Looks like they are running even in Virginia. The pundits predicted a horserace in Virginia, but to many of us who have lived here a long time, that situation is still surprising.

McCain has got to hate spending money to win Virginia. But he is going to have a hard time winning the election without the Commonwealth in his column.

McCain is sunk. Might as well start getting used to "President Obama".

Yes, that 17 point lead that Dukakis had ensured him the 1988 election against H.W. Bush. Oh, wait it didn't. I swear people with their polls.

"Funny - a lot of pundits were predicting as much as a 15% lead for Obama by now (after a big convention bounce)."

The GOP circulated a memo predicting 15%.

All it means is that there are fewer declared undecideds now, though it would be interesting to know how many say their vote may still change by November.

(FWIW, I've been of the opinion that if Obama doesn't break 50% in the polls by the end of the Summer, he's going to lose. We'll see if I'm right.)

Averaging together polls with different sample sizes, margins of error, methodology, and questions gives you a number that is completely meaningless.

This mostly true unless you know how to weight the numbers. Nate Silver over at 538 has a pretty elaborate model that weights pollster past performance, sample size, and age of the poll, then sanity checks it against state demographic data and the trendline in the national polls. All together it looks to be a good model that makes it easier to see through all the noise that you get looking at individual polls, which is quite prone to cherry picking. It will be interesting to see how well his model plays out compared to the final results.

" my hunch, based partly on the fact that Obama polled better in many primaries than he actually delivered."

I assume you are talking about this year's primaries, the ones where Dems came out as much as ten times as republicans did. If we saw huge numbers, often record breakers, in the primaries, you can assume even bigger numbers in the regular vote. That doesn't spell well at all for McCain.

however, only time will tell....

I assume you are talking about this year's primaries, the ones where Dems came out as much as ten times as republicans did. If we saw huge numbers, often record breakers, in the primaries, you can assume even bigger numbers in the regular vote. That doesn't spell well at all for McCain.

Except a similar thing happened in 1988 and that guy got a 15 point bounce out of his convention. Anybody remember the Dukakis administration?

No one, other than the GOP and GOP supporters, ever thought that there would be a big bounce (see David B's on-point post in this thread re fewer undecided voters]. It's all a game of expectations, as we know. Will the GOP be slitting their wrists if McCain does not get a double-digit bounce from his convention? Of course not.

I just don't see any dramatic movements in the polls in this election, unless there is some dramatic external event, or where one candidate really blows it. [McCain having a stroke during a debate; Obama referring to his secret uncle, Osama bin Laden, etc.]

If the Dems can get out the vote...keep a big majority of those who came out in the primaries, then he'll win. If Palin somehow energizes her base more than we expect, or, if--in the end--people are just unwilling to vote for someone with relatively little experince [or sadly, someone who is Black], or if the Obamomentum has faded too much, then McCain will win.

You want to put money on that conditional bet? Set a date and a method for averaging the polls. I'll give you 3:2 on doesn't break 50 --> Obama wins up to $300 ($200 on your end, of course).

I though that y'all bet beer. Wouldn't that be a six-pack to a four-pack?

The most accurate "predictor" of the winner of an election is an exit poll, as it is a survey of what has already happened, not of what people say will happen a few months down the road. Nevertheless, the exit polls in the 2004 Presidential race stated that Kerry won, 51-48, when, in fact, Bush won by a similar margin. (Here.) Likewise, as pointed out above, Obama did not poll nearly as well as exit polls indicated that he would. For some reason, it seems as if polls favour more liberal candidates, although that advantage does not materialise in the ballot box. Surely, this is another variable to correct for, which may be why DB said that Obama has to poll over 50% to have a chance at winning.

Here is a link to the McCain campaign's 15% memo.
Link

Mark Parsons, Dukakis didn't get anywhere near a 15% convention bounce. It was right around 7%, as is normal for all political conventions.

I predict that I'm not going to argue about the polls at this point in the campaign.

The numbers for Obama have been lower that most of us thought. But this could go either way. He's running far behind the "generic Democrat," and so the undecides have reason not to support him, and so will break for McCain. OR--The trend is so heavy for Democrats this year that down-ballot votes will carry over disproportionately for Obama.

Then again, perhaps Barr will win.

Jonathan Lund:

I don't vouch for Wikipedia, and they haven't sourced this. But this is what I get from their entry on "Michael Dukakis":

During this time, his 17-point lead in opinion polls completely disappeared as his lack of visibility allowed Bush to define the issues of the campaign.

David Bernstein:

gr, because I think the default for the undecideds/not completely decideds will be McCain, not Obama. my hunch, based partly on the fact that Obama polled better in many primaries than he actually delivered.

In point of fact, Obama did better in the primaries than the polls predicted. There were exceptions in specific states (NH being the most notable), but for the most part Obama beat his polls. The connection to his vaunted turnout operation is speculative, to the best of my knowledge, but not an unreasonable hypothesis.

The Ace:

If we saw huge numbers, often record breakers, in the primaries, you can assume even bigger numbers in the regular vote

Historically Democrats always turn out in large numbers in the primaries.

Reference 1

Reference 2

Those 3 terms of Democratic rule since 1968 have not borne out your theory.

Who hacked Ace's password and posted the substantive, civil comment?

Re: Yes, that 17 point lead that Dukakis had ensured him the 1988 election against H.W. Bush.

Which was early in the summer of 1988. This late in the game a consistently maintained lead, even a small one, does start to be moderately predictive of the election.

Re: 4.5%? That's a disaster in the making for the Dems

Unless you've invented new laws of arithmetic, 4.5% is a pretty respectable lead and absent some highly improbable electoral college shenanigans, it would be a victorious margin on election day. George W. Bush won in 2004 with a smaller lead than that.


Re: If Palin somehow energizes her base more than we expect,

Energizing a base does not win elections (though it may help fill the campaign coffers). Unless people are so energized they are doing something illegal, like voting, multiple times, an "energized" vote counts the same as a dispirited one. Now let me spell it out for the Right: McCain is blowing this election by toeing the Party Line. To win this one, he needed to pull a Nicholas Sarkoszy stunt and run against George W Bush-- hard against him. Yes, he would need to keep the SoCon stuff (pro Life etc.) because he does need those voters. But he should have come up with some sort of Nixonian plan to bring "Peace with Honor" while bringing the troops home, maybe even pulled an Ike by promising to go to Iraq and make a quick end to that war. And he should be highlighting his differences with Bush on taxes, global warming etc, and promising more of the same. Maybe he should even come up with a Heritage Foundation, Romneyesque plan for universal healthcare. McCain likes to poses as a new Teddy Roosevelt, but so far he falls way short. TR was a GOP progressive. McCain is offering the same old tired ideas along with bondage to the same old special interests and power brokers. He needed to be bold and radical this year-- a lot more bold than just picking an obscure women governor for VP. The GOP can have either the White House or it can have knee-jerk allegiance to the failed ideology of the past. It cannot have both. The GOP is where the Dems were thirty some years ago: they had reached the end of FDR's legacy and could no longer run against Hoover and the Depression. The GOP is at the end of Reagan's legacy, and can no longer run against Jimmy Carter and the 60s.