Apparently Ahh-Nuld’s wife Maria Shriver just showed up at an Obama event with Oprah and added her support to his campaign. I’m not sure that’s surprising in itself. It’s sort of a Kennedy fad at the moment. And I don’t think there’s ever been any sense she changed her politics just because her husband’s a Republican. Several readers just wrote in to say that saw it at an Obama rally telecast on CSPAN. And I’ve confirmed.
As you’d expect there have been a flood of major media polls out today of the Democratic race. So let’s round them up. (Note that I’m not including today’s reports from the two daily tracking polls being kept by Gallup and Rasmussen.)
ABC/WaPo: Clinton 47%, Obama 43%
Pew: Clinton 46%, Obama 38%
NYT/CBS: Clinton 41%, Obama 41%
USAToday/Gallup: Clinton 45%, Obama 44%
There’s a little nugget buried down deep in the CBS write-up of the story that a number of you have mentioned …
The picture in the states voting on Super Tuesday is not nearly as close as the overall picture and offers some good news for Clinton. Among voters in those states, she leads Obama, 49 percent to 31 percent, with 16 percent still undecided.
Remember, the overall poll has the two tied at 41%. So assuming there were respondents in rough proportion to the number of people from states voting Tuesday, Obama must be way up in the non-Super Tuesday states in order to be so far behind in the others.
This would not follow the pattern we’ve seen over recent months that has Obama improving his standing with voters once the race becomes actively contested in a given state. What’s more the result at least seems to be belied by state by state poll results that show Obama in a strong position in a lot of the Super Tuesday states.
That’s all a long way of saying that I’m not sure what those numbers mean. But there is one key point to keep in mind. The margin of error for this poll was 5% — with a survey of 491 Democratic primary voters. But the margin of error for a subset of the total survey is higher than that for the total. In this case, probably substantially higher since in this case we’re probably dealing with not many more than 200 respondents.
So, could mean anything, but the sample size is so small that spread just isn’t very reliable.
This morning’s CNN poll has Obama up by 3 over Clinton. To the best of my knowledge that’s the first one ever showing him on top. And it comes on a slew of national polls out yesterday showing the two either tied or with Clinton slightly ahead.
A number of polls now show Clinton and Obama in a dead heat in California. But a number of you have written in to note that large vast numbers of the states voters have already cast their ballots, and that they did so when Clinton still held a substantial lead. The Christian Science Monitor recently quoted a state election official who believes that just under half the votes in the state will be cast early. In other words, a substantial proportion of this election will have been ‘held’ when Clinton was way ahead. So a poll taken today doesn’t give you a full picture; indeed, it may be substantially distorted in Obama’s favor.
But don’t be so sure. I have not looked at the methodologies yet of the various California polls. But the same issue arose in Florida. And when I looked into how the pollsters were doing their surveys they were taking this into account. They were asking some form of who will you vote for or who did you vote for if you’ve already voted.
I would certainly assume they’re doing the same thing in California. (If anyone can point me to specific information about the questions for the California polls, please let me know.)
Now, looking back, McCain did seem to outperform his late poll numbers, if only by a couple points. And my recollection is that the tie it looked like going into election day was based on Romney’s late surge whereas McCain had been up in much of the early voting period. So it’s possible that may be evidence of a early voting effect skewing the numbers. But the polls were bouncing around a lot at the end. And it’s at least as likely that it’s just the polls getting close to the mark but not quite there.
In any case, the point is, if you’re figuring that early voting will skew tomorrow’s numbers. Don’t be so sure. The pollsters know about early voting too and I believe they’re taking steps to factor that in.
We have half a dozen polls out on the Democratic race in New Jersey in the last two days. And the state definitely appears to be in contention, though with Clinton still with a lead in most polls. Today’s Zogby poll has a dead heat at 43%. Quinnipiac has a 5 point margin for Clinton; and Strategic Vision, a Republican outlet, has 6 points. Yesterday, Mason-Dixon had an 8 point spread for Clinton and Monmouth University had a whopping 14 points, with Clinton hitting the 50% mark. See the poll details here.
Wikileaks has unearthed the 2005 Rules of Engagement for the U.S. military in Iraq–which allowed for cross-border raids into Iran or Syria.
A few more numbers. Today’s Gallup tracking poll is up and it has a slight notch back up for Hillary. From 2 points to 4.
Looking over the bigger picture, there were now a total of 6 non-tracking polls released over the weekend and until today. The highest Obama lead is 6 and the highest Clinton lead is 8. But the more recent of the polls seems to favor Obama, though I should note they’re all pretty closely clumped together in time. And a very similar picture seems clear in California. A scattering of polls, which taken together show something like a tie but with the trend moving in Obama’s direction.