Since when is a 6, 7, 8 point lead a "dead heat"?

Kee-rist a'mighty. Front page of my local rag--"Presidential Candidates in Statistical Dead Heat". (Sorry--no link--it's not on their Web site for some reason.)
:wtf:

They are trying SO HARD to make this suspenseful. Never mind the math. :eyes: Yeah, I know that with the margin of error, it's not considered "much" of a lead, but doesn't the term "dead heat" imply that the race is tied?

Gawd, I hate my local paper. x(

My paper, the Columbus Dispatch, did that very thing just today. (No, I can't cancel my subscription; like most cities these days Columbus has only one paper, so there is no choice.)

The paper is terrified of pissing off either side. It used to be fairly liberal, then in the past several years it's been conservative (a couple of years ago they bowed to conservative blowhards and moved Doonesbury from the front page of the Sunday comics to the inside of the section, but at least they didn't move the daily strip to the editorial page). Lately (perhaps with the departure of the managing editor a couple of months ago?) they've been refusing to take a side at all--even to the point of having exactly the same number of LTTEs on either side, every single day. One pro-Repuke letter, one pro-Dem letter. Two pro-Repuke letters, two pro-Dem letters. Etc.

I know that is hard to get but it really is the case. Now that said, when you take an average of polls and still have that kind of lead it is significant.

After reading this ridiculous story by some idiot on the paper's staff--which surprised me, as they usually run AP stories when they want national coverage--I checked Google News for "dead heat" (to see where this guy was getting his information) and found only...Zogby. :eyes: (Zogby was not mentioned in the article, nor was any other pollster--a fact-check/citation failing on the part of this "journalist".)

I commented on this to Mr. MG, who is a Republican (sigh--otherwise a good guy), and he said I'm offended only because I "only read what I want to hear" (i.e., DU). Not true, I responded. If you look at all the polls out, Obama holds a clear lead. He didn't have an answer for that one, except that the pollsters are all liberal. :eyes:

This hasn't been a "dead head" or a "Horse Race" in weeks if not months.

On ABC News they are talking alternatively between "the next President" and "President Obama". The writing is on the wall and Obama has all the $$$. True Obama could run out on a stage and demand to know where all the white women are and it would then be a close race. But if you look at the electoral map you will see that McCain has to win ALL the battleground states and take away an Obama 7 point advantage in Virginia in order to win.

The remaining bit of interest is whether Democrats reach 60 Senate seats (sans Lieberman). At that point we can put in some stiff laws against election fraud and route Republicans for quite some time to come as we can effectively put a stop to all their vote shaving efforts.

But that was only in one poll (Zogby) and the rest of the polls have been largely unchanged. Go figure.

They want the horse race but I think Powell's endorsement today will dispel any notions of that.

haven't they gotten yoke on their faces too many times?

Showing a 3 pt spread. Of course the media latched onto the outlier to fuel the narrative that the race is a "dead heat".

the 12 point lead polls are pure B.S.

They are at a point where they think they can utter something with no factual information to back it up. It's sort of like:

"Obama has terrorist ties"

"Uh, that has been disproven multiple times by multiple non-partisan sources"

"No, it hasn't."

"Yeah....it has"

"Nope."

"Well, I'm not gonna bother arguing with you."

"Fear not, change is coming."

"You're right, Obama has this thing locked up."

"I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about McCain."

"Oh, so McCain stands for change now?"

"Yep, he's a maverick. Have you seen his new slogan - 'Yes, we can y'all'?"

"Jesus."

"I thought y'all didn't believe in God."