A real improvement or a random noise?

[Shira]

According to Rasmussen daily sampling, Bush has 47.4% and Kerry 46.5%.
Is it a real improvement for Kerry or a random statistical noise?
I believe that Kerry improved a little bit in the last few days, but the nationwide gap is probably around the 3%.

[Shira]

According to Rasmussen daily sampling, Bush has 47.4% and Kerry 46.5%.
Is it a real improvement for Kerry or a random statistical noise?
I believe that Kerry improved a little bit in the last few days, but the nationwide gap is probably around the 3%.

If its a blip it will stay with the 3 day rolling average for... 3 days.

If on Monday Bush bounces back to +4 (when the Thursday night sample rolls off) we know it was a blip, if not.. then not

I'll let you know on MOnday.

For what it is worth, a very strong Bush sample rolled OFF today, the last 3 daily samples have all been within about 1.5% of tied - but they have also shown a fairly large blip towards the dems in party ID.

Hard to say what, if anyting, it means.

If we compare 3 polls of Time we'll see that on 9/2 Bush had 10% margin. On 9/9 the margin was 12% while yesterday (9/23) it was 4%.
Further more: Does Bush deserve a second term or someone else?
On 9/9 it was 52:45 in favor of Bush, while yesterday it was 49:47 in favor of someone else.
Is it all random or is it the beginnig of some shift?

And another sign:
On 9/6 the EV as per Rasmussen were 213:175 in favor of Bush.
On 9/21 these numbers were 213:211

I can not argue about the professionalism of Rasmussen but the methodology in these two dates was the same

[Shira]

Time will tell, however.  BTW, the margin in the latest Time poll is 6 point for Bush, not 4

Go to
http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm


The 6% margin is with Nader who virtually gets 5%

[Shira]

A breakout of the Daily Bot track - day by day samples:

As oppose to what your graph shows, never in September was Kerry ahead of Bush. That's what in your graph on 9/14, 9/19, 9/24.
Further more, the numbers of 9/25 (today) are 47.9:46.3 and not 49.8:45.4

[Shira]

That was his sample for the specific day, (9/25) where it is 49.8 to 45.4.

The average of the last three days (9/23-25) is 47.9 to 46.3.

As to Kerry leads on certain days, if we were to theoretically say that Bush's lead under this weighting is roughly 2.5% (which is a reasonable guess), then each daily sample would roughly have a MOE of +/- 3%, which means that we would get a Kerry lead somewhere on the plotted graph every once in a while (not doing the math to figure it out specifically).

But if you look into the Rasmussen stuff (  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm ) you'll see that on 9/7 they were tied 47.3% and in all other days Bush was ahead.
Does Rasmussen show average of the last three days and The Varlion derives the single date from it?

[Shira]

Somehow, some way, he is able to figure the one day samples.  No one on this board knows how he figures it out, but I'd bet money his numbers are dead on.

OK
Let X22, X23, X24 and X25 be the margins on 09/22, 09/23, 09/24 and 09/25.

So we have (X25 + X24 + X23)/3 = 1.6
And (X24 + X23 + X22)/3 = 0.9

or

X25 + X23 + X24 = 4.8
X22 + X23 + X24 = 2.7

By subtracting we’ll get X25 – X22  = 2.1
which means that the margin on 9/25 was greater than the margin on 9/22 by 2.1% and that’s what his chart shows. In order to progressively calculate the absolute one day number he has to know the absolute margin number of one day or may be two consecutive days ( I have to think about it)

It's even simpler. The assumption is that if a 3 days margin avarage shifted 0.7 EACH day between 9/22 and 9/25 so the total shift is 2.1 and that's what his chart really shows.

[Shira]

According to Rasmussen daily sampling, Bush has 47.4% and Kerry 46.5%.
Is it a real improvement for Kerry or a random statistical noise?
I believe that Kerry improved a little bit in the last few days, but the nationwide gap is probably around the 3%.

If its a blip it will stay with the 3 day rolling average for... 3 days.

If on Monday Bush bounces back to +4 (when the Thursday night sample rolls off) we know it was a blip, if not.. then not

I'll let you know on MOnday.

For what it is worth, a very strong Bush sample rolled OFF today, the last 3 daily samples have all been within about 1.5% of tied - but they have also shown a fairly large blip towards the dems in party ID.

Hard to say what, if anyting, it means.

Correct me if I am wrong.
You have to know the absolute numbers of arbitrarry two consecutive dates in order to run this process of "deavaraging"

[Shira]

If you look at anything in Rasmussen, look at the 7 day average.

OK. I took the numbers from your table.
During the period 9/12-9/18 the avarage was 48.5:45.3 (a 3.2% difference) in Bush's favor.
The numbers in the next 7 days between  9/19 and 9/25 are 48:45.8 which is 2.2% difference.
This means that Kerry REALLY improved by 1% in the last week. These are seven days samples with very small statistical noise.
The methodology of Rasmussen could be bad but it is the same methodology in the compared two periods.