece of news is fairly interesting. For the first time since the campaign started, individual state polls show John McCain with more electoral votes than Barack Obama, according to electoral-vote.org.

It turned largely on the strength of new polls in Ohio, Nevada and Virginia. McCain has outpolled Obama in those three states where previously Obama had held the edge.

McCain "shares" are also trading higher than Obama on the Intrade Web site.

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Comments (3)

Oddly enough, that election tracking site leans more democratic, while this one
(www.electionprojection.com ) has an admittedly conservative webmaster...and the latter shows Obama ahead in the electoral votes. I think historically the latter has a higher rate of accuracy in predictions but don't quote me on that one. I tend to only follow these projections, which somehow distill all of the other polling by using a mysterious pot or something!

Posted by Bonnie R | September 15, 2008 5:47 PM

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I commend you, Bob, for taking a step back to analyze the situation. It doesn't matter that I was right; it's much more important for you to be, as your stage is much larger.

But, thanks for affirming that national polls are meaningless given the Electoral College. State-by-state polls (are the corresponding Electoral projections) are much more useful.

I would suggest www.fivethirtyeight.com as a resource.

PS: Bob, you deleted one of my comments earlier today. I hope that you will again take a moment to step back and consider the point that was being made. The comment was not meant to devalue your post, but to question pseudo-scientific innovations in general. Phrenology, anyone?

Posted by CaliGuy | September 15, 2008 9:07 PM

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I don't believe the national polls are meaningless. A country-wide shift in sentiment is nothing to sneeze at and usually will show up in the micro-view as in this case.

Can you take it to the bank? No. Can you pretend a shift really isn't happening? No.

Posted by Bob Collins | September 16, 2008 7:54 AM

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