Obama lead drops to 5 points (Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll)

[Nambe]

Source: WASHINGTON (Reuters)

Democrat Barack Obama's lead over Republican rival John McCain has dropped to 5 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.

Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely U.S. voters in the daily tracking poll, which has a margin of error of 2.9 points. Obama's lead has dropped over the last three days after hitting a high of 12 points on Thursday.

"Things are trending back for McCain. His numbers are rising and Obama's are dropping on a daily basis. There seems to be a direct correlation between this and McCain talking about the economy," pollster John Zogby said. ...

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE49J0...

[mediaman007]

1. I can't believe a slug like Joe the Plumber is a rallying point for

Americans.

[DemNoir]

2. Yeah Ok

I hope everyone realizes by now that Zogby just makes it up as he goes along.

[pam4water]

27. Yeah, I heard Zogby kind of admit that on the PODUS 08 channel of XM Radio

He said that he "determined" that republicans were less likely to answer the phone than democrats. So he add a fudge factor to his poles to "compensate" for the lower number of responses by republicans.

And C-Span has turn into Fox Noise with better suits and complete sentences. I guess the book stuff on the week end is OK.

[medeak]

34. done with zogby! n/t

[BearSquirrel2]

38. That's bullshit!!!

This isn't the way you do it. You ask what people's demographics are and then you weight the poll according to what you believe turnout will be.

[The Backlash Cometh]

20. It isn't Joe the Plumber.

It's the crony networks they're going to want to protect.

[psomniferum]

52. Zobgy, sucks, yes

but moreover, fuck the Republican criminals for making us all worry about this so much.

[Flagg]

3. 44% for Mc Cain ?

I call bullshit.

Who are those people ?
Seriously I haven't met anyone openly supporting MC Cain for weeks. Where are those people hiding ?

[ikojo]

5. I'm seeing more and more McCain stickers on cars

and McCain signs in lawns and in apartment building windows in the St Louis area.

A local DJ postulated that if Obama's lead on election day is five points or less, McCain will win because people will see him as "safer".

I think the attack ads, the attack robo calls, the attack emails and mailings are working on McCain's behalf particularly among whites.

Obama and/or his surrogates need to pound home the theme that neither McCain (mr seven houses) nor Palin (with her $150k wardrobe) really understand working class people, how can they when they live so extravagantly?

[NJmaverick]

7. In north Jersey I am seeing groupings of McCain signs

they are popping up like weeds.

[DemNoir]

10. Yeah Obama's going to lose New Jersey

Calm down.

[NJmaverick]

15. I would have to be excited before I would need to calm down

I am just stating an observation, you need to calm yourself down, you are going to hurt yourself jumping to conclusions like that.

[pam4water]

37. I live North of Pittsburgh and a ton of McCain signs showed up here in the past week

at the same time a ton of signs for Malissa Harte the republican candidate for representative should up.

Also a lot of the Obama signs mysteriously disappeared in the night. I don't know if that changes anyone's vote. The only McCain supporters I've seen lately are the hardcore ones I run into on the forums.

[susanna]

55. I saw those groupings in the northern suburbs of metro Detroit.

The funny part is that they're all one one person's property, like ten of them in a group on one lawn. I said to my husband, "Well, they do wave more flags than other people, and in doing so think themselves more patriotic. This is just another manifestation of that behavior." In contrast, the Obama signs were one to a property. Interesting, I thought.

[DemNoir]

9. Please

Calm down.

[yorkiemommie1]

43. more and more of them

on my street here in SoCal! UGH!

[rocktivity]

4. Henny Penny--Obama's lead is falling!

The race is tightening! Keep tuned in to the mainstream media for the latest details! And don't forget to watch the commercials!


GET THEE BEYOND ME, POLL! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!!!


rocknation

[eowyn_of_rohan]

6. these figures are manufactured

This is the way they attempt to set the stage for stealing another election. Nobody in their right mind would believe that nearly HALF of American voters would vote for stupid, incompetent, corrupt SARAH PALIN and sickly, weasely, mentally unstable McCain.

[DemNoir]

11. Once again

Calm down.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

16. Excuse me? "once again"?

I don't recall meeting you before, and who are you to tell others to calm down about this?

[leftchick]

22. you are correct

this is the pattern all right.

[pipi_k]

8. And this is why

the rest of the world has reason to think Americans are STUPID.

Brainless

Easily swayed by whatever idiotic half-baked idea happens to be floating around at any particular time.


Obama has a double digit lead for weeks and all of a sudden it drops?


Hmmmm...if it's Thursday, then it's time to believe ____________. Oh wait a minute...I heard _________ and I don't know if it's true or not, but dammit, I'm changing my vote to the other guy


Seriously...is that what goes through people's minds when they answer "poll" questions? Or are the questions so worded that people misinterpret them and the pollsters use that information to concoct results that lead us all around by the nose?


Whatever...I'm just real tired of polls making us Americans look like idiots

[Rude Horner]

14. Amen, pipi_k n/t

[yellowcanine]

12. I will say it again. Democrats generally lose ground in weekend tracking polls.

I have been seeing this since 1992 with Clinton. It is an artifact of the polling process.

[bigdarryl]

13. yeah and Obama is only five points down in Arizona go figure

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

17. Rasmussen still has the lead at 8 and DailyKos has it at 11

Zogby is playing with what a likely voter is - again - or it's statisical noise.

The RCP average is 7.7 this morning.

There are already as many early voters in NC as voted last year and the trend is 2:1 for Democrats.

I'm not letting one bad Zogby poll bother me.

[elocs]

18. My god! Millions of people are going to vote for McCain! They have yard signs and everything!

The Obama campaign is toast!

[NikolaC]

21. Well, if we are going by that standard ...

lol. Three houses in my circle who had McCain signs REMOVED them from their lawns and mailbox. What does that say? For every one of us in this neighborhood who have either an Obama or McCain yard sign, there are three who don't. I still don't know who they will be voting for. While it is annoying to see people with so many McCain signs and bumper stickers, but encouraging to see Obama ones, I fail to see how that is a true barometer of how the election will turn out.

[CLANG]

32. I just put an Obama/Biden sticker on my car 2 weeks ago

I had hesitated out of fear of the right wing wacko's keying my car - or worse. And I live in Madison WI where we worship SATAN!

I can only imagine that there are many more Obama voters that are afraid to show their colors than the wing-nut right wingers with their macho kill-them-all mentality and their arsenal of semi-automatic weapons.

[NikolaC]

42. I Agree

We have had petty things happen when we put the sign up, but things have been okay otherwise. We are considering following suit with the neighbor up the road who took down their Obama sign until Halloween is over. We were thinking of taking it down that day and returning it to the lawn the next morning because we are a bit afraid that the nuts will pull all of their BS stunts on that night.

[bemildred]

19. "Zogby poll all over the place."

New headline. But seriously, why not infer that the Zogby poll is inaccurate rather than that millions are changing theirs minds back and forth all the time.

Do you know a lot of people that change how they are going to vote a couple times a week?

[INdemo]

24. Rasmussen polls differs...

Remember a week or so ago that Zogby had poll results that were actually a push poll...Zogby gives the "liberal" media something to boast about but I do question the accuracy..
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics...

now with that said I believe that with the help of the MSM it does appear that Mccain is gaining some momentum.
But when they show McCain's stump speeches every five minutes(seems like it) that's bound to help some with undecideds.

[bemildred]

28. I question the accuracy of all polls.

I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy either. McCain may have "momentum", but it is downward "momentum", not up. "In the gutter" in every sense of that phrase.

[INdemo]

30. The Corporate Media is

at least making it appear that McCain is gaining momentum...I read and hear about all the problems with early voting and I'm a little nervous about possibilities of a another stolen election.As far as the polling goes many times people see the results and don't know the number of samplings or the questions asked to get those results...A few hundred voters vs 1000 to 1500 samples make all the difference but people dont bother to check that.

[bemildred]

33. Well, it is amazing that such a theoretically simple activity as voting can be so hard to do well.

It's almost like the politicians don't want it done well.

As far as polls, it is easy to attack the methodology of most of the pablum we are fed on any number of methodological grounds, and people do that all the time. I don't waste my time. It's like religion, people that want to believe will believe. But nothing much happens if you don't.

[panzerfaust]

23. It only has to be beliveably close before the election

to, once again ...

[Sewsojm]

25. BullShit!!

McCain's going to get creamed!

[craiga86]

26. I went to a lecture at North Florida Univeristy with Zogby speaking

And I'll tell you now, he certainly had a conservative lean on alot of his comments. That was not a hard to notice. I don't know whether or not he was doing so because we were in Duval County, Florida (Jacksonville - a conservative area) or if it's just his bias.

Also, he mentioned that he's actually worked for John McCain's campaign as well as Tom Daschel's. He kept saying over and over that John McCain has been "such a Maverick in reaching across party lines" and "I know it and I've seen it".

Someone asked at the lecture how he gets his polling so accurate. I beleive he mentioned that the percentage of republicans that vote are generally higher than Democrats and that alot of OTHER polling agencies have been using the same percentages of likely voters for republican and democrats. In my opinion this is not something you can label on this election cycle because alot of people are going to vote this time around. Alot of people are pissed off.

[Warren Stupidity]

44. Zogby's track record for accuracy is not good.

[CLANG]

29. Here we go again!

They are setting us up for another stolen election. This is so transparent it's not even funny.

[ryanmuegge]

31. 5 points is huge in the US. McCain is getting killed, even if this poll is accurate.

There are only two viable parties.


The electoral vote is going to be a massacre.

[fed_up_mother]

47. I want more than 5%

With the margin of error and the possible Bradley effect (and no one knows how that is affecting the margin of error), five percent scares me.

[Democat]

35. John "Push Poll" Zogby speaks!

[JMDEM]

36. The overall pattern of recent bogus polls greatly disturbs me. nt

[GinaMaria]

39. I'm worried about the toll the beating of the

socialism drum is taking, We need to respond to this. Tax cuts for the middle class is not redistribution of wealth. The top 1% has had a tax cut for the last 8 years. It hasn't helped the economy. The middle class gets a turn now to help the economy and the right wingers start screaming 'socialism'. It is all out class warfare. When will the MSM point this out? The 's' word scares the middle class into voting against themselves. We are nearing the end and have to continue to hit hard especially on this issue. Another 4 years of this nonsense will do us in. Everything is at stake right now.

[smirkymonkey]

57. Haven't we had "Socialism" for the last 8 years?

It's just been the "redistribution of wealth" upwards. I can't understand why Obama isn't hammering that point home more, because I think you're right about the whole "S" word freaking out the middle class. Of course they are wrong, but just the mention of the word scares the crap out of them.

Obama needs to start beating McCain with his own club and fast. I had a nervous breakdown after the last election, I really don't think any of us could take another "wake up in the morning and find out that our sure thing had somehow gone belly up overnight."

[ramapo]

40. 7 pts in 3 days because why?

An interesting poll because you wonder what has happened to cause a significant of number of those polled to trend to McCain, changing their minds along the way. Seems unlikely. Is it because McCain hasn't done anything dumb in a few days? The poll happened to hit a different segment of voters? People are sick of Obama? Or is it mostly all bs?

I tend to think the latter. I don't believe there are that many voters on the fence still. But even if true, so what? Five points is fine and it is the individual states that matter anyway.

I can't wait until it is all over. Enough is enough.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

41. Zogby's model uses equal numbers of republicans and democrats

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com:

By contrast, you probably aren't likely to see John Zogby offer a coherent explanation of why he his poll contains as many Republicans as Democrats in a political environment where Democrats have a 10-point generic ballot advantage.

See the whole blurb here:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/pollster-respond...

[psomniferum]

53. Yes, he does

I noticed this reply:

Cubicle Boy said...

And interesting (and good news for me anyway) that they got O+5 with voters who have already voted with a population that would historically vote Republican (older, male, white, same number of Dems and Repubs).

[Doctor_J]

45. Dropped 7 points in 3 days? MUAHAHAHAHAHA

[rustedart]

46. because he is using flawed polling techniques

He is uses data on percentage of voters from the election in 04. But nation wide there are now more Dems registered then there were in 04 and he is not taking that into account when figuring his calls. Hence the close numbers in his polls. Check out fivethirtyeight they have all the polling info one would ever want.

[MetaTrope]

48. Of course the "polls" will have to be neck-and-neck when the ATM votes start getting tallied

[rocktivity]

49. How come Zogby is the ONLY poll that matters all of a sudden?

Who died and left him in charge? Can't you tell you're being set up for the race "tightening" within stealing range before the end of the week?


rocknation

[Marthe48]

50. I haven't got a Zogby poll in weeks

and I've been a Zogby respondant for years. Wonder how many other Dems haven't gotten the polls lately?

[Darian]

51. We all know he's full of crap.

I don't know how anyone can take his polls seriously. Screw Zogby.

[robcon]

54. Never. Believe. Zogby.

He had Kerry ahead by 4 points just before the 2004 election!

He had Obama ahead by 10 points in the California primary (Clinton won by 13 points!) He was off by 23 points in California - one-fourth of the primary electorate!

I think Zogby manipulates the raw numbers more than any other pollster. His explanation in California - that he expected higher Hispanic voting is as phony an explanation of a 23 point error(!!!!) as his numbers are.

Zogby is useless.

[peaches2003]

56. "Spread the Wealth"

When Obama said that to Joe the Plumber it gave McCain exactly what he needed. The low info voter is taking in all McCain is saying about socialism, spread the wealth, etc. and using it as the excuse or fear not to vote for Obama. Never mind that the Repugs have been spreading the wealth upward to the rich for 8 yrs.

It is the BIGGEST mistake Obama has made in the campaign and this is just the kind of slogan that McCain needs to make a surge at the end with a fear campaign.

[mac56]

58. oh noes!

[high density]

59. Zogby definintely has the most dramatic polls of them all

+12, then +5 less than a week later. No other poll is showing wide swings like that.