There is a lot of debate over Democratic-biased and/or Republican-biased polls in this election. There are definitely examples of both out there, so please read the following: http://uspolitics.about.com/od/campaignpolls/a/deconstructpoll.htm http://uspolitics.about.com/od/CampaignsElections/a/How-To-Read-Election-Polls. Currently, Gallop and Rasmussen and Fox are showing a Republican bias while Ipsos, Public Policy and ABC/NBC/CBS are showing a Democratic bias. SurveyUSA is pretty reliable but they haven't done a national poll for quite a while and Quinnipiac is usually reliable but their last poll was skewed in favor of the Democrats (although the head of Quinnipiac admitted that was partly due to unusual temporary circumstances (just after the Romney video was made public)). If anyone knows of another neutral poll source, please post it on this thread.
Fox News' latest poll shows the President leading Romney by five points. In an amazing display of utter denial, other Rightwing media are now trying to claim that FOX is "skewed" favorably towards Democrats.
Your best bet is to rely on polls that take averages of other multiple ones. Realclearpolitics is a decent one.
Your best bet is to toss junk polls (Rasmussen). If you average in the crap, it makes your average crappier. The reputable pollsters simply call a large random sample, based on matching census demographics, and ask the respondent to self-identify their party affiliation. The fact that the random sample has more people self-identifying as Democrats simply shows that more people are self-identifying as Democrats, not that more Democrats are being selected for sampling. It would be a wild bias to not report the party self-identification numbers, or to try to "correct" it with some bizarre turnout model, as Rasmussen does.
What does the RCP Electoral Map look like with "No Toss-ups"? Matter of fact, what does it look like even with some states listed as "Toss-ups"?
Rasmussen's latest poll yesterday had Obama 47% to Romney's 46%. Given Rasmussen tends to have a Republican bias, Romney had better step up his performance.
I take polls with a big grain of skeptic acceptance. Any poll can be manipulated to prodce the results the poll taker wishes, when it becomes more reliable is when all the major polls agree on the numbers. The only real poll that counts is the actual election but the closer the election has been getting the worse it looks for Romney and the Repubs.
I don't think we can take just one poll and say this is how it's going to work. For instance, we could have 500 reps, 200 dems, and 300 indepdenets in a poll. Well, they're going to vote down party lines. Couldn't I say from that poll that 50% of people surveyed here, said that Mitten's was going to win? Why not just add these polls up, to show us how they're doing? Bigger sample size, and it'll probably even out in the long run.
The problem is people tend to only look at the polls that tell them what they want to hear. Historically certain polls are more accurate and those are the polls people should value.
Right now ALL the polls in RCP Mitt Vrs Obama have Obama winning. That includes Rasmussen Tracking, FOX News and Gallup Tracking. In Florida Obama is winning in 8 polls and losing in two...those two by 1 point and they were from a week ago. In Ohio Obama is winning Every Poll. Mitt loses these two he loses the election. Things are not looking good for Mitt right now. You may choose to ignore all the polls but know this, they have been pretty accurate. They predicted 2008 and 2010 pretty well. Friendly Reminder: The Polls Are Usually Right http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/107734/friendly-reminder-the-polls-are-usually-right#
