Pollster: Don’t Believe The Dem Hype

[bigredbirdfan]

Pollster: Don’t believe the Dem hype

By Joe Dwinell & Jessica Fargen

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The presidential race is still too close to call and could come down to the very last weekend before voters decide if they like or distrust Barack Obama, a national pollster predicts.

“I don’t think Obama has closed the deal yet,” pollster John Zogby told the Herald yesterday.

Zogby’s latest poll, released yesterday in conjunction with C-Span and Reuters, shows Obama and John McCain in a statistical dead heat, with the Illinois Democrat up 48-45 percent.

Zogby said the race mirrors the 1980 election, when voters didn’t embrace Ronald Reagan over then-President Jimmy Carter until just days before the election.

“The Sunday before the election the dam burst,” Zogby said of the 1980 tilt. “That’s when voters determined they were comfortable with Reagan.”

Now voters are wrestling with two senators with opposite resumes - Obama, at 47, the unknown, and the established 72-year-old McCain.

Zogby said he’s still hearing from moderates and non-partisan voters - what he calls “the big middle” - who are still shopping for a candidate.

“It still can break one way or the other,” Zogby says.

The Numbers

The three-day survey polled 1,220 likely voters - about 400 people a day. Zogby will continuously poll right up until the November election.

The latest poll numbers may reflect the bump that McCain received after his running mate, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin sparred with Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden during the first and only vice presidential debate last week.

The poll shows that the two White House contenders have no problem attracting support from their own parties.

Obama is winning 84 percent of the Democratic Party support and McCain has 85 percent of the GOP support, but Obama has the edge among sought-after Independent voters.

He leads McCain among independents, 48 percent to 39 percent, according to the poll.

Obama also has support from a slightly higher percent of conservative voters than McCain gets from liberal voters, but the advantage is small, according to the poll.

Pollsters surveyed 1,220 likely voters and asked approximately 39 questions. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

[3wt]

Remember when gore and kerry were gonna be landslides? The media loves to cherry pick polls. It's an innocent looking way to sway a vote. Just wait for the "exit polls" on election day. "Hey, lets only talk to the guys with dem buttons and stickers on their shirts...maybe it will look like the dem is a big winner and keep the right wingers at home."

[Al Agnew]

Polls showing the national results don't mean a thing, since you can win the popular vote and lose the election (Bush vs. Gore comes to mind). The only polls that mean anything are the state by state polls, and the last one I saw shows Obama with a lead over McCain in just about every "battleground" state, in the neighborhood of 5-8 points.

I also am looking at polls this year with even more skepticism than usual, because I really believe that there are quite a few people out there who say they are for Obama but in the end won't be able to cast a vote for a black person. And I won't trust the exit polls during the election for the same reason...people who don't want to admit they didn't vote for the black candidate. I'm still thinking it's going to be VERY close.

[jdmidwest]

Seriously, what educated voter would not know how to vote by now anyway. What could come out now that would really change any real voter at this point in the game. One is not electable and the other is marginal. Only the vote early, vote often types would be waiting for the last minute to make up their minds.

Who answers the phone when a pollster calls?

What really worries me is that some networks are already reporting a win by Obama in the electoral college, aka CBS. I smell a rat. Again! Remember 2000?

Cute cartoon the other day showed McCain sprinting and sweating in a race and Obama being carried on the back of another guy with a Media tag around his neck. Obama was not even breaking a sweat.

Around here, I only see a few Obama signs and tons of McCain/Palin. Let Barry drop his coins on the satellite, the constant ads on networks, I hope it bleeds the party dry.