Gallup Tracking Poll Thread [Obama vs McCain]

[freedomburns]

OH YEAH BABY!!  HELLLLLOOO PRESIDENT OBAMA!!

Wow, Colin Powell just made me cry.  What an incredible endorsement!

[freedomburns]

The race is widening, not tightening.  The polls are looking good.

[freedomburns]

The race is widening, not tightening.  The polls are looking good.

Actually the RCP measure shows the race tightening, but not by much.

How do you figure that when it shows a 5.0 lead for Obama yesterday, and a 5.3 lead for him today?  Hmmm?? 

As usual, you are wrong.  I will assume that you are simply ignorant/poorly informed here, and not intentionally lying so as to benefit your political leanings.  Either way, you suck!

[freedomburns]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yeah, me too.  And it just went up more for Obama as they added in some polls that came out today.

Now it is up to 5.8 points up for Obama.  This is definitely trending towards Obama then, and away from a race that is tightening.  This race is widening now.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/

Is there some other page that you are looking at?  Because from what I see there, you seem to be even wronger than before.

fb

[freedomburns]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Could you be bothered to refresh me on what regression to the mean means?  I seem to remember some of this from General Ed statistics at UCSC twenty years ago...

[freedomburns]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Could you be bothered to refresh me on what regression to the mean means?  I seem to remember some of this from General Ed statistics at UCSC twenty years ago...

Regression toward the mean is the effect of looking at outliers of a sample and finding them to be closer in the next measurement. This effect is strongest when the samples and the method to collect them are identical and dominated by statistical error. In that case one expects that an outlier is really just a statistical fluke and the next measurement will have high probability of landing closer to the mean.

This does not apply if there are systematic differences in the samples. It also should be used with caution in polls, since it really applies to individual measurements (like batting averages or exam scores), and is less applicable for a measurement which is itself a statistical sample of measurements.

Thanks, muon2!