The Palin Bounce Arrives (updated)

By: faithfull
Published On: 9/4/2008 5:26:51 PM

Brace yourselves.
The bad news is, tomorrow's polling data will be the first to reflect the full impact of Governor Palin's uplifting screed against the common good in America. At an adjective-bursting 37.2 million viewers, Palin's speech will undoubtedly have meaningful impact on the polls. Likely, it will be good for McCain, as indicated by a new CBS poll showing the race 42-42 tie down from Obama+8 over the weekend. In the poll McCain also narrowed the "enthusiasm gap" from a 42 point Obama lead to just 20.

The good news?

1) Theres still two months to work your asses off so that Obama wins the state of Virginia and neither McCreepy or the Secessionist ever get near the White House.

2) Hitting the 4th and final day of their convention, McCain is getting his convention bounce (roughly 6 points on average), along with a VP bump.

3) McCain/Palin's gain in the CBS poll came mostly from pulling down Obama, not from improving their own numbers.

4) "What Nate at FiveThirtyEight said"-«:

If the polls don't move by tomorrow, then it's time for the Republicans to get a little nervous. If they don't move by Saturday, then it's time for them to get a lot nervous. But most likely they will move.

Then again, post the Palin selection, Gallup already had John McCain winning the Republican vote by something like a 90-7 margin. It's hard to do a lot better than that; Bush won the Republican vote 93-6 in 2004. So if this was a convention designed to appeal to the base, and the base had already gotten behind McCain, it's possible that there isn't that much ground to make up.


Update: Thanks to teacherken in the comments for pointing out the discrepancy in party ID from this poll and the last one.
874 Respondents
228 R = 26.2%
308 D = 35.24%
337 I = 38.55%

The NEW CBS Poll

691 Respondents

215 R = 31.11%
241 D = 34.07%
235 I = 34.00%

Republicans gained 5% points in respondents, Dems lost one, and Independents went down 4.5%.  

Comments



Some good news (Lowell - 9/4/2008 5:31:51 PM)
here:

An Obama aide passes this news along:

   $8 million raised since Palin's speech from over 130,000 donors - on pace to hit $10 million by the time John McCain hits the stage tonight.

The Palin pick energized Republicans...... and has given a jolt to Democrats, too. (The RNC has raised $1m since Palin's speech.)



Looks like we hit $10 million (faithfull - 9/5/2008 11:09:47 AM)
per TPM

Love this quote:

Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor confirms that the campaign has now pulled in over $10 million since her speech -- a "one day record," Vietor says.

"I hope she gives a speech every day," Vietor joked.



That would be $300 million (Lowell - 9/5/2008 11:18:55 AM)
a month.  C'mon, Governor Palin, give a speech every day! :)


Who does the polls (Rebecca - 9/4/2008 5:55:53 PM)
Why are all these "news" media doing polls? We know the media is biased so why would they be doing polls? Shouldn't polling organizations be independent? Why do people quote polls by Fox, CCN, and other media outlets as being objective?

Seems like something obvious is going on here, BTW, the chairman of the board of the entity which runs CBS is the head of the Carlyse group. The company which holds CBS is a subsidiary of a Nuclear Power entity. We are becoming so easy to manipulate! Wake up folks!



Thats an interesting chain (faithfull - 9/5/2008 11:11:11 AM)
And I agree that this poll had some problems, and that it will be most informative to see what movement the independent pollers pick up today.  


Secessionist (relawson - 9/4/2008 6:05:03 PM)
To me, and probably many people in both parties, that is the most damning thing about Palin.

To be in a party that endorses seceding from the United States of America - and then speaking at their convention - that is just mind boggling.  She is on the political fringes and has no business running for Vice President.

One of the leaders of the AIP was on tape saying that AIP members should join the other parties and infiltrate them from within.  How can we be sure Palin isn't an AIP mole in a beauty queen disguise?  We can't.  Joining the AIP is really no different than being a communist, anarchist, or in a militant group.  The absolute fringes of society.



Couldn't agree more. (faithfull - 9/5/2008 11:11:59 AM)
I hope the media will run with that a little once the post-announcement buzz and convention coverage is through.  


Polling data looks good but not as good as the ground. (Tiderion - 9/4/2008 6:35:39 PM)
I volunteered today for a couple hours in my local Obama office. We had a lot of people coming in who were just plain mad. Plenty of women, independents, now ex-Republicans were the norm. No one thought we were headed in the right direction. Plenty wanted to volunteer to make sure McCain and Palin didn't make it to the White House.

Pretty awesome guys! Go out and volunteer as much time as you can.



hyou have to look at the internals of the poll (teacherken - 9/4/2008 8:31:08 PM)
to realize that it has real problems, and does not represent real closure.

From this diary at Daily Kos:

Here's the nitty-gritty on the last two CBS polls.

I'll start small.

August 29 - 31, 2008 (Total Respondents - 875)

                         UNWEIGHTED  WEIGHTED
Total Registered Voters       781       743
Total Republicans                  247       229
Total Democrats                    310       308
Total Independents              318       337

Oddly enough, the "weighed" totals of 229 (R) + 308 (D) + 337 (I) add up to the TOTAL number of respondents... minus one.

That's right:

Unweighed = 875
Weighed = 874

I guess whoever conducted the survey decided not to count their crazy uncle Willamina after all.

It gets better.

September 1-3, 2008 (Total Respondents - 835)

                             UNWEIGHTED  WEIGHTED
Total Registered Voters           734       691
Total Republicans                      229       215
Total Democrats                        250       241
Total Independents                  255       235

And here are the questions they asked:

VOTE FOR PRESIDENT (Among registered voters) (This is the 42%-42%
DESCRIBE YOUR SUPPORT (Among registered voters)
OPINIONS OF THE CANDIDATES (Among registered voters)
DOES HE UNDERSTAND THE NEEDS AND PROBLEMS OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU? (Among registered voters)

...hang on a minute. ALL of these responses are Registered Voters only.

                         UNWEIGHTED  WEIGHTED
Total Registered Voters         734     691

But wait a sec. I thought they surveyed 835 people, not 734. What happened to everything those other 101 people said?

...oh, who knows.

All right, enough build up. Here's where the actual WTFery begins.

In the Aug 29-31 poll, where Obama came out 50-42, the ratio of weighted Republicans surveyed to weighted Democrats surveyed was 30.8% (R) to 41.4% (D).

In the Sep 1-3 poll, where he and McCain tied at 42, the same ratio is 31.1% to 34.8%.

Look again at that waiting.  In earlier poll, where Obama led by 8, the margin in party weighting gave Obama a 10.6% margin.   In the new one, where the two are tied, the party weighting is 3.7% advantage Democrat.   The difference in party weighting is that the Democratic advantage has decreald by 6.9% of the 8% difference.   Meaning the so-called closure is largely explained by the difference in party weighting - or McCain closed the total number by about 1% once one factors out the difference in party weighting within the sample.  That is statistical noise.

Unless CBS clearly points out the difference in weighting, presenting this as a meaningful change in the status of the race is intellectually dishonest.

Oh, and this poll was taken over the same three days as the 3day samples for the two daily tracking polls, from Rasmussen, which now has the margin at 4%, and Gallup, which saw it expand to 7.