Comments on: Explaining the Polls (Or, Maybe Not)

by: Steven Taylor

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 22:00:53 +0000

But Paul, you are missing my point–the tracking poll is a three-day rolling average.

by: Paul

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 21:43:42 +0000

” Really, by the time the story was fully in the consciousness of the news-consuming pubic, the numbers tunr a bit more Bush-ish. ”

Um doc- that was my point.

by: Paul

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 21:43:02 +0000

“Really, by the time the story was fully in the consciousness of the news-consuming pubic, the numbers tunr a bit more Bush-ish”

ahem- Um doc- That was my point. maybe read me again.

by: The Glittering Eye

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 21:22:18 +0000

RCP trends
I’ve been looking at the most recent set of poll compilations from Real Clear Politics. Clearly, the current trends are not particularly good for Kerry and he’ll have to do something to change that. But I’ve been looking at something…

by: Steven Taylor

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 20:38:26 +0000

One theory is that generically speaking (i.e., not jsut this election) is that polling over weekends tends to pick up more Democrats than Republicans due to lifestyle issues–most specifically that because Reps are in the aggregate more affluent, they tend to be out of the house more on weekends. So the hypothesis goes, in any event.

by: Dave Schuler

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 20:33:21 +0000

I completely agree with your margin of error point. But margin of error doesn’t explain periodicity. Your point that tracking polls favor Kerry over the weekends is, of course, true. But I’m seeing if I can reason out why. And that’s why I suggested the “talking heads” theory.

by: Paul

Sat, 30 Oct 2025 19:25:08 +0000

You have a point about the moe BUT since Kerry starting hammering Bush, we went DOWN 3 points, one point per day. That matches real life eg the storying crumbling.

It would be a REAL hard sell to get me to believe that the moe is such that the story is really helping him and the graph should show him going up one point per day.

In another note, I have not looked yet and I don’t know if it is up but the WaPo tracking poll might give us the first look at “the bin laden effect.”