esrosedotblog

POLLING FEVER

I get all weak kneed at some polling result or other and someone has to pull be back from the brink and remind me that it ain't about the popular vote, it is the electoral that matters. Then they have to show me the composites. Then they have to remind me that it is fucking August. A crazy time.

That voice of reason is most often the famous 'kos' better known as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.

The big freakout
by kos
Wed Aug 20, 2008 at 10:07:40 AM PDT

So over at the post announcing the launch of my book, I saw a couple of people freaking out -- freaking out!!!! -- that McCain has the lead in some national polls.

So I sauntered over to Pollster.com to see what all the hoopla was about, and clicked through to their national polls page. Then I rolled my eyes when I saw that the poll causing such aneurysms was ....

A Zogby poll.

Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.

Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. So while it's not exactly a cakewalk, freaking out over single polls from shitty, discredited pollsters like Zogby is pretty pathetic.

We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. Freaking out over crappy pollsters is just lame. Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50.

I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't).

I used to be on the Zogby panel. It is easy to get on. All you have to do is sign up. In fact, the other day, they had a bulletin recruiting people for their polls. So guess what? I would think that any campaign worth its salt would sign up as many lopsided pollees as possible.

Anyway.

It's all about perspective.

Perspective.

Perspective.

Labels: poll