Better, Eric: at least this time you acknowledged the basic facts.

Now if we could just get you to drop your editorial adjectives and adverbs (in this case, "wide" and "slightly").

and the Rasmussen Reports shows her holding steady. The MSM is frightened to death of Hillary. I still don't understand all the fear of the Clintons. 1993 thru 2001 were good times for this country; budget surplus, strong dollar, prosperity, low inflation. There is a poll out that shows a majority of Americans feel that this country is on a downward slope. We'll find out won't we,

Seth H.,

As I commented immediately after the debate, it seemed to me the national press was ready to move on to Act II of their narrative and start trying to bring Clinton down to earth. I also hypothesized that their negative coverage could lead to a dip in the polls for Clinton, which the press would then use to further rationalize their new narrative, setting off a vicious cycle to match the virtuous poll-coverage cycle that they used to build up Clinton in Act I.

And so I see CNN in this case as just playing their part in this all-too-predictable dynamic. But in the end, it is still all just going to come down to what people decide in the last few days before voting.

Even when he's saying something I agree with, Bill Schneider is still an imbecile. All the fake gravitas of Russert without Russert's brains (and that's not meant to imply that Russert has brains.)

That said, if Schneider says it, you know its becoming CW. Not because Schneider makes the CW but because he's said anything that wasn't.

If you look at when these polls were taken, its clear Hill's mo was slowing before the debate. I strongly suspect that that's what had her rattled and why they started spinning pre-debate. No doubt Penn's internals identified hunderds of different microdemographics with oh-so-clever names and about 30-40 people each where she was slipping.

Oh, and way to disprove the frequent bias accusations there, Eric.

Funny, when these polls came out last month you were calling them as outliers. You were talking about this and the ABC/Washington Post polls as evidence of her dominance. Now they are in line and the race remains unchanged? Funny how that works.

There's a headline on a site right now "Citigroup fighting for its financial life". Stan O'Neal of Merrill didn't go around his board to Wachovia to explore a merger because things were great at Merrill. Merrill is fighting for its financial life. Who do we want to be President if the country is financially collapsing and China quits lending?

You didn't answer the question - who? The dow is up 9% in dollar terms but has a negative return in Euros. I just got a call from someone who is losing everything. Who is going to guide us through this? I don't know the answer.

Bush-Lite and her corporate media allies want you to hate republicans but love the culture of corruption.

DTM wrote on November 5, 2007 5:52 PM:

dcshungu,

I thought you were relying on this aggregation:

http://www.pollster.com/08-US2-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

As I post (without yet including the CNN poll) they currently have Clinton at a 24.1% lead, not a 20% lead. That is a significant point because given their methodology, if the aggregate gap actually went down even just to 20%, that would obviously require a change in the trend lines (although not necessarily a deflection).

A possibility, but I am looking at ALL the aggregates from all sites (RCP, included) to say that HRC has a lead of about 20%. Had I been basing my figure on pollster.com data alone, I would have had HRC lead at ~25%.

Those who do "hard" science look at a lot of data before drawing conclusions. We do not do "Inferential Statistics", thank you.

Interesting. I am a waverer. A few weeks ago I thought I had accepted and might even be enthusiastic about Clinton. Her performance last week at the debate and her campaign's really whiny manipulative
"the guys were mean to me" original response completely turned me off. I also read the very good article about Obama's foreign policy in the NY Times Sunday magazine and that impressed me. If I am a bellwaether, this primary season is still up for grabs. Clinton just doesn't appeal to me at some fundamental level.

A pundette on Hardball put it well. Billary is a "candidate of convenience" for the democrats. The moment she shows weakness the Dems will run like scalded dogs (that last is mine..she wasn't a daughter of the confederacy)

Girlfriend had a rough week. She can't take too many more

Well, here's hoping.

Lyle @ November 5, 2007 5:15 PM: ". . . The MSM is frightened to death of Hillary. "

WTF?!?!? Clinton is their wetdream given life . . . She will further deregulate ownership rules AND provide eight years of programming by virtue of her last name alone AND all without having to pay lip service to a boat load of illiterate pseudo-religious fascits.

Corporate media affiliation/ownership of polling organizations explains her high polling numbers better than any single factor I can come up with.

Corporate conspiritor Clinton gives the media a raging hard-on . . . Frightened by posterior padded region. You've been hanging with dshungu WAY TOO MUCH.

So I'd have to conclude that this CNN poll is about right in line with most other polls taken in the last several weeks.That would probably tend to mean that any reports of Clinton's demise based upon this particular poll may be just a tad premature.

Here's the problem with your analysis and the aggregation of a series of polls--they have different methodologies. At best, you can extrapolate trends for each individual poll. So, the value of the CNN/Time and ABC/Washington Post polls are the trends they indicate (assuming they use the same methodology month-to-month). Here, the trend, based on this latest data point, is unfavorable to Clinton, but she still continues to enjoy a healthy lead. Same with the ABC/Washington Post poll.

The other point is none of these changes relate to the debate--at least not according to pollster.com.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/three_campaigns.php

Well, then according to realclearpolitics, Clinton's peak lead was about 27 points (back in mid-late October):

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/democratic_presidential_nomination-191.html

What I don't see at realclearpolitics OR pollster is anyone claiming, as you did: "Hillary's real lead has been around 20%."

So, where exactly did your 20% number come from?

And by the way, I know enough about the hard sciences to know that making up fake numbers because they fit your preferred hypothesis is not considered good scientific practice.

I now know better than to engage you in a debate of this sort, considering your inability to understand something as simple as I stand by my wager.

But if you know anything about the hard sciences as you claim then please go get your own numbers at the link below

http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/national-polls/cook-political-report-national-polls-presidential-polls.html

where Cook and Zogby have had HRC's lead down to as low as 13-15% and other polls, such as the Post/ABC, have had her lead up to as high as 33%. A fair reading of these numbers would suggest that her lead is somehwere between these extrema. CalD above independently came up with ~23%, which is quite close to my estimate of about 20% (hardly a significant difference). Quit ponitificating and come up with your own honest estimates. All the data are out there to allow you to make an educated guess. Use your head rather than you virtual mouth...

Finally, a caveat emptor: As I had stated before, despite having a sound statistical science basis, public opinion polling is measuring something that is highly volatile and this can change without notice, so, therefore, do keep that in mind before you start throwing (I'll be nice) lame accusations of manufacturing numbers, especially if you have no clue about the methodology that one is using. I would not sacrifice my integrity at the alter of any politician's ambitions, and I hope nor would you. Most people will see in polls whatever they want to see, but looking at enough polls can provide a fairly good idea of what is going on. Despite the loud noise emanating from the msm echo chamber, I have seen little that suggests that the dynamics of this race have changed.

Both of those "anonymous" posts are mine, and sorry for the re-post but I'd messed up the html tag for the 'blockquote' in the initial post.

Can we make the "Remember personal info?" feature work so that we can get rid of the ubiquitous "Anonymous" poster?

Bonsoir et bonne nuit!

I still don't think national polls a year ahead of the election count for much, but this must make Hillary's machine run in overdrive. A 7 percent loss is HUGE. Could it be that voters are paying attention and realize Hillary's game? Take no real positions, pander to everyone, Run against Bush in rhetoric, but support him on Iraq and Iran like the good Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton "girl" that she is.

Too funny to watch the hysterical Hillaryites try to explain away a major drop in the polls that they worship. Hillary isn't so inevitable, eh?

CalD,

I don't think there was a particular event in October. My sense is that Clinton was on a general upward trend in early-mid October as the national coverage was being dominated by claims of her inevitability.

dcshungu,

First, just because you brought it up again in this thread, I will once again document your previous error. You originally claimed: "Mark Blumenthal@pollster.com has maintained all along that the poll was a clear outlier". I have shown that is false using his 10/16 post (he affirmatively stated in his original post that we could NOT tell if it was an "outlier" and on 10/16 he stated it was merely on the high side given later polling). Of course the fact that he said he stood by his wager doesn't save your original "clear outlier" comment, because he never wagered that the poll in question was a "clear outlier." SO there you go: your error documented for about the fourth time now.

Second, so your "scientific" method is to take just a small subset of the many polls available and then make a wild guess at where in that range the lead might be? What is "scientific" about that?

Third, CalD was taking an average for October, not trying to find a peak in October (which CalD noted was probably higher in mid-October). Nonetheless, even CalD came up with a higher number than you. You say 3 points isn't significant, but actually with a full month's worth of polls it is. And the point remains the same: you have to get this number right if you want to make accurate assertions about trends.

OK, to sum up: we now have three rigorous attempts to deal with this issue: RealClearPolitics has the peak lead in October at about 27. CalD has the October monthly average lead at 23. pollster has the regression-formula lead at 24.

And dcshungu looks at numbers like 27, 23, and 24 and says ... 20. I guess you are using Karl Rove's math.

dcshungu, why do you do this to yourself? We all know what really happened here: you didn't get the 20 number from any sort of scientific analysis of prior polls. You came up with 20 because it was the number you needed to come up with to claim that a poll with only a 19 point lead was not significant. That is where the number 20 came from: from what you needed to support your talking point, and not actual analysis.

I know it, you know it, and now everyone else knows it. But I guess you are just incapable of admitting error--as in fact you have proved by refusing to admit you made an error on your "clear outlier" claim.

dc, relax. I am willing to bet, unless something really bizarre happens, clinton II will be leading the national polls by double digits until Iowa and maybe still leading by new hampshire. After that, who knows, but the national polls will show her leading big time up until then, so its kind of a waste of time to be arguing about polls at this point. Gee, I have an idea, let's talk about issues or other things, but then dc wouldn't have anything to talk about.