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applegrove

(118,022 posts)
Sun Sep 9, 2012, 11:36 PM Sep 2012

"An 8-Point Convention Bounce for Obama?"

An 8-Point Convention Bounce for Obama?

at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/an-eight-point-convention-bounce-for-obama/262135/

"SNIP....................................

Buried in New York Times polling guru Nate Silver's latest blog post is a chart that should have Mitt Romney ordering out for some Xanax. The chart depicts Silver's statistical inferences from several multi-day tracking polls that include Thursday and Friday, the final day of the Democratic convention and the day after--in other words, the two days after Bill Clinton's barnburner of a speech. I'll explain below why I'd add one grain of salt to Silver's inferences, but first, here they are, in this chart's final column, which depicts the estimated swing in Obama's favor since Clinton's speech:

.................................

My two reasons for mild skepticism:

[1] I support Obama, and I'm a pessimist. OK, I admit that this reason isn't a paragon of rigor. So on to the second reason:

...................................

Here's the reason this matters: Obama's multi-day tracking numbers rose for Thursday, the day after Clinton's much-praised speech, and then reached an even higher level for Friday, the day after Obama's not-so-praised speech, and the day a weak jobs report came out. (These are the numbers released by the polling companies on Friday and Saturday, respectively.) It's tempting to look at those numbers and think, "Wow, Obama's numbers continued to rise immediately after his speech, and notwithstanding the weak jobs numbers." But, again, all we can say for sure is that his post-speech numbers were higher than his numbers had been a week earlier. (That's with the Gallup poll. Not all the tracking polls are 7-day--some are just 3-day--but the same type of uncertainty applies to all of them.)

......................................SNIP"
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"An 8-Point Convention Bounce for Obama?" (Original Post) applegrove Sep 2012 OP
one can hope, but DPC.Comment Sep 2012 #1
Oh yeah. We need to be aggressive and fight until the very last day. applegrove Sep 2012 #2
I read Silver's column as well and though his methods are pretty accurate davidpdx Sep 2012 #3
 

DPC.Comment

(42 posts)
1. one can hope, but
Sun Sep 9, 2012, 11:56 PM
Sep 2012

AppleGrove -- one can hope, but post convention polls are notoriously unreliable. Too soon to stop hard work.

applegrove

(118,022 posts)
2. Oh yeah. We need to be aggressive and fight until the very last day.
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 12:04 AM
Sep 2012

I just think it is great that some independants are trying Obama on this week. I'm sure they'll like it.

davidpdx

(22,000 posts)
3. I read Silver's column as well and though his methods are pretty accurate
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 09:40 AM
Sep 2012

I'd still be cautious in taking any number in terms of the bump too seriously. I believe he said something to the fact that once the tracking polls all are post-convention we will have a better idea what Obama's bump in the poll really was.

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