About the polls.

Now, I am not a statistics expert by any means, in fact in graduate school most of that stuff made me crazy.

However, I wonder how many of these polls are polling college aged kids? My daughter is 18 and in college. Her entire dorm is sprouting Obama stickers on their memo boards.

One of her classes, with about 300 students in it was dismissed to watch Hillary's speech. Not so much for Palin's or McCain's, or whoever spoke on the corresponding night at the RNC.

I don't know of a single kid who will vote for the first time this November who is voting for McCain. Not one.

And, although I don't purport to know everyone who is voting, obviously, I would say I know several hundred. Is that a random enough sample? :shrug:

not cell phone only people. I know a lot of people who don't have a land line anymore.

They also don't tend to poll newly registered voters.

Turnout is going to be the big factor and polls can't account for that either.

I still think it will be Obama in a landslide. I refuse to give up hope.

Turnout will be an amazing factor. Here in my county for the first time ever, they ran out of Dem ballots at the primary election.

That has never happened before. Usually when I go to vote, I'm number 7 or something like that, LOL.

I think Obama/Biden knows that. I mean, look at how they announced Biden's selection...via text message. They are perfectly targeting the college kids.

I agree with Midlodemocrat. Obama/Biden will pickup a HUGE majority of college kids. And that's what makes me optimistic about this race. Also, it makes me optimistic on other issues in November...for instance, the defeat of Proposition 8 in California...the anti-gay marriage amendment. College kids are overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex marriage.

doesn't appeal to them.

I'm 42 and I've got caller ID on my land-line phone, so I normally don't answer unless I can identify the caller.

because it goes up and comes down.

Survey data can be considered less than 'scientific' if it isn't gathered on a land-line or by some other means that establishes a longitudinal relationship to a community demographic; which is only part of why we don't hear allot of, "7 out of 10 carnival tilt-a-whirl operators intend to vote for (fill in the blank)" :):(

If Obama's base is rooted in youth, and youth is off to school with their brand new credit cards; they may be less likely to even be reached for inclusion assuming they aren't busy lining up weekend social events, or even have their phones turned 'on' so they can be asked their opinion. I appreciate the *Obama bumper stickers are all over the quad & media center* concept...

Sadly, however, that in & of itself is not what's going to win this election cycle imo :(

via mail absentee, if they're not going home and aren't residents of the state/city they go to school in.

As to the polls....this is the convention bounce. Wait until the debates to celebrate or get nervous.

Surveys are weighted based on age (and other factors). It will not affect the survey 1% if too little or too many young voters are called.

Looking at Gallup data (they only give weekly for free, and smaller breakdowns cost $).

Obama vs McCain (Aug 25-31)
18-29 54%-37%
30-49 48%-45%
50-64 49%-42%
65+ 44%-43%

How does Gallup (or any pollster) make sure they get the "right" amount of Youth vote? They don't need to.

Let's say 18-22 demographic makes up 10% of voting block.

When they conduct a survey of 1000, statistically they should get on average 100 18-24 year olds (10% of 1000). Let's look at two scenarios.

A) Too little of sub population.
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Say on one survey they only get 65 18-24. Those 65 people vote 48 for Obama. That works out to a 74%-26% split.

B) Too much of a sub population
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On another survey they get 118 18-24. Those 118 people vote 87 for Obama. That works out to a 74%-26% split.

Now you may think well in survey A Obama will do worse. Right? Well that would be Wrong. He would have the EXACT same final result in both surveys.

Surveys are weighted it doesn't matter the individual # of votes but instead the % (which remains the same) of what each sub-pop thinks.

Surveys get baseline data on (race, gender, age, marital status, zipcode which is used for rural vs urban, religion, party ID).

Each sub pop vote is converted to a %.
The sub pops are then weighted by how much they make up the electorate.
If 18% of voters are Black and they vote 94% for Obama then that 94% get multiplied by the 18%. This is done for each race to get a statistical representation of voting based on race. Once that is done the same thing is done for each other group (age, marital, etc). The final result is the cross product of each sub-pop (properly weighted).

The idea that if they call 1000 people and get too many women, not enough young people. and too many Hispanics they just publish that is laughable.

If you wanted to do a COMPLETELY RANDOM SURVEY with no weighting or sub-pops you CAN DO IT. However the smaller the sample size the larger the error. 1000 people out of 120 million on a 50/50 issue sampled will have a margin of error of +/- 18%. The survey would have no meaning. On the other hand if you wanted to get +/-4% with completely ranom survey you would need to call OVER 46K people.

All surveys used weighted sub pops to reduce the sample size to something manageable. They have been doing that for 60 years for elections (and 300+ years for other forms of statistical analysis).