Cratering

Obama's poll numbers are cratering.

Gallup buries the lede in its latest polling on health care, the Browning of Massachusetts, and Barack Obama’s performance in the first year. They headline the fact that 55% of Americans want Congress to suspend work on ObamaCare while only 39% want Congress to continue. That’s not exactly news; it’s about the same split in support Rasmussen has seen among likely voters for weeks now, and Gallup just confirms that ObamaCare has the same level of support in the general adult population.

In fact, the biggest news is that 57% of adults — adults, not registered or likely voters — give Obama poor marks for his first year in office...

Well OK. Things could be worse. And by golly they are. Obama's proposed new rules for banks have cratered banking stocks.

NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks are set to extend their slide Friday, following the worst two-day stretch the market has seen since June.

Stock futures fell as better than expected earnings from General Electric and Google failed to inspire traders.

President Barack Obama spooked the market Thursday, after asking Congress for limits on how large big banks can be and to end some of the risky trading large financial companies have used in recent quarters to boost profits.

The market could be re-entering a period of uncertainty that defined the financial crisis and sent it cratering nearly a year ago before its 10-month rally.

Overseas, Asian markets overnight followed the U.S. sharply lower. European markets are also falling.

There is that word cratering. And not only has he cratered the American markets. He has cratered the Asian and European markets as well. The man is a genius. The Smartest President Ever™

Well on to more of the same. Employment is cratering according to a Progressive site.

The latest US nonfarm payroll report provides more confirmation. Although the headline number was a modestly anemic -85,000, Rosenberg called it "horrible" because its details showed consistent weakness. As a result, he estimates a more accurate "465,000" December decline, based on what's occurring at the small company level "where the trend in orders, output, sales and employment" has been dismal.

Importantly, economic sectors sensitive to the business cycle actually "cratered" in December, "which flies in the face of the overwhelming view that this recession has fully run its course." Also disturbing was that while "temp help" gained 47,000 jobs, its fifth straight increase, full-time employment "plunged" 647,000 last month, a clear sign that no one is hiring, especially small businesses that do most of it.

The reason headline U-3 unemployment held steady at 10% was because the labor force plunged by 661,000, the sharpest (discouraged worker) decline in nearly 15 years. The broader U-6 unemployment is 17.3%, and economist John Williams (shadowstats.com) calculates it more accurately at 21.9% by excluding manipulated changes for more valid figures. He estimates about 500,000 December job losses, not the sanitized U-3 number. He also says that a "major double-dip downturn should be obvious by mid-year."

Oh. Yeah. Let me give you the title of that progressive piece.

The Recession is Over, the Depression Just Beginning
Cheery news that. Well it is only January, 2010. Two Years 11 months 4 weeks and 0 days to go. I can hardly wait.

But back to happier days and the words of FDR's Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot."

Well there is one good thing. I don't believe Obama has eight years. And with the way he is going he will be lucky to get his almost three more.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Arlen Specter: Critics Not Representative

Arlen Specter says critics of a government take over of health care are not representative. But is that true? Let us look at the numbers.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, 49% of Americans disapprove of the President’s handling of health care reform compared to only 43% who approve.

These health care poll numbers have remained relatively stable the past three weeks, despite heated town hall meetings and other protests from conservatives against the health care legislation.

So it looks like what Arlen is seeing may in fact be representative. But it doesn't matter. What counts is his next election. People who are angry get out and vote and bring their friends.

And what do folks think about the costs of adding tens of millions to the health care rolls?

Democrats, however, have remained steadily divided as to whether health care costs will increase or decrease under the new plan. Republicans overwhelmingly believe that costs will rise.

And here is a statistic on how well people think Obama is doing his job.

According to the Gallup survey, the president’s job approval averaged 63% during his first six months in office.

A six month average? He must be doing very badly today.

What is Obama's job approval rating today?

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 31% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-six percent (36%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5.

So there you have it. Lies. Damn lies. And Statistics.

The Bloom Is Off The Rose

The honeymoon that any new President generally gets (typically 100 days) is over. About 40 days early. Bad news for The One.

President Obama’s honeymoon is beginning to fade.

Members of Congress and old political hands say he needs to show substantial progress reviving the economy soon.

Some Democrats have started to worry that voters don’t and won’t understand the link between economic revival and Obama’s huge agenda, which includes saving the banking industry, ending home foreclosures, reforming healthcare and developing a national energy policy, among much else.

It is always possible that people don't understand the connection because there is none. Or worse because the proposed solutions will make things worse.

Democrats from states racked by recession say Obama needs to produce an uptick by August or face unpleasant consequences. Others say that there is more time, but that voters need to see improvement by the middle of next year.

The most optimistic say Obama and Democrats in Congress will face a political backlash unless the economy improves by Election Day 2010.

“We’ve got to see an uptick by August or the Democratic majority is in jeopardy,” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose state had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in January.

The economy will quite possibly be coming back by August however, employment usually lags the economy by one to three years. That can't be good for Democrats. Especially if the recent rise of Wall Street is not really a leading indicator but just another dead cat bounce.

Mr. Obama has some convincing to do. It is not just Wall Street and Main Street. Now it is his own party.

Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president's proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

Yeah. How about those deficits.

There is at least one Republican who is not happy with Mr. Obama's budget. Only one? Well a lot actually. But this one is important because he can run the numbers.

It was obvious to most Capitol Hill insiders why President Obama wanted Republican Judd Gregg as a member of his cabinet: He's one of the sharpest money-minds in Congress.

But instead of getting Gregg's counsel within the administration, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner found himself today of the receiving end of Gregg's fiscal conservative wrath.

In a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee Gregg dressed down Geithner with facts, figures, and charts. While always keeping his cool, the exchange was somewhere between a mother's scolding, a drill sergeant's questioning and an attorney's cross examination.

In his opening statement, Gregg politely called the administration's budget forecast a lie.

"The argument that it cuts the debt in half in four years is, ahh, is truly spurious," he told Geithner.

President Obama himself gives Gregg's comments a sense of stinging credibility. When the president introduced Gregg as his nominee for Commerce Secretary last month, he said Gregg is known for is fiscal discipline.

"He shares my deep-seated commitment to guaranteeing that our children inherit a future they can afford," Obama said.

Today, the president's compliment of Gregg turned into an attack on Geithner. Gregg said the budget is essentially "putting on our children's backs a debt they can never get out from underneath."

You know. That reflects a significant portion of what Main Street thinks.

Ace of Spades is looking at Main Street and quotes some interesting reports.

It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama's net presidential approval rating -- which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve -- is just six, his lowest rating to date.

Well so far he is still in plus territory. Good for him. He is no where near Democrat Congress territory. Yet.

Recent Gallup data echo these concerns. That polling shows that there are deep-seeded, underlying economic concerns. Eighty-three percent say they are worried that the steps Mr. Obama is taking to fix the economy may not work and the economy will get worse. Eighty-two percent say they are worried about the amount of money being added to the deficit. Seventy-eight percent are worried about inflation growing, and 69% say they are worried about the increasing role of the government in the U.S. economy.

Now those are some astounding numbers. And 69% are worried about the role of the government in the US economy? Where were they during the election when Mr. Obama was making all his promises to intervene in banking, energy, and health care. What? Mr. McCain was making similar promises? Never mind. Maybe next time we can get a Republican to run on the Republican ticket. Of course things could have been worse for the Republicans. We could have had Huckabee and the food police. Now there was one socialist I could not believe in. In fact I couldn't believe he was a Republican. Well, as I said previously, fiscal conservatism and social conservatism are not necessarily convergent. In fact they seem to be divergent and that divergence appears to be tearing the Republicans apart. Good. The Republicans have to decide if they are the moral socialist party or the fiscal conservative party. A good place to start that is to ask yourself: which is the bigger tent? Which will be the bigger tent given demographic trends? I could answer the question for you but I prefer to let you do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The PUMA Question

In the comments on my post A Funny Thing Happened In The Voting Booth commenter Dr. Nobel Dynamite made the following point.

"Not to mention the PUMA factor." [that was me - ed.]

You need to turn off the propaganda for a while, my friend. Just because Neil Cavuto trots out a cigarette hag that claims to speak for disgruntled Hillary supporters doesn't make PUMAs anything more than wishful thinking from Fox.

No Bell,

In science/engineering we look at unusual results and outliers for undiscovered phenomenon.

It is more than possible that I may have discovered some interesting effects.

BTW the reports on the PUMA effect started in the high 30s. Dipped to the low 20s and then started rising again to the mid 30s. (that would be % of Hillary voters going for McCain). Since the last reports of that rise there has been no news of the PUMA effect. Did it just disappear? Or was it a case of "did not fit the narrative"?

A defection rate as a % of the total vote of 3.75% (roughly 20% [defectioon rate] of 1/2 [Hillary voters] of 37%[Dems in the electorate]) can be overcome. It will be offset by a 13% or so R defection rate (about 5% of the vote). If the defection rate is 40% of Hillary voters that is a 7.5% loss. Killer.

The question is: is that defection rate being measured accurately? Since the announcements of the PUMA factor have stopped, I'd have to say no. If it had dropped it would have been announced. If it rose above 40% it would be buried.

How about what DJ Drummond has to say on the subject of polls.

Gallup has noted the strength of early voting this year. The most significant points from that article are these; early voting is stronger than expected this year, and so far republicans have been just as eager to vote early as democrats. The third point is the most important signal of all. Says Gallup; "Early voting ranges from 14% of voters 55 and older (in aggregated data from Friday through Wednesday) to 5% of those under age 35. Plus, another 22% of voters aged 55 and up say they plan to vote early, meaning that by Election Day, over a third of voters in this older age group may already have cast their ballots."

The last two statements are very good news for McCain and bad news for Obama. This is because it demonstrates that enthusiasm to actually vote by republicans is equal to enthusiasm to vote by democrats. This runs directly against claims made in polling up to now, demonstrating that participation in polls is not directly related to voting this year. Second, the higher participation by senior voters and weaker participation by younger voters is directly in line with historical norms, again running against the poll expectations that this year would see a wave of young people voting but seniors staying at home. Gallup's own data proves this is not happening as they predicted, and the polls are therefore invalid in those respects, in addition to obvious flaws in the party weighting. The reasonable expectation from these facts, would be for Gallup to back down and correct its weighting to match the observed behavior. As of yet, Gallup has not taken that step.

Then we have this wonderful explanation of polling by Charlie Colorado at Just One Minute.

What we're hoping for the polls to tell us is how people will vote in the future. In order to figure that out, we start by asking some number of people how they would vote today.

Obviously, we don't and can't know how people would really vote (Obama could be caught with a dead girl and a live boy and Fox News with a camera.) But it's everyone's best guess, and they have a chance to answer "O" or "McP" or "undecided".

Now, if we could ask every single person who will be voting this question, we'd get a fairly precise number --- not exact, but pretty close. Asking 130 million people their opinion is pretty intractable, so they ask a much smaller number. There are mathematical reasons to let us make an estimate of the amount of error we get by just asking that smaller number, and that's where this "margin of error" comes from. The wy it works is basically like this: say we have 130 million red and blue marbles, in proportions of 51 percent red and 49 percent blue. Since they're well mixed, we can be confident that most of the time, if we scoop out a bucket full of 1000 marbles and count the colors, there will be something close to 510 red and 490 blue. It's extremely unlikely --- although possible --- that we'd scoop out 1000 blue marbles. It's also very unlikely that every time we scoop up marbles, we'll get exactly 510/490. But let's say we try it 100 times. Roughly 95 times out of 100, we'll get a count between 495/505 and 525/475.

That's exactly what the "margin of error" is: we know, mathematically, that 95 times out of 100, our random scoop will deliver a number plus or minus 1.5 percent (or, total, 3 percent) of the "real" value we'd get if we counted all the marbles.

The problem is that when we talk about a real poll, our "marbles" aren't perfectly mixed. If we were to, say, call the first thousand people in the Cambridge Mass phone book, that wouldn't represent the country as a whole very well. So instead, polling companies call a lot of people, carefully selected, and try to work backwards to what a "perfectly mixed" sample would have been like.

Now, say we were talking about the marbles example again. We know, because they were our marbles to start with, that exactly 51 percent of them were red, 49 percent blue. So when we scoop out 1000 of them, we have an "ideal sample" in mind. A little algebra lets us then compute what the perfect sample would have looked like, and it is going to come up 51/49 every time.

But now let's say we don't know what the real number is; we just think we have roughly 51 percent red when we start. now we scoop out 1000 marbles and apply the same adjustment; we think it's 51/49, and we scoop them out, checking each scoop. If they're really 51/49, the numbers we get should cluster around 51/49. If not, then we can compute what the "real" proportion is.

But now, what if we start with the wrong assumption that they're really 55 percent red, 45 percent blue? When we compute our adjusted values, we're going to "slant" what we think the real value is toward the red ones. we may compute a guess that it's really 53/47.

And that's where the polls are right now. Each one starts with an assumption, or model, of the real electorate. That assumption causes the values to slant one direction or another; how good that initial guess is will determine how good the eventual result is when all the marbles are finally counted.

A lot of the polls have fairly radical assumptions, like that people identify themselves as 40 percent D, 25 percent R, 35 percent independent. Those polls also show Obama with a big leads. Other polls have closer assumptions, and get smaller ranges. That's why I said above that the way to read the polls is really "IF the mix is really like this THEN the election results would be roughly so".

There is an interesting addition to this question from Iowahawk who shows his math.

Works pretty well if you're interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or growth of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you're interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn't quite fit the balls & urns template?

What if 40% of the balls have personally chosen to live in an urn that you legally can't stick your hand into?

What if 50% of the balls who live in the legal urn explicitly refuse to let you select them?

What if the balls inside the urn are constantly interacting and talking and arguing with each other, and can decide to change their color on a whim?

What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you?

What if you've been hired to count balls by a company who has endorsed blue as their favorite color?

What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue?

What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?

If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows

Because, in this case, so-called scientific "sampling error" is meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by non-sampling error. Under these circumstances "margin of error" is a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact, and if a poll reports it -- even if collected "scientifically" -- the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Until then, fondle your own balls.

That can be fun. More fun is when you have the right kind of help. So today I want to ask for your help.

Don't give it to him. Make him steal it.

As to the fondling balls question. I'm looking for volunteers of the female persuasion. Urn fondling in return. Then maybe a cigarette afterwards.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Numbers Game

More than one person has asked me why the polls are so out of whack with what they see as their reality. So what is that reality? I think a few anecdotes are in order. First from commenter Daddy at Just One Minute.

Arriving in Indy about midnight I asked the 2 female bus drivers how did the ballgame come out and they both replied they weren't listening to any ballgame they had been listening to the debate. Both were enthusiastic and pumped, and extremely complementary of Sarah's performance, especially since they had been led to believe she was going to do so poorly. The female Cab driver was very jazzed as well and said exactly the same thing. Ditto for the check-in lady in the hotel. Later at The Redeye Cafe in downtown Indy for a 2 AM Guiness and Spanish Omelette (Yumm!), the bartender girls were also oblivious of ESPN and SportsCenter on the overhead TV's behind, and both were still complementing Sarah on her performance. All these girls were Colts fans, and they were acting exactly like they do when their Colts win a playoff game. I have no idea what any of their politics were, but it seemed that Sarah's performance was somehow something they took personally, and they were proud of how she did. I never did get any opinions from any guys what they thought about the debate since apparantly women do all the work after midnight in Indianapolis, but my unscientific survey of the working girls of middle America is that Sarah made a very big and a very positive impression. Whether or not it'll turn into votes for her, who knows.

Here is one from commenter Sharen at No Quarter.

Comment by Sharen 2008-10-04 23:19:36

Yesterday I was going to The Grove in Los Angeles, I don’t know where your at but if your not familiar with the area, its basically West Hollywood, and I was SHOCKED, SHOCKED by how many McCain/Palin signs I saw, I told my Mom to stop the car and I was like OMG LOOK AT ALL THESE SIGNS, I saw 1 Obama sign and the rest was a sea of McCain/Palin signs, around here in liberal Los Angeles county seeing McCain signs is very unusual, it must have gone on for two blocks, in total, 3 Obama signs, and the rest were McCain/Palin, TWO BLOCKS, I was like damn, am I in Orange County LOL. I swear if California goes Red I will eat my shoe, I don’t see it happening but ya never know

And finally one from Porchlight at Just One Minute.

Daddy,

Thanks for the Indy update. I am trying to figure it out. Wildly enthusiastic audiences for Palin, RNC fundraising for September 1/3 higher than their previous record, VP debate viewership 1/3 higher than previous VP debate, etc. Why isn't this showing in the polls?

So why isn't all this showing up in the polls? There are reasons. Some good. Some not so good. And some there is no way to account for.

So how about the good? Registrations for Democrats is way up. Rush Limbaugh with his Operation Chaos plan to derail Hillary got a bunch of Republicans to register as Democrats to defeat Hillary. So the pollsters believe the Republican party has lost support.

How about the bad? The newspapers and most TV networks are so obviously in the tank for Obama this year that they aren't even making a pretense of a pretense of objectivity. So they get the polls with numbers they are happy to report and that helps their candidate by depressing the other side.

And how about the no way to account problems with polls? People lie to pollsters. Unsourced anecdote: a nice sounding black lady calls and asks who you are voting for? Are some people going to be nice and say Obama when in reality it is going to be McCain? It happens.

Now how about some analysis by people smarter even than me. Let me start with A.J. Strata's view on cooking the polls.

Voter models are the essence of political polls. You take a sample of a few hundred or a few thousand people and predict how that sample can reflect 10s-100s of millions of people. If you are off by even a small fraction in your assumptions the bottom line could be off by 5, 10 or 20% (despite an MoE claim of a few points).

We have a perfect example of this in two Colorado Polls out recently. The first poll was commented on by our Reader MerlinOS2:

PPP just released a poll in Colorado which puts Obama up +7

Now what the issue is here is that the party split was

Dem 40
Rep 36
Ind 24

However August voter registration number per the spreadsheet available from the Secretary of State show the registration breakdown is

Dem 30.6
Rep 34.8
Ind 34.5

Details on the poll in question can be found here. Just this week American Research Group (ARG) also released a poll for Colorado (which is not used in the RCP poll of polls strangely). Its voter model was Dem 32%, Rep 35% and Ind 33%, very close to the ACTUAL voter registration levels noted by MerlinOS2. The result: McCain 48%, Obama 45% - a McCain lead of +3%. (Note: this polls also shows McCain tied with women)

These polls were taken at basically the same time in the same state. But we can see how the voter model can really change the bottom line (a 10% difference).

Go to A.J.'s for the links. And A.J. has more so if you want details give him a read.

Newsbusters looks at the fabrication side of polling. You know. They just make shit up. Again it is all about party weightings.

In the kitchens of the Associated Press, it's almost as if the wire service asked its chief cook -- er, pollster -- GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, to do the following:

* Whip up a tasty, representative poll after the Republican Convention.
* Three weeks later, make the same dish, but this time adjust the mix of ingredients by radically oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans, thereby creating a false illusion of momentum in the campaign of Barack Obama, and of decline in John McCain's.
* Hope people don't notice the changes in the recipe.

Of course we don't know if the differences between AP-CfK's Sept. 5-10 and Sept. 27-30 results were created deliberately, but the results sure look suspicious (both polls are available at PDF links found at AP-GfK's home page).

Read the article if you want to check out the links. Me I want to look at some numbers and we do in fact have a few.

"Somehow," the sample make-up changed from 33-31 Democrat to 40-29 Democrat from the earlier to the latter poll -- a shift of nine points.

"Somehow," the Strong-Dem vs. Strong-GOP difference went from nothing to eight points.

"Somehow," the Strong-GOP vs. Moderate-GOP mix went from +3 to -3, a swing of six points.

Well Newsbusters has charts full of numbers and more text so for the numbers obsessed (hey there may be a key to winning the lottery in there) have a look. There is always more to learn.

I'd like to finish up with analyst DJ Drummond of Stolen Thunder whose motto is: A man must be accountable, else everything he does counts for nothing. Yep. Any way DJ looks at the Secret Poll

I have been working through the poll numbers for quite a while now, sorting out valid patterns from the fakes. I held off posting the true state of things for a long time, for a number of reasons, but I notice that some on the Right have begun to lose hope and make sounds of giving up. So I will tell you plainly, that

We Are Winning

and can only fall in this election if you give up. It's been a long road and the enemy has been his usual foul self, with lies and smears and everything we have learned to expect from people who put power above any moral or honorable precepts. It's close, but here's where we have been, and where we are:

August 31: McCain 41.77%, Obama 41.06%

September 7: McCain 42.45%, Obama 42.04%

September 14: McCain 45.71%, Obama 39.62%

September 21: McCain 44.48%, Obama 42.06%

September 28: McCain 42.73%, Obama 41.62%

And based on the demographic responses, once the undecideds shake out if we work as hard as we can and continue to keep faith, the final popular vote will be

McCain 51.59%

Obama 48.41%

Keys to remember:

This is not a football game or a baseball game, it's politics. Support is built up gradually and won bits at a time. Also, some of the best gains are not obvious at first, because some significant actions take time to develop. McCain and Obama both fell back a bit the last week of September, McCain because Republican support fell off a bit, Obama lost independents' support. This is a salient factor in where the candidates' opportunities and weaknesses lay.

Now I have cribbed everything DJ posted. Which is kind of like stealing. In fact it is stealing. In my defense it wasn't a long post and DJ answers some interesting questions in the comments. So do the right thing and give him a click. Plus his advice is critical: keep the faith. Do not give up. Make sure you and all your friends show up on election day.

I'm going to double down on the above comments. Here is what I say about all this. Again: Let us not give Obama the election by staying home depressed on election day. If he is going to win make him earn it. Get out and vote and make sure everyone you know gets out and votes. Make him know he was in a fight.

In other words fight the trolls on the blogs. And come election day get out the vote like your life and your country depended on it. Because it does. Even in a state like Illinois where I reside, every vote counts because it adds to the popular vote totals even if your state is going for Obama in the electoral college.

Vote Dammit

And if you want to do something about vote fraud read this, because polls aren't the only way the numbers are being cooked this year.

Cross Posted at Classical Values