Only Electoral Votes Matter (And here they are)

[Tigers2B1]

Since national polls showing who leads, Bush or Kerry, really don't tell us much, if anything, here's a link to how the race is turning at the STATE level. These are STATE LEVEL POLLS and the only ones that matter.

This link shows the electoral race as Bush 285, Kerry 165, and 88 undecided. Note, however, that Bush shows 107 of those votes as weak, to only 12 as weak for Kerry

This is a very informative site – showing poll trends state by state and voting history. I suggest you not only check it out but bookmark it since I suspect this will be a very close race, both in popular and electoral vote.

http://www.race2004.net/

[wasteofo2]

Important to note, that most of those polls are relatively old, and all I checked were pre-debate. Kerry's numbers have gone up alot since the deabte, and the poll numbers will fluctuate alot based on how the candidates do in the next debates. What people thought Sept 22. doesn't really have any importance, because what they think today is inevitably different. And what they think today doesn't really matter, because what they think in a week will be different.

There's still Iraq to influence voters, and unemploymeny statistics come out on Friday, lots of stuff is going to happen between now and Nov. 2, and lots of stuff has happened between the times these polls were taken and now.

The only poll that matters will be the poll taken on Nov 2. at the voting booth, lots of stuff will change before then.

[Moonbear]

On that site, it states that the only state where a poll has been conducted entirely after the debate is NJ, where Kerry is now in the lead (though still a pretty close heat). It's hard to know what these polls mean. They sample such a small percentage of the population, that you could get variation from poll to poll just from the people you include, not from any actual changes in who people plan to vote for.

[Tigers2B1]

True, State polls are coming in at different times at all times and if you’re assuming a pending swing in the electoral vote projections, then these polls are very dated. Yet, I don’t see reason to agree that the debates will affect these polls "a lot", as asserted in a post above however – short of a debate meltdown by one of the candidates. The polls that have come in, post-debate, are not showing real post-debate movement for Kerry, even though a large majority consider Kerry to have won the debate. Note that this lack of movement in the few post-debate state polls is consistent with national flash polls done by Gallup and other organizations just after the debate. While the flash polls indicated that viewers considered Kerry the debate "winner," by a substantial margin, they also indicated that this would not change their vote or their opinion about the candidates on a number of other issues. We will soon begin to see whether these flash polls were correct in their assessment on the ELECTORAL level. Predicting the affects, if any, of the debate will be clearer as state polls come.

As a point of comparison, here is ANOTHER site, one run by a democrat, that provides ELECTORAL count rather than giving us almost meaningless national polls. This site has Bush with 321 electoral votes and Kerry with 200. It will be interesting to see if the debate has any affect as more states are polled and if so, and more importantly, what states are affected.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

[Locrian]

Very interesting, thanks for the post.

[selfAdjoint]

Here's another site that goes into a little more detail on what change would be required for Kerry to win from his present losing position (still losing as of 10/5). The change required isn't very big.

http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html

And here's the site

http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/

with the famous Bush approval graph:

http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/files/pollkatzmainGRAPHICS_10331_image001.gif

[Tigers2B1]

Thanks selfAdjoint –

Presently, this professor has it for Bush, even within the 95% confidence band. However, he is guessing that Kerry will get a "significant bounce this week" based on national polls.

Here's what he says –

In a national poll, Newsweek shows Kerry ahead by 3% among registered voters, a swing of 8 points from their previous poll - and three times the current Meta-Margin. A USAToday/CNN/Gallup poll also shows an 8-point swing compared with their previous poll. [National polls] Now here is an NJ poll that shows a 6.7-point jump over the last three polls taken before the debate. Based on this I venture a guess that Kerry will get a significant bounce this week.

IF the professor's guess is correct, and there is a "significant bounce" in state polls / or in some state polls, the entire question remains – which states will show that bounce? IMHO, it is on that question that the whole meaning of the professor's word "significant" rides. In addition, the professor mentions that nine state polls are post-debate, yet mentions only one. I've looked at the nine post-debate state polls and none show much of a change, and certainly no "significant bounce." A tenth, California also shows no significant changes post-debate. Of course, the individual state's post-debate polls themselves are few in number in addition to being very limited state wise. For what it’s worth, I thought this point was worth making since the professor indicates there are nine new state polls, now 10, yet mentions only one, --- BUT uses the national polls when justifying his guess. Not saying the professor's "guess" is unsupported - just that the support seems a little selective at this point --

Also, here is yet one more link, which was provided at the site selfAdjoint linked –

http://www.federalreview.com/

[wasteofo2]

Again, I suggest peole just chill out and wait for a little less than a month to see what the real results are.

Hopefully on Nov. 2 we can actually get the real results...

[selfAdjoint]

Wasteofo2, why on Earth should we chill? It's all in good fun and no money changes hands.

And as for "bounce" look at todays numbers (http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html); Kerry's probability of winning the electroal vote is up from 7% to 60%! Ohio has gone back from red to pink!

[Moonbear]

Wasteofo2, why on Earth should we chill? It's all in good fun and no money changes hands.

And as for "bounce" look at todays numbers (http://synapse.princeton.edu/~sam/pollcalc.html); Kerry's probability of winning the electroal vote is up from 7% to 60%! Ohio has gone back from red to pink!

Everything I've seen today has shown Ohio as purple. It's a tie right now.

[wasteofo2]

Wasteofo2, why on Earth should we chill? It's all in good fun and no money changes hands.

I'm not saying forget politics, but just chill about the polls. You have tons of polls showing greatly varying results, no one can tell which one is precisely accurate, and even if you could, the numbers would just change tomorrow.

[wasteofo2]

This link shows the electoral race as Bush 285, Kerry 165, and 88 undecided.
http://www.race2004.net/
Gah! See what I mean? 5 days ago it had Bush 285 Kerry 165, today it has Kerry 243 Bush 196!!!!! Does that mean Kerry's won? Does that mean Bush's done for? No, not at all, in another 5 days the numbers will be all different again, and after the next 5 days, the dynamic will be so totally different that what happened 10 days ago means next to nothing.

The same thing with www.electoral-vote.com. I don't remember the exact numbers, but in the beginning of October, before post-debate polls had come out, Bush was totally clobering Kerry according to that website, now it's Kerry 280, Bush 239!!!!

[Tigers2B1]

wasteofo2 - for someone who wants to "chill" - you sure are posting in this topic a lot.

[wasteofo2]

Chill was a bad word, I meant more like don't take the polls seriously.

And hey, Jefferson wrote the words "All men are created equal" and owned slaves, gimme a little bit of lee-way with consistancy :biggrin:

[klusener]

he is just showing the inconsistencies of these polls....