Tag: polls

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Obamaians, don’t get your hopes up (too much)

It was mid-October 1992, and Bill Clinton led George HW Bush with 16 points in the polls. In the end, Clinton won the elections by 6 points. In 1999, Al Gore led George W Bush 51 to 40 points in at least one poll. In 1973, Jimmy Carter led Gerald Ford in one poll by 13 points; Carter finally won by just 2.

All this is meant to convey one message: Democrats, don’t you get your hopes up too much just yet.

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Polls? Big Black Holes!

I don’t believe the guys over at Fivethirtyeight.com, the people who say that they “do polls right”. I also don’t believe the aggregate of the polls at Realclearpolitics.com. Or Pollster.com. I don’t think neither of those companies or websites is correct, due to the Big Black Holes in this particular election.


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Are You Experienced?

A new Wall Street Journal / NBC poll (opens as Acrobat .pdf document) out today shows that a majority of voters questioned is comfortable with the idea of having Sarah Palin in the White House as vice-president, despite a “national debate” on whether she’s experienced enough for the job.

That’s very interesting. Because polls have for months been showing that voters are somewhat concerned over Barack Obama’s lack of experience. It is the very reason why Team McCain has from the start been highlighting Obama’s perceived “lack of experience”.  Obama selected Joe Biden, a Senator with 33 years of experience in foreign affairs, to be his running mate. That’s a lot of experience, but it hardly made a difference in the polls.

So what can we conclude from this? That experience is something that only troubles Obama? Or is experience simply not that important to voters?

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Closing the deal

Yesterday, I wrote an article called ‘Deconstructing Obama’. In it, I gave a very short rundown of the only strategy that seems to be left to McCain: go personal. The reason being that Obama has had the initiative since day one, it seems.

But perhaps I was wrong. The tracking polls are starting to show dents in Obama’s armour. Over at Real Clear Politics (I’m always careful with these guys as they’re clearly pro-GOP), the latest rundown of tracking polls shows that although Obama is still leading, the margins seem to be getting smaller, not bigger.

That spells trouble for Obama. Of course, Americans being Americans, I would not be surprised if they once again elect someone who will tear their country even further apart. Because that’s what Republicans do: they pretend to be all Christian morals, but before you know it, they’re out with TV-ads calling people traitors and sodomizing your 3-year-old.

Either way, Obama has not yet been able to close the deal and I’m afraid that that’s because people are still very doubtful of him. Of course, American pigheads being American pigheads, they keep noticing that Obama is black. Perhaps that’s it. It can’t be because of ideological reasons. Because how many average Americans read candidate platforms these days?

I‘ve said from day one, so even before the primaries, that Americans were very capable of electing a carbon copy of George W Bush into office. I also predicted that the election would be very close.

When the new King of Expectation beat the Oracle of Chappaqua, I said I was convinced that any generic Republican would win the election. Now, I’m going back to that position. I’ll be keeping it until Obama truly starts improving his poll numbers and significantly moves away from McCain.