St. Louis Post Dispatch/R2000: Obama dominating in IL, while MO is tied

[Tender Branson]

Missouri:

Obama - 48
McCain - 47

Illinois:

Obama - 59
McCain - 35

Survey of 800 Missouri and 800 Illinois voters taken between Oct. 20 – 23,2008. Margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/politics/story/626E29518BC2A07B862574ED000B581E?OpenDocument

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/politics/story/F531FD9740AD21E3862574ED000BCE1D?OpenDocument

[Reds4]

Good news for McCain here... so apparently R2000 wants us to believe that McCain is down 12 nationally and only 1 in MO? Hmm..

[Eraserhead]

These look reasonable.

[Lief 🗽]

Yeah, these results look about right.

[Franzl]

Good news for McCain here... so apparently R2000 wants us to believe that McCain is down 12 nationally and only 1 in MO? Hmm..

R2000's tracking poll has never matched their state polls...but they've always been somewhat reasonable...no reason to seriously doubt these numbers.

[Lunar]

Good news for McCain here... so apparently R2000 wants us to believe that McCain is down 12 nationally and only 1 in MO? Hmm..

Sorry to burst your bubble, but these two things use completely different weighting mechanisms.

I think R2K's state-wide and district-wide polls, while a few percent biased towards Obama, are generally pretty accurate.

Obviously McCain has relatively good information in Missouri since Obama keeps cutting ad spending there, but not THAT significantly.  I think it's a bit cuckoo for anyone to analyze a poll that's only slightly favorable to their enemy and declare that it's good news because it should be such and such more favorable than it is.