Conventional Wisdom v. The Polls
CW Claim: Obama's surging and Clinton is falling. The polls: Yes, it's only one poll, but Gallup's latest survey shows no hemorrhaging whatsoever for Sen. Clinton. She remains in a dominant position nationally. The qualifier: in recent statewide surveys, she's lost a little ground in New Hampshire, and polls behind Edwards in Iowa and behind Obama in South Carolina. Perhaps the state polls are leading indicators? Perhaps the national polls will not comport with the early primary state polls until right before the Iowa caucuses. Which polls are more important? The state polls.
CW Claim: Giuliani's had his best days; his stratospheric poll numbers are now tropospheric. The polls: Again, back to Gallup's latest. The battery of negative press has yet to slow the ex-NYC mayor down. He's up or tied in several statewide surveys, and his national favorability/unfavorability ratio remains the highest of any other candidate. The qualifier: Real Clear Politics' average shows a slight trendline dip for Giuliani, but we won't conclude anything until we see the results from a few other national polls. Note that Charles Franklin's graphical analysis shows no downturn.
CW Claim: McCain is at rock bottom, nationally. The polls: Probably, true. The qualifier: McCain's standing in state polls suggests that his candidacy is healthier than it appears.
CW Claim: If Fred Thompson gets in, it kills Romney, hurts Giuliani, and bruises McCain. The polls: The Cook/RT Strategies poll tested several variants of this question, and a Thompson-less race burdens these candidates fairly equally. The qualifier: the CW may not be wrong, here, assuming that Thompson would take from Mitt Romney the lion's share of prospective or potential Romney voters. That's an assumption. Without seeing an ideological/demographic breakdown of McCain's and Giuliani's supporters, it's hard to see how anyone can conclude with any certainty where Thompson's votes would come from. The Pew subsamples suggest that McCain and Giuliani supporters are more conservative than McCain and Giuliani, and otherwise, unremarkably indistinct from the rest of the electorate. [MARC AMBINDER]
I don't understand the heavy reliance on Gallup here even if it's the "latest," and especially when it is used as a stand in for "The Polls" and multiple polls are presented in a qualifier role.
In addition to Gallup, 2 polls released last week also showed Hillary with double digit leads – FOX and the Charlie Cook Report poll. Once again – when will Obama’s poll numbers match the hype? If he can’t be competitive with Hillary now, how can he expect to compete when the media stops writing their glowing stories and starts asking the tough questions? Five months of hype and he has yet to emerge as a serious competitor against Hillary – the Obama team must be a little frustrated.
Senator McCain might be able to win average Americans over and is arguably America's greatest statesman. But he can't win over the hearts of his own party.
Friday, April 6th Senator Orrin Hatch (UT) spoke to a government class at the University of Utah. When asked about campaign finance he said McCain-Feingold was "inexcusable". He went on to say he I think "McCain didn't even know what was in the act."
Republicans have despised McCain's former maverick attitude. Although the Senator from Arizona has worked to mend ties with his party, they won't forgive him for McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act.
The Gallup poll was for three days through April 5 -- and Obama's 1st-quarter numbers were not released until April 5, setting off a flood of positive coverage. The poll is already outdated.
one qualifer should be added about the gallup poll; it surveyed adults, not registered voters or likely voters. asking a national sample of adults who'd they vote for is more likely to give you misleading/skewed results than the latter two samples. on that point rasmussen has a poll just out of democratic likely voters where clinton has lost nearly ten percentage points and is now only five points ahead of obama.
Allow me to correct this nonsense about Obama and national polling put forth by the Clinton people,
4/02-05
Clinton 34%, Obama 29%, Edwards 15%
and he's ahead by 12 points in SC.
Obama surges ahead of Clinton in South Carolina poll. Obama leads with 34 percent of the Democratic primary vote, followed by Clinton with 20 percent