*** SurveyUSA Stops Tracking Clinton vs McCain in GE ***

[FlyingSquirrel]

Not sure if anyone else has noted this yet.

The most recent SurveyUSA (5/16 - 5/18) taken in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia only asked respondents for their preference of Obama vs McCain.

Interestingly, a SurveyUSA poll (5/17-5/19) did poll Clinton vs McCain in North Carolina - this is the only state in which Clinton was included in their polling since a Washington State SUSA poll (5/12).

Source for above information: Pollster.com

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I'm not quite sure what to make of this - Rasmussen stated earlier that they would soon be dropping her off their polls but has not yet done so. If SUSA is not going to poll Clinton vs McCain any more, did they make an announcement? And why would they include her in a poll from 5/17-5/19 in a likely red state (NC) but exclude her from five battleground states on 5/16-5/18?

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One thing's for sure, this skews Electoral-vote.com's predictions because they only take the most recent poll - therefore a SUSA poll can change Obama's numbers but not Clinton's. If both of them are doing poorly in a state, for example, this will only be reflected for Obama and not Clinton since SUSA excluded her. This is pretty important. I don't recommend Electoral-vote.com as a good source of information for many reasons, but lots of people follow it.

In my journal I do what I feel to be a more accurate, less volatile electoral map than Electoral-vote.com.

Here's my latest one.



This week I have Clinton at 284 vs 254 for McCain, and Obama at 269 vs 269 for McCain.
Electoral-vote has Clinton at 314 vs 207 for McCain, and Obama at 266 vs 248 for McCain.

Obviously I think EV.com's current prediction is much too rosy for Clinton. But like the weather in Seattle, just wait a day or two and it'll change... my maps are only updated once a week at most, and tend to be quite a bit more stable.

I haven't quite decided how to compensate for SUSA's lack of polling for Hillary. In a week or so I may not have to worry about it though.

:)

[CreekDog]

1. NJ's head just exploded

fourth time this week! :rofl:

[mcctatas]

2. ...

:spray:

[davidpdx]

5. I guess he'll have to make up stuff off the cuff

to claim Obama is unelectable. Oh wait, that's what he's been doing all along.

[K Gardner]

29. Sheesh.. I was gettin' ready to say !! LOL..

[Tarheel_Dem]

6. Is he still here? I thought with the demise of his partner in crime....you know,

that's Tropics guy, that he'd surely be soon to follow. Oh well.

[CreekDog]

7. tropics is gone?

:wtf: what happened?

[americanstranger]

He got his pizza delivery

after switching between Clinton and Obama 18 or 19 times.

- as

[CreekDog]

12. he had me dizzy towards the end

that was crazy.

[Garbo 2004]

28. And, per EarlG, Tropics' three sock accounts also were pizza'd.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6042195&mesg_id=6042649

[gateley]

11. I double that~

:spray::spray:

[TheDoorbellRang]

3. I like your model much better than EV.com's

Have you just started this? I hadn't seen you post this before.

[FlyingSquirrel]

10. Been doing since April 17... this is my fourth.

They don't get a WHOLE lot of notice, but some.

May 24
May 17
May 7
April 17

Or just add me to buddy list and you'll see when I update my journal.

[TheDoorbellRang]

13. I just added you to my list.

Looking forward to watching the sea of blue growing.:toast:

[davidpdx]

4. Don't worry about Clinton in terms of polling

If SUSA stops polling Clinton, I'm sure Rasmussen will do the same pretty soon. Without polls, it pretty much gives them nothing to compare her to Obama.

I'm sure we'll hear the cries of sexism because the polling companies have stopped gathering polling data for her. My response, "oh well."

[quantass]

24. ..

[phrigndumass]

8. Great stuff, Flying Squirrel!

Pollster.com is the best source to use. Nice maps!

K/R ... :D

[FlyingSquirrel]

25. Thanks.. I have a little problem though.

Some states are getting polled more often than others, and since I'm only including the last ten polls in each state for my map, and not including any polls earlier than February 2008, some states have more polls than others. So some of them will respond to new polls more quickly than others.

Of course, for the ones with more polls, when a new poll comes in, I drop off the oldest poll - so if a candidate has been making progress in that state, they'll not only get a higher number from the latest poll, but also drop off a lower number from the oldest poll - so I think that kind of makes up for it somewhat.

I'm not sure if I should just stick with ten polls per state, or at some point change the date for the earliest poll (I probably wouldn't want to keep using Feb. polls in August for states that they don't poll very often).

I think it'll all work out ok, 'cause I'm not really even bothering with states that I don't consider to be battleground states - and so the states they'll be polling less often won't even really be in the mix, I'm thinking. (I'll check them every so often just to make sure though).

-----

Here's my list of states that I won't be checking very often, tell me what you think of my classifications:

Blue-Strong

DC, MA, NY, RI, VT

Blue-Medium strong

CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, NJ

Red-Strong

AK, AL, ID, IN, KS, MS, MT, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY

Red-Medium strong

GA, KY, LA, NC

---------

I probably ought to include AZ as a Medium-strong this year too since McCain's from AZ. If I don't see any movement over time I might stop checking it as often. For Medium-weak red states I have AR, AZ, TN, VA, WV. Medium-weak blue states, ME and WA. Weak red, CO, FL, MO, NV. Weak Blue, MI, MN, OR, PA. Swing, IA, NH, NM, OH, WI. Will be keeping tabs on all these states pretty closely.

[phrigndumass]

27. You've put a lot of thought into this!

I agree with many of your state classifications, maybe only a few differences:

Illinois - Strong blue. (My homestate) Obama will win with at least 65% here.

Indiana - Weak red. It should be in play this year, hopefully.

New Hampshire - Weak red. (What has happened to NH over the last decade or two?! It used to be blue.)

That's about it. With the rapid change in news cycles now, I use polls for about 35 days maximum. They lose their usefulness after about a month. That might leave you with very few polls for each state until we get past the summer, however, if you decided to shorten your poll period.

I'm looking forward to reading your journal in the coming months!

:D

[FlyingSquirrel]

32. I'll add Indiana to the ones I'm watching.

Agree with IL this year - I had made the classifications based on history of presidential elections and nothing else, so hadn't moved either AZ or IL based on home states. I would have made MN more blue since it's been such a reliable blue state, but the only reason it went blue in 1984 was that Mondale was from MN - and it's been so close every time, less than 5% difference each time. Don't know what's happened to NH either but either swing or weak red, it'll be monitored. :)

[4_Legs_Good]

9. Good!

The sooner this is a two way race, the sooner we'll start seeing a really blue map. The illusion of a 3 way race (even though I know they try to match them up one on one) gives Clinton and Obama supporters the ability to answer a question favoring their candidate twice. I'm on the Gallup panel, and a recent question they asked (after my favorite: do you approve or disapprove of the way GWB is handling his job) If the election were held today, who would you vote for, and the list included Clinton, Obama and McCain.

I like your maps!

David

[thewiseguy]

14. Those models are not correct

SUSA had two polls last week that showed Obama was up on McCain in both Virginia and Ohio. Your maps do not reflect that.

[FlyingSquirrel]

15. There's a reason my maps do not reflect that.

It's a single poll. If you look at my previous map, however, you'll notice that Virginia has gotten less red in my latest map.

If you want instant changes in your states based on a single poll, by all means keep going to Electoral-vote.com 'cause they'll do that. I'm looking for more realism - entire states do not just suddenly switch from red to blue in a week's time (usually). They get less red first and then flip to barely blue.

As for Ohio, there were two polls since my last map. The SUSA one had Obama up by 9 points, and Quinnipiac had McCain up by 4 points. Last week I had Obama down 1.9% in OH - this week he's down only 0.8%. Both are the same color in my color scheme. (Since there's an average of 10 polls in OH, the latest ones don't have quite as big an effect on his average percentage as they might in states with fewer polls to look at.)

[FlyingSquirrel]

19. One thing though..

In my above post, I pointed out that the more polls there are in each particular state, the less that state will shift with each additional poll. So it's not a perfect model - but the further toward the election we get, the more polls there will be so each state should shift at about the same rate. Since I'm capping it off at 10 polls per state it will eventually be the same for all of the battleground states, although in some cases some of the polls might be older than in other states where they're polling more frequently.

There's no such thing as a perfect model, so I'll just keep trying to improve on it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. thank you for keeping people informed. There is an organized campaign of bald face lying going on

to present Sen. Obama as unelectable - even though the evidence supported by the vast majority of independent and even a number Republican leading opinion monitors - show exactly the oposite.

Here are just some:

Rasmussen Markets data gives Sen. Obama a 62.0% chance of winning the White House in November

"The Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator shows Democrats leading in states with 200 Electoral Votes while the GOP has the advantage in states with 189. When “leaners” are included, the Democrats enjoy a 260-240 Electoral College lead. Rasmussen Markets data gives Democrats a 62.0% chance of winning the White House in November (results are updated on a 24/7 basis by market participants). "

"Rasmussen Reports believes the race is over and that Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. We will stop tracking the Democratic race in the near future to focus exclusively on the Obama-McCain match-up. "

link: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

-----------------------



Average of National Polls:

Obama 46.9/McCain 44.0 = Obama + 2.9

Clinton 46.1/McCain 44.9 = Clinton + 1.2

The general election polls averages the latest polls from Gallup Tracking, Rasmussen Tracking, Quinnipiac,ABC News/Wash Post, Democracy Corp, LA Times/Bloomberg, IDBB/TIPP, Battleground

links:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_clinton-224.html

---------------------

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Gallup: Key Clinton voters are shifting to Obama



----------------------------------------------

Rasmussen Markets data gives Sen. Obama a 62.0% chance of winning the White House in November:


"The Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator shows Democrats leading in states with 200 Electoral Votes while the GOP has the advantage in states with 189. When “leaners” are included, the Democrats enjoy a 260-240 Electoral College lead. Rasmussen Markets data gives Democrats a 62.0% chance of winning the White House in November (results are updated on a 24/7 basis by market participants). "

"Rasmussen Reports believes the race is over and that Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. We will stop tracking the Democratic race in the near future to focus exclusively on the Obama-McCain match-up.

link:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

.

[FlyingSquirrel]

18. I like the part where it says that key Clinton voters are shifting to Obama

It makes sense, after all - Edwards voters shifted once he was out of the race, so of course Obama should pick up some of the Clinton voters in time. Good news.

[VolcanoJen]

17. Every time a Hillary Clinton talking point dies, an angel gets its wings.

That SurveyUSA match-up for Ohio should make us all feel pretty fantastic. Obama beats McCain straight-up in Ohio by 9 points, and when they start adding in VP names, Obama/Edwards beats McCain/Awful GOP VP Candidate of Your Choice, the Dem ticket beats McCain anywhere from 12 to 18 points!

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/05/23/ohio-vp-matchups

There goes the Rust Belt Curse. Yay, Ohio!!!!!

[K Gardner]

30. LOL.. I love the title of your subthread.

[intaglio]

20. Say "Goodnight Hillary"

in memoriam Dick Martin

[Douglas Carpenter]

21. k&r very interesting!

[tekisui]

22. It only makes sense. They don't poll the GE for Edwards or Richardson

or any of the other "also ran's".

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. no they don't...Sen. Obama wasn't my first choice either. But I don't expect them to keeping

polling when everyone knows that Sen. Obama will be the nominee.

[Swamp Rat]

26. k&r

[grantcart]

31. Interesting - Obama now has a bigger spread against McCain in NY than Clinton

11 points to 9