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Poll: Obama's Colorado Lead Shrinks; Half Say He's Too Inexperienced
One of Obama's key selling points has been that he has a plausible shot at winning Western states like Colorado -- but a new poll of that state finds that his lead over McCain there has just about evaporated, and half the state's voters are afraid he's too inexperienced to be President.
The latest numbers from Rasmussen: Obama 43%, McCain 41%, with a ±4% margin of error. A month ago, Obama was ahead 48%-42%.
From the pollster's analysis: "Still, 50% of Colorado voters think Obama is too inexperienced to serve in the White House, but 42% disagree."
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It's Rasmussen. From what I've seen, their polling always appears to have a Republican bias.
June 19, 2008 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not just republican, but right-wing. Ratsmussen was way off throughout the primaries and favored the clintons. Pathetic polling organization, but it is what it is. I take Ratsmussen with a grain of salt. One thing though, I hope mcbush is buying ratsmussen's crap. He will be dancing all the way to defeat if he follows ratsmussen's polls.
June 19, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
a lead is a lead.
Rasmussen polls are skewed because he uses demographic makeups that are outdated.. dont forget this was the man who said the GOP Generation would rule the next 30 years in american politics.
more people voted for just Obama in the primary then voted for all the republicans COMBINED!!
so there is gonna be a huge amount of new voters that polling firms wont pick up unless they use new demographic trends
June 19, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not great news but it's early.
If it looks like that on 10/1/08, then I'll be worried.
June 19, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
We want Eric to do the next TPMtv update
ERIC
ERIC
ERIC!
June 19, 2008 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Breaking News:
McCain is going to take public financing.
June 19, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Breaking News:
McCain is going to take Geritol.
June 19, 2008 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Six point lead goes to a three point lead in a poll with a 4 point margin of error. In June. Yawn.
June 19, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric reminder...CLINTON LOST
As fro rassmussen they are a reTHUGlican outfit, hopefully with their hireing of poblano he will set them straight!
June 19, 2008 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its one poll, it means little.
June 19, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, polls with Obama ahead in key battle ground states get no headlines but polls that show Obama behind or weakening do?
(see Quinnipiac polls of two days ago)
June 19, 2008 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
WTF is that all about?
Me thinks the TPM crew feels that good news generates fewer hits whereas Repub shilling gets us all riled up to post.
If the GOP Rasmussen poll shows this, add 4 or 5 points to the Dem.
June 19, 2008 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
pretty much
June 19, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Turnout, turnout, turnout. The crosstabs show Rasmussen predicts GOP turnout to be greater than it was in previous polls.
June 19, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too inexperienced to be president??? and they think McCain will make a better President? They're crazy.
June 19, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric: As I keep saying about similar posts, polls are fuzzy snapshops. Very fuzzy ones.
When editing poll stories, I always made it a point to change the phrase "the results show ..." to "the results SUGGEST ..."
Look at the 4-point margin of error. That is the limit of accuracy Rasmussen is willing to claim (and even that, only 19 times in 20).
Assuming last month's poll had the same size sample, it is conceivable that the reality on the ground is that Obama has actually INCREASED his support in Colorado, from 44 to 47 per cent.
Your assertion that "a new poll of that state finds that his lead over McCain there has just about evaporated" is simply not supported by the data.
I'm not suggesting I know whether his lead is shrinking or not.
But neither does Rasmussen, even if they pretend otherwise.
Be a bit more credulous in reporting their (or any pollster's) conclusions.
And ALWAYS factor in the margin of error before asserting that any kind of trend exists.
June 19, 2008 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bit of bad advice there. Be LESS credulous.
June 19, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can see everything you need to know about margin of error when two polls come out on the same day differing by 10 pts, and each claiming a margin of error of 4 pts.
These error margins refer only to one particular kind of error - statistical error from extrapolating to a large population from a small sample. However, there are other sources of error which they never mention. All polls contain a plethora of assumptions, mostly dealing with turnout of various groups, and these can be wildly inaccurate. There are also well documented biases, including selection bias, response bias, coverage bias and others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll
Monitoring a single poll over time can be useful for tracking purposes, since it is likely that their biases will at least be consistent, so a shift over time is more likely to be real. But making a big deal out of a shift of 4 pts in a poll with a 4 pt margin of error is laughable.
June 19, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
At best, we're talking about the starting line, that's all. No one's done any campaigning. No one's done anything stupid--errr...wait. Check the wire again, McCain might have, you know, spoken.
Point is, it's too freakin' early for all this obsessive poll watching. Let's at least wait until there's a Veep attached...
June 19, 2008 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm so looking forward to four more months of Eric's breathless the-sky-is-falling reporting.
June 19, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe that Obama is still ahead.
HOWEVER, PLEASE DO NOT BE CONFUSED. He is still not a winner. He has a lead, but no one has voted yet.
NO ONE HAS VOTED YET.
Obama's position on FISA will be a defining moment.
June 19, 2008 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why all the hatred for Rasmussen? I don't remember them being a horrible polling organization. They've been putting Obama way ahead of McCain in practically every poll released since Hillary conceded. But of course people don't give a shit about that.
Look, I'm a hardcore liberal Obama supporter, but I'm not going to attack Rasmussen simply because one poll has Obama losing a couple points in one poll in one state. Let's get fucking realistic.
Polls fluctuate. There's over four freaking months til the election. Let's just be rational here, seriously.
June 19, 2008 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry, Eric, I try not to harp on you and Greg, but this is fucking ridiculous. The MARGIN OF ERROR is LARGER than the CHANGE. There's no story here. at. all. To say his lead there has "just about evaporated" is just silly.
June 19, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
meh, I have to agree. I am usually a defender of the reporting here and I expect a certain amount of hyperbole in the headlines anywhere - but yeah, this is a non-story. The fact that Obama hasn't increased his lead the way he has in the rest of the state polls since getting the nomination is a little newsworthy but otherwise this is a little 'sky-is-falling' bit of interpretation.
On the topic of Rasmussen, they tend to skew a little conservative relative to actual results. That is actually a good thing, I think. If they are showing a 2 pt lead in CO, Obama is likely doing a bit better than that. Considering that he hasn't really campaigned much in the state since January and Bush won by 5 pts in '04, I will take the 2 pts at this point and be happy.
June 19, 2008 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ohhh, one other thing. Ratsmussen is getting soooo desperate that they are push polling. See the earlier post on florida. I bet they had some bs question that obama was a terrorist because of the fist bump or something. They have been getting progressively worse over the years and were god awful the last presidential election, probably to try to boost the king. After this year, I will bet a lunch that ratsmussen is out of business. Any takers?
June 19, 2008 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to fivethirtyeight.com, an election prediction website which is run by a pro-Obama statistics expert named Nate Silver, Rasmussen is the third most accurate pollster in America (after Selzer that does mainly Iowa only and Survey USA). Rasmussen is more accurate than Quinnipiac and PPP and way more accirate than ARG.
Every time Rasmussen comes out with a poll that some Obama supporters don't like, they start saying how supposedly biased in favor of Repubs Rasmussen is, which is objectively untrue. Funny how when ARG or Dem-affiliated PPP come out with a poll favorable to Obama, the Obamaphiles don't mention anything critical about those subpar polling outfits.
June 19, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Precisely my point. (See above). This Rasmussen hatred is pathetic.
June 19, 2008 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. As someone who has been polled by Rasmussen, I can tell you that they are exceptionally biased. The poll question to me regarding the Virginia governor's race between Tim Kaine and Jerry Kilgore was heavily skewed towards Kilgore, specifically with regards to taxes. Rasmussen is a right-wing, Fox News-associated poll. From personal experience, they are indeed a "horrible polling organization". They used *very* biased wording in their poll. And that is being "realistic".
June 19, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rassmussen has consistently polled Bush job approval ratings above everyone else, including FAUX.
~
June 19, 2008 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I live in Colorado and McCain has been advertising heavily here so this may be more than margin of error/bad polling. As Obama doesn't start advertising until tomorrow this may still be meaningless though.
June 19, 2008 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The polling accuracy results are what they are and, if you visit the pollster rating section on fivethirtyeight.com, you'll see that Rasmussen is one of the best -- better than ARG, PPP, Quinnipiac, Gallup, ABC/Washington Post, CBS/NYT, Fox, LA Times, Resaerch 2000, and many others.
The proof is in the pudding with pollsters and Rasmussen beats almost all others in predicting outcomes. How does Rasmussen do it? I don't know. And Survey USA's robopolls are even more accurate.
Polls won't start to matter much till the VPs are selected.
June 19, 2008 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to post the same thing twice - but there is a trend here were a positive Obama poll is ignored and then a negative one gets a hyperbolic headline. I'm not sure what that means - for all I know Eric is trying to get us to donate to Obama - but the pattern has been around since the primaries.
June 19, 2008 9:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The poll of polls is the best one to follow...
June 19, 2008 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
A month ago, the poll was of a hypothetical race. Today, it is the real deal.
June 19, 2008 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is hardly what you would call popular in Colorado
When Obama starts campaigning here, his numbers will go back up, Rasmussen and Kleefeld's handwringing notwithstanding
Relax
There's a Democratic Convention here in August, remember?
June 20, 2008 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
We've got to remember to thank Hillary for putting forth the "inexperience" argument so forcefully. Among other things...
June 20, 2008 8:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yeah, no one would have thought of it otherwise. If only Senator Clinton had made no arguments against her opponent like a good supportive woman would, there would be no arguments against Obama whatsoever. This crazy thing called running for office should be abolished, once it's clear who the coolest guy in class is.
June 20, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am in Colorado and I think this is BS. I was at my caucus and I know that it is at least not what most dem's think. He won a huge majority here. I do think he needs to campaign here so people will get to see him and hear him. I think he will be able to win Colorado. I am not looking for the 'experience' of the regular Washington politician anyway... look at the mess we are in... how much has that helped or is it the cause of the mess?
June 20, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink