TPM Track Composite: Obama's Big Lead Holding Steady
Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama still holds a solid lead over John McCain, with the overall margin is unchanged from yesterday:
• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-43% Obama lead yesterday.
• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-45% Obama lead from yesterday.
• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-41% Obama lead yesterday.
• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 53%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.
• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.
Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.1%-42.5%, a lead of 7.6 points, compared to a 50.4%-42.8% Obama lead yesterday. The undecideds have increased by a total of 0.6%, but it's come equally out of both candidates' scores.
Late Update: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a new model that has been modified for an expected higher turnout. We will be using that second model, under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle. Plugging today's Gallup results for likely voters -- Obama 53%, McCain 43% -- into our calculations yields a revised composite of Obama 50.6%, McCain 43.1%. We'll be switching over to that likely-voter number in our composites from now on.
HOLY SHIT!!! look at missouri!!!!
October 13, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Show me," indeed!
October 13, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Landslide wave reaches ND. It is back into play.
In Public Affairs Institute at Minnesota State University Moorhead, Obama is shown with an edge against John McCain in a North Dakota poll. he survey shows Obama squeaking past McCain, 45 percent to 43%.
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=218215§ion=news
October 13, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gotta be a college prank by MN State, no? Those Minnesoootans just love goofing on North Dakotians!
October 13, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Drudge has no use for your numbers and fancy arithmetic.
http://pufferfish.typepad.com/
October 13, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama steady with nearly a 8 point lead is just where McCain wanted him...
Seriously did McCain really need to put that line in his speech, i guess he may be able to rally a few crazy people but most people look at it as a joke.
October 13, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uh Oh. I fear that McCain has us exactly where he wants us!
October 13, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
He thinks rope-a-dope is when your opponent has YOU huffing and puffing on the ropes. Nobody tell him, okay?
October 13, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
see what all that barn burning do to you, McCain should have took a page from Hillary and not pull a kitchen sink strategy with last week's fiasco of a mob rally campaign. But no, all his campaign spokes people would provided was an arrogant attitude nose turn up response when confronted by the media when they are the party that are suppose to convince us why we want them for 4 more years.
October 13, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where's Idiotic?
October 13, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
To hell with the tracking polls...SHOW ME MISSOURI Eric!!!
October 13, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
More results for today:
ABC/WaPo - Obama 53, McCain 43
InTrade - Obama 77.7, McCain 22.7
October 13, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
The nice thing is to see Obama over 50% in so many national and state polls.
As far as McCain, his best chance right now is for a national game changer. There isn't much he can do at the state level - there are too many leaks and he is behind in too many places.
Maybe McCain folks have realized that there is nothing they can do to change the game. Last week was an absolute disaster in terms of public perception and polling for them. So, they might just sit tight and not make waves and wait to see if external events change the tone of the race. That could be why they decided not to release a new economic strategy.
October 13, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like a real game changing strategy, one that didn't work out so well for Marie Antoinette as she waited for them to grease the guillotine.
October 13, 2008 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the primary McCain came back to win his party nomination but the guys he was up against were either flawed and unlikable (Mitt Romney) or ran bad campaigns(Guliani, Huckabee).
Now his campaign is trying to come from behind again except this time his opponant's campaign isnt like Romney who had the money but wasnt likable, or Huckabee who was likable but had no money.
BO is in a totally different league. BO is the kind of opponent you dont want to go up against because he has the money, likability, message and campaign apparatus. But most importantly he makes few mistakes and gets better as the campaign goes on.
McCain is running his campaign like its the primary still. Getting your base excited is like singing to the choir. He hasnt done anything to attract swing voters or Dems. What worked for him in the primary isnt working in the general election campaign and i think McCain and his campaign just figured that out with 3 weeks to go.
October 13, 2008 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's very surreal - I've not seen anything like this in a presidential campaign in my life. Maybe it happened and I wasn't paying attention. McLame isn't really running a campaign anymore - I can't figure out what exactly he's doing, but whatever it is, it is fatal for the Repugs -
October 13, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's hard to imagine Giuliani not leading the "unlikable" category!
October 13, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking of which, I caught one or two of the Republican primary debates... sorta. By sorta I mean I couldn't watch them through. Too painful. Unwatchable. Those were not so much of debates as... name-calling. Oh wait, that's what McCain is still doing...
October 13, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I've identified this forum's favorite poster, "idiotic":
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
"The highly accurate IBD/TIPP poll has started today with its daily tracking of likely voters. Just off the press: Obama 45; McCain 43; and 13 percent unsure. The poll of 825 likely voters has an error margin of +/- 3.5 percentage points. Also, McCain has a 48-41 lead among investors with 10 percent not sure. All this is good news for McCain."
[posted by Larry Kudlow, 10/13/08 03:22 PM]
[IBD/TIPP = Investor's Business Daily/TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics]
October 13, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know this isn't to the present point of BO's growing lead in the polls-how about that!!
But I have to comment on the fact that Sarah Palin yesterday was wearing a rather large polar bear pin as she roiled the political waves in front of the most base among the base.
Aren't those the same polar bears she took off of Alaska's endangered list! Don't worry, when they're gone her pin will remain.
October 14, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink