Thursday, October 23, 2008

HORSERACE

30 Pages of PDF Fun From the Folks at the Battleground Poll

Fascinating stuff in the Battleground Poll's full report out today. Obama leads McCain, 44-42, with 13 percent undecided.

Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot, 48-40. It was 49-37 at the beginning of the month. Congress' approval is at 17 (higher than the Oct. 9 rating of 15 percent) and disapproval is at 74 percent.

Obama's favorable impression is at 58 percent, down a bit from the 62 percent the poll had Oct. 9. His disapproval has creeped up a bit, from 35 percent Oct. 9 to 39 percent.

McCain's favorable impression is up marginally, at 54 percent (52 percent a week ago); his unfavorable is down 2 percent to 42 percent.

Biden's favorable is down a similarly small margin, from 57 percent Oct. 9 to 53 percent now; his unfavorable is 33 percent.

Sarah Palin's favorable has rebounded and is now at 51 percent, up 4 percent from last week; her unfavorable 42 percent, down 3 percent from last week.

When you mention all of the candidates and their running mates, Obama leads 48-45. He led, 51-41, on October 9.

Does it mean anything? What about all the other polls showing Obama with a much larger lead?

I'm thinking back to this post, pointing out that the vast majority of pollsters in 2006 overestimated the percentage of the electorate that would be Democrats, sometimes by a wide margin. "Several pollsters were in the right neighborhood — Fox, Pew, Time — and a whole bunch were all making the same error in the same direction in their likely voter screen — Hotline, AP-Ipsos, Cook/RT Strategies, Newsweek, Democracy Corps, NBC/Wall Street Journal, USA Today/Gallup and the CBS/New York Times poll."

This doesn't guarantee that those guys will be wrong again this time around. But it is within the realm of possibility.

10/23 10:37 AMShare