This Is Going To Be A Close Election, Part 47,926
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John McCain — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
With the dust having finally settled after the prolonged Democratic presidential primary, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama locked in a statistical dead heat in the race for the White House.
With just over four months remaining until voters weigh in at the polls, the new survey out Tuesday indicates Obama holds a narrow 5-point advantage among registered voters nationwide over the Arizona senator, 50 percent to 45 percent. That represents little change from a similar poll one month ago, when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee held a 46-43 percent edge over McCain.
CNN Polling Director Keating Holland notes Tuesday's survey confirms what a string of national polls released this month have shown: Obama holds a slight advantage over McCain, though not a big enough one to constitute a statistical lead.
Just a little reminder that every vote counts.
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This Is Going To Be A Close Election, Part 47,926 7 Comments (0 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Each & every vote counts - that's why we must remain steadfast. McCain will be a much better president for the US & the world than Obama, much better exponentially.
?
it's definitely not Earth
A planet on which people do polls with a MoE of greater than 5%?
what with all the liberal arts being taught on college campuses that usually require some type of statistics classes.
McCain for POTUS so the left can't ruin SCOTUS.
Here at RedState, if McCain is down within the MoE then he's "tied". If he was up by the MoE then it would be a "fantastic turnaround pointing toward a huge victory in November!!"
And vice versa on the Left-leaning blogs.
It's all spin. The polls, for what little they are worth at this point of the campaign, suggest a slight Obama lead. Maybe.
It's not an all or nothing proposition. It's a matter of statistical ground rules to prevent gaming of the results.
In particular, if I'm understanding MoE correctly as representing an alpha of .05 (or is it .01?), then if the difference falls within the MoE, you cannot reject the null hypothesis - that is, you cannot declare that the results represent a true preference between the candidates as opposed to chance fluctuation.
So in that sense, you have a statistical dead heat in that you cannot state that the difference in percentages is statistically significant.
However, the closer the difference comes to the MoE, the more confidence you can have that the difference is genuine, even if you can't demonstrate it from that sample. (And for that matter, the MoE works both ways, so the true difference could be larger than the observed difference.)
In then end, it comes down to probability and what level of certainty you would insist upon. Your understanding will be better when you rely upon multiple polls and/or trends over time. But that's why campaigns hire statistical experts.
Frightening, that as a Republican I have to ask that question...however, it is real. Unfortunately, I am not alone. You wonder why the poles show what they do??? We are frightened that we will vote for immigration laws that burden our children and grandchildren, environmental laws that really have no basis and burden our children.