Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Internals on Some of These Polls Are ... Worse for McCain

That new national Fox poll that has Obama ahead of McCain by just 3 points is a little ... funny.

Fox had Obama up by 9 a week ago and the conservative blogosphere is going gaga about this poll. Let's crack it open a bit, shall we?

Last week, Fox's sample had 44.9% Dems vs. 38.6% GOPs. This week? 42.6% vs. 40.9%. Interesting. That's why some pollsters, like Rasmussen, weight by Party ID. The majority of the "shift" we are observing in Fox's numbers are due to changes in the construction of their sample.

Meanwhile, the new ABC/WP tracker stays steady from yesterday at Obama +8. But that's not the REALLY bad news for McCain. The really bad news is that 94% of Obama supporters say they will "definitely" vote for him and an additional 5% say it is "unlikely" they will change their mind. Since he's at 52%, that makes John McCain's job over the weekend a bit harder. For purposes of comparison, 4% of McCain supporters say there is a "good chance" they will change their minds.

Happy Thursday!

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