The anybody-but-Hillary leftist-behinds will begin to slam TPM-EC for showing its extreme pro-Hillary bias by reporting this fact in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

I can't wait for about three more months when all the anybody-but-Hillary's are so over.

I see Eric is still spinning polls on behalf of Clinton.

As far as I can tell, the last AP/Ipso poll was taken at the beginning of October. As we have documented before, the polls taken during October indicated that Clinton had increased her lead as of mid-late October. But her lead seems to have recently decreased, about back to where it stood at the beginning of October. This AP/Ipsos poll is consistent with that overall picture.

Of course, that recent decrease in Clinton's lead may not be directly attributable to the debate, and actually seems to have started before the debate. But Eric boldly claims this poll "shows that Hillary Clinton has yet to feel any damage at the national level from last week's debate," and as noted it does not (at best it is neutral, and at worst it helps confirm a dip in her lead since mid-late October).

Mich

I stand humbled and corrected in the face of such Qixotic determination.

Have a nice election ;-)

Survey taken November 5-7 so it was after the debates.

Do call us when you have some news, won't you?

Hey keith, there was a piece on npr about obama this morning that I think you should listen to and drop a dime with whoever to address what was raised in the piece. Obama didn't look bad, but he would look a heck of alot better if he took care of what was raised in the piece. FYI.

DTM,

"As we have documented before"

"we" ?

"we" should check this link:
http://www.pollster.com/08-US2-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

At least it seems "we" have gotten past the "polls don't mean anything" meme.

Michael:

I presume you are referencing the note to the Iowa woman's brother who's working to keep health insurance while fighting lymphoma, but correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure the campaign is working on addressing the issue in its own way and doesn't need my advice (i'm just a volunteer) on how to handle these things. Plus, from my read of the article, she wasn't upset or bothered about it. Now, as for the waitress, that's a whole other story.

Yep, just an fyi. Also, agreed on observation, just an fyi. Wasn't the waitress thing pathetic. It totally shows someone out of touch.

Thanks for posting the link LJ. It appears AP's analysis (that things are about the same) is spot on, in that, you really can't draw any conclusions about the impact, if any, the debate had on the polling. The only movement seems to be related to eliminating Al Gore from the poll (and redistributing his support to other candidates (or none)).

every time i see another national poll i groan. regardless of what it might say. i also pretty much just turn off and don't really pay attention.

i don't really fault tpm for reporting polling data - i love that tpm is a resource that reports all polling data as it becomes available. but i've long been annoyed with the media's obsession with national polling. unfortunately, tpm is no exception, devoting about half of all blog posts on presidential polls at election central to national polls.

i just wish tpm would do more analysis when it comes to polling data (so i don't have to go anywhere else because i love tpm so much and because i'm kinda lazy). put it into useful context. factor in the timelines in which the priamries and caucuses will occur. factor in the superdelegates. but most importantly factor in the proportionality (and 15% rule) of delegate distribution. (and factor in whether or not a state will be stripped of its delegates for breaking the calendar.)

something like the bar graphs at the wikipedia page for dem primary polling would be great. instead of just falling in to the trap of letting each new poll result be reported within its own context and limiting analysis to trends (and echoing the way the rest of the media will be reporting the 'news'), plug the data into the running tally of what it means for delegate distribution while still keeping an eye on what coming in first means for grabbing headlines and such.

i'd really like to see something like that alongside the tpm poll tracker. am i alone in this? i might be. i honestly can't say.

hadenough wrote on November 8, 2007 12:41 PM:

DTM,

"As we have documented before"

"we" ?

"we" should check this link:
http://www.pollster.com/08-US2-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

At least it seems "we" have gotten past the "polls don't mean anything" meme.

Good luck, Hadenough, getting anything, no matter how obvious, to sink into Mr "As-we-have-documented", who is pretty much on my "ignore" list, as it is a waste of time to try to deal with those who Dissemble To Mindlessness...

Yeah, dcshungu is back. What are you going to spin for us today, oh great spin master?

Anonymous wrote on November 8, 2007 1:14 PM:

Yeah, dcshungu is back. What are you going to spin for us today, oh great spin master?

Do you mean, in addition to what the numbers have already made quite clear? Nada. I am here just to start a virtual brawl, and get my adrenanline up...:-)

DTM,

while a useful resource, pollster.com is as chockfull of (mostly) useless national polling data as anywhere else.

but to be clear i believe that the predictive value of polling is actually well-founded. the predictive value of national polling however, is nil.

i don't think there is anything wrong with electoral horse-race reporting in and of itself. the problem is with electoral reporting that emphasizes the horse-race to the exclusion of substantive policy and political reporting. that is not a charge i would level at tpm.

reporting the horse race is fine but the candidate selection process isn't the kentucky derby. or even the triple crown. it's actually more akin to the winston cup (or whatever they're calling it these days). it is a series of races. and what place you finish in each of the races (how many points you get) is what's important, not just who comes in first.

DTM,

You say in your first post that the AP/Ipsos poll was taken in the beginning of Oct, when they actually say it was taken in the days after the Oct. 30 debate.

What gives?

Do you really think Giuliani is ahead, despite being far behind in both Iowa and New Hampshire?

Same thing applies to the Dems to some extent. National polls are less than useless.

pacc, you are a douche bag.

Keith, doesn't that excuse sound so much like, who, uh the king. Of course, blame someone else, anybody, don't take any responsibility. Also, you keep referring to the article, you should listen to the piece. There probably is some ipod thing so that you can listen to it. It was much more powerful than reading an article. Obama came off really, really well and not in a fake way, like clinton. I really felt awful for that woman and obama was so sincere, that's why I brought the issue to your attention earlier. I was not "trying to tell you what to do or tell you to tell them what to do." I just thought that someone would want to know about it if they didn't know about it already.

Clinton sounded bad and you are right on the observation concerning what the waitress said, it kind of dovetails into failing to tip, that's why the excuse really sounds bad. The issue wasn't even on clinton's radar screen, which speaks volumes about the person, and then she kept using the waitress as an example in stump speeches. It really didn't sound good.

I'll be most eager to see the obnoxious colonpowwow's excuses next November when (if nominated) Hillary loses to the Republicans. Won't really be of much consequence for Democrats since if she's nominated we get a Republican anyway.

loki,

Actually, I acknowledged that the last AP/Ipsos poll in early October and this poll in early November were indeed basically the same. But I also noted the fact that aggregations of the other October polls showed Clinton's lead growing between the beginning of October and mid-late October, then shrinking a bit going into the beginning of November. Obviously, that hypothesis of an up-and-down trend in October is consistent with polls that show basically the same numbers at the beginning of October and beginning of November (because up and then down gets you back to the same spot).

As for Eric's spin: that possibility of an up-and-down trend in October is why comparing this poll to a poll from early October does not prove Eric's point. To make this even simpler, to show the immediate effect of an event, you need to look at the polls immediately before and immediately after the event. Eric is looking at a poll pretty soon after the event, but the earlier poll he is looking at is not immediately before the event (it is about a month before).

Finally, I actually wouldn't expect any direct effect in national polls from something like one of these debates, because too few people watch. So in my view it isn't a question of time lag--I doubt a direct effect will happen at all.

But there could of course be indirect effects, such as through news coverage of the debate, press releases based on the debate, ads based on debate, news coverage of the ads and press releases, and on and on. Just like in fact we saw--there were debate-related ads, releases, and stories coming out all last week, and here we are still talking about it.

So if you are asking me how long it would take for the sum total of all those indirect effects to show up in polls--who knows? For all we know there could still be indirect effects occuring weeks or months later. Moreover, other events are going to happen, so any ongoing indirect effects of the debate may be difficult or even impossible to detect.

In the end, I should note that I am not saying we can tell already the debate had a negative effect, directly or indirectly, and we may never know for sure. All I was objecting to is Eric declaring that this poll shows there was no such negative effect, which is not true.

By the way, immediately after the debate I commented about this in some places, and I noted that when the dominant press narrative changes from "frontrunner is inevitable" to "frontrunner slipping", the new negative coverage can help cause a slip in the polls. The press will often then use that slip in the polls to justify its "frontrunner is slipping" narrative, creating a negative feedback loop (the opposite of the positive feedback loop that often helped build up the frontrunner's poll numbers in the first place).

So for a good example of that sort of thing, see here:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6754.html

DTM,

that the predictive accuracy of pre-election polling increases substantially the closer you get to the election does not mean that polling two months out has "very little predictive value". polling two months out might indeed have very little predictive accuracy in comparison to the predictive accuracy of polling two weeks out but the accuracy of polling data is not limited to that relative metric. i would emphasize that methodology matters. not just in how a poll is conducted and its results interpreted but also (if not especially) for how its predictive accuracy is calculated.

it should also go without saying that predictive value is not the only value of polling.

dc, if she was just on her own, then of course she wouldn't pay for dinner, she would be comped but she would make sure to tip, if she cared. For what its worth, you have to get a visual on this, the whole campaign bus unloads into a small mom and pop diner in some small iowa town. The entire campaign is comped. Don't you think that she would make darn sure that they are tipped at least? You'll probably say no, and I would wager a bet that either you never worked your way through college waiting tables or you are just stretching for your candidate.

Then on top of it on the campaign trail she's including the waitress in her speech and talking about how she cares for the little people, but she didn't care enough to make sure the campaign tipped the staff? It's just a character thing and it bugs me, because I busted my a** trying to earn my way through college on tips and got stiffed all the time. Other people could care less, but it bugs me.

Michael wrote on November 8, 2007 4:30 PM:

dc, if she was just on her own, then of course she wouldn't pay for dinner, she would be comped but she would make sure to tip, if she cared. For what its worth, you have to get a visual on this, the whole campaign bus unloads into a small mom and pop diner in some small iowa town. The entire campaign is comped. Don't you think that she would make darn sure that they are tipped at least? You'll probably say no, and I would wager a bet that either you never worked your way through college waiting tables or you are just stretching for your candidate.

Then on top of it on the campaign trail she's including the waitress in her speech and talking about how she cares for the little people, but she didn't care enough to make sure the campaign tipped the staff? It's just a character thing and it bugs me, because I busted my a** trying to earn my way through college on tips and got stiffed all the time. Other people could care less, but it bugs me.

Michael, for what it is worth, this was an oversight, although one that would make someone campaigning for the "little guy" seem like a hypocrite. However, this was what it appears to be: An honest mistake. Everyone was too busy trying to have a picture perfect event, but they screwed up on the basic etiquette of restaurant dining: gotta tip if you wanna say "thank you"! Tip = Thanks In Payment.

They forgot their basic etiquette, that is all. It is no big deal, I think (I wonder whether they made up for it later)...

dcshungu et al,
You're "spinning" those damn facts and statistics about front-runner Hillary Clinton again! You dogs.

Ya know, if offering facts and statistics is now lableled "spin" among the Clinton Haters...
Then what in the world do they call their own posts when it consists of nothing but idiocy like this:
(whine)"You Clinton supporters just WATCH! Clinton will NEVER win, because ***I'M*** not going to vote for her."
LMFAO!

I just wanted to encourage y'all to keep up the great "spin."
These Loyal Bushie Clinton Haters exhaust me.

Michael wrote on November 8, 2007 4:52 PM:

dc, after my last post I checked the news stories and apparently they are saying that they paid and tipped, which seems odd based on what the waitress said. Maybe the manager pocketed it or whatever. The whole thing just seems strange. You should actually listen to the interview.

Also, unfortunately for clinton this happened before during the 2000 campaign and a few weeks after she took some heat she sent a savings bond as a tip. Seems kind of odd that it happened again. Bad luck I guess.

IMHO, this is a non-issue... Wait a minute! You say that TeamClinton said that they'd paid and tipped, and that it is the waitress involved who is contesting their version of the story? I got it...That waitress must be an Edwards' Fifth Column, planted in that restaurant to make Clinton look cheap, uncaring and hypocritical! ROTFLMAO!

Oh boy, I was trying to point out that the campaign is saying it paid. Again, listen to the interview, she wasn't critical of clinton. The waitress isn't contesting anything. What, are you guys/gals (I don't want to be charged with being sexist again) going to start lobbing bombs against the waitress? She was very nice. Jeez.

Turns out that the manager that verified HRC's version of the story was not on the premises that day (and thus has no first hand knowledge of the situation) and is an HRC supporter.

loki, (1) I wasn't referring to your post and (2) you call me a "tad unhinged" that's comical coming from you as evidenced by your post. I didn't see my posts as being unhinged at all. Not tipping is a character thing, if she didn't. If she did, its my bad based on what I saw and heard this morning and I wanted to point that out.

In any event, do I think she cares about the average working person, maybe a little, but not much, maybe just one sh*t. I think she is more concerned about power and personal aggrandizement, as opposed to doing anything good for the country. On the flip side, that one sh*t is alot more than any of the republicans currently running. I'd rather have any of the other dems running as the nominee, other than of course kucinich or gravel, than clinton. I think they all care alot more about the average working person than clinton does.

Not tipping is a character thing, if she didn't.

Hillary: At your service.

In any event, do I think she cares about the average working person, maybe a little, but not much, maybe just one sh*t. I think she is more concerned about power and personal aggrandizement, as opposed to doing anything good for the country. On the flip side, that one sh*t is alot more than any of the republicans currently running. I'd rather have any of the other dems running as the nominee, other than of course kucinich or gravel, than clinton. I think they all care alot more about the average working person than clinton does.

The rumblings of a head case. Michael, it seems to me like it's time for your benzodiezepines..."benzos", for short.