Why polls aren't worrying Obama's team

[ruggerson]

Finally, for John McCain, a week to smile about. "Obama fatigue," a virus that's afflicted the GOP presidential candidate for sometime now, was discovered in a new Pew survey to have spread to 48 percent of the populace.

And recent national polls now place McCain and Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat. Gallup's numbers have Obama 46, McCain 43.

RealClearPolitics' national average is about the same, Obama 46.9 to McCain 43.3.

What does it mean? Next to nothing. And Obama's team not only knows it, it thrives on it.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1099400,CST-EDT-carol10.article

[uponit7771]

1. "These are not national elections but state by state elections. We have vote goals. ..."

nice

[dkf]

2. I like the team's attitude...no drama here, just a foundation for November.

"In the short run, jealous jabs at Obama for having too much face time on the covers of Rolling Stone and GQ may appear to close the gap in national polls. But the aggregation of images -- Obama in Germany, Obama with his cute girls and beautiful wife, Obama visiting his grandmother in Hawaii -- is by dribs and drabs helping America feel familiar with him, visualize him on foreign soil, and see him, perhaps, as both human and presidential."

[caledesi]

4. Well said! NT

[Blue_Roses]

3. wise words...

:)

[Phx_Dem]

5. Great article.

This is how they're going to win -- just like in the primaries when they methodically went after delegates instead of worrying about polls. They're doing the same thing now -- with electoral votes.

"In other words, this is now and always has been the sum of political component parts for the Obama operation, not a national popular election but a sophisticated, incremental accumulation of delegates in the primary, and electoral votes come November."

[ruggerson]

7. exactly

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

9. But the EV and national popular vote are going to match

There are practical reasons for organizing by state. All national campaigns do.

But gainsaying national polls is silly unless your are planning to win the EV and lose the popular vote.

(And why is anyone talking about national polling as being weak for Obama? Obama's margin in national polling equals an electoral college blow-out. 5% is a LOT.)

Campaign strategy is state-by-state, by national polling is a better predictor of the outcome that cumulative state polling.

The Obama campaign is not trying to PREDICT the outcome. They are trying to influence the outcome. State polls tell you where to spend resources, for instance.

If they were trying to predict, rather than run a campaign, they would rely on national polling because it is, in fact, a better predictor than state-by-state.

I am familiar with the reasons that *shouldn't* be the case, but in practice it is. A lot of state polls suck. There are states with conflicting polls showing McCain winning and Obama winning. National polling, on the other hand, is quite consistent. Obama is up 4-7%.

State polling is better than national polling for predicting the electoral college margin, but not the electoral college result. National polling is quite good at picking a winner.

No one alive today has seen a mis-match of electoral college and popular vote. (Gore won Florida... there was no mis-match in 2000) JFK and Nixon were close to tied, but JFK had an okay electoral college margin. But the point is, if Nixon picked up 0.2% of popular vote he would have had an equally comfortable electoral college margin because a lot of states were close.

I am sure there were electoral college projections in 1960 showing Kennedy up 150 and showing Nixon up 150. National polling said, "This is really close." Since the electoral college projections included calling states based on polling margins too thin to be reliable, the national polling gave a better view of the race.

(On the show MAD MEN they used dome archival 1960 election night footage where one network said early on that Nixon was something like ten times more likely to win, based on their computer estimate. That estimate was, of course, state-by-state. "This looks closer than it is." But it wasn't... close means close means close. Every year people get caught up in the state-by-state because it *should* be preferable, over-looking the fact that it often magnifies a lot of small polling errors into big projection errors.)

[gblady]

6. I like this line....

"It's the horse race play. Or, as the Axelrod game goes, you always play the come from behind, even when you're ahead."

[polichick]

8. The Obama team doesn't lose focus - it's a numbers game with them...

...and the numbers are on the ground ~ ALWAYS!