{"id":16502,"date":"2008-08-06T16:35:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-06T20:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16468.html"},"modified":"2008-08-06T16:35:30","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T20:35:30","slug":"on-obama-mccain-polls-it-depends-on-the-meaning-of-squeaks-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/on-obama-mccain-polls-it-depends-on-the-meaning-of-squeaks-by\/","title":{"rendered":"On Obama-McCain polls, it depends on the meaning of ‘squeaks by’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Lifetime Networks released a national poll of women and their presidential preferences. Time’s Mark Halperin said Barack Obama “edged out<\/a>” McCain in the poll. Obama’s lead? 11 points. “Edged out” made it sound like it was close. It wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Similarly, CNN characterizes Obama’s five-point national lead as “squeaking by<\/a>” McCain. <\/p>\n

The race between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama is extremely tight, according to the latest CNN “Poll of Polls.” Just five points separate the two candidates — Obama’s 48 percent to McCain’s 43 percent, with 9 percent undecided.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Atrios put it<\/a>, “While it might cause an ulcer, I do sorta hope that for a brief time McCain holds what will be described as a ‘tremendous’ 5 point lead or something similar.”<\/p>\n

This seems to happen quite a bit. According to Chris Matthews, when McCain holds a six-point lead with a given demographic, it’s significant. When Obama holds a six-point lead, it’s “almost … negligible<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

It’s largely a function of expectations, I suppose, but it’s getting kind of silly. Sure, I’d be delighted, and feel a lot less stress, if Obama were cruising with a 20-point lead right now. But it’s almost as if news outlets are trying to convince people<\/a> that a six-point lead against one of the nation’s best-known, media-loved politicians, who has spent every day for weeks bashing the hell out of his less-known Democratic challenger is some kind of disaster.<\/p>\n

It’s not.
\n
\nHere’s what we know. Obama leads by six in the new AP poll<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Solid margins among women, minorities and young voters have powered Barack Obama to a 6 percentage point lead over John McCain in the presidential race, according to a poll released Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Obama is ahead of his Republican rival 47 percent to 41 percent, The Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed. The survey was taken after the Democratic senator from Illinois had returned from a trip to Middle Eastern and European capitals, and during a week that saw the two camps clash over which had brought race into a campaign in which Obama is striving to become the first African-American president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…by five in the CNN poll<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…and by five in the new Time poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After two weeks of sharpened attacks between the campaigns, Barack Obama is maintaining a narrow 5% lead over John McCain in the race for the White House, a new TIME poll shows. Overall, the poll shows Obama leading McCain 46% to 41% when undecided voters with a slight preference are included (the margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points). That gap is the same as the presumptive Democratic nominee held in June.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCain going negative last week seemed to help him<\/a>, but Obama is swinging back this week. With that in mind, the polls will probably continue to fluctuate for a while.<\/p>\n

Kevin summarized<\/a> the landscape pretty well yesterday: “Obama is taking some lumps right now, but he’s quietly building up an effective ground game and raising trainloads of money for the fall. There’s no need to panic over a few days of weak polling.”<\/p>\n

Agreed, especially when the polling isn’t that<\/i> weak. I’m not as confident as some that the election will work out fine for Dems, but I’ve lost count how many items I’ve seen in traditional news outlets over the last several days about the shockingly-small leads — mid-single digits — Obama currently has.<\/p>\n

There’s just no reason for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Lifetime Networks released a national poll of women and their presidential preferences. Time’s Mark Halperin said Barack Obama “edged out” McCain in the poll. Obama’s lead? 11 points. “Edged out” made it sound like it was close. It wasn’t. Similarly, CNN characterizes Obama’s five-point national lead as “squeaking by” McCain. The race between Sens. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}