Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2:48:57 PM
Two questions arise from the Washington Post/ABC poll.
Since they find an unusually high gap — an outlier from all other
polling — what kind of sample produced it? And does this really show a
shift in likely voters to Barack Obama, when state-by-state polling
shows the race tightening in the other direction? The answer is that a
poor sample still could show some movement
As some have already noted, the sampling in this poll could explain why. In the raw numbers, the poll sample consists of 38% Democrats and 28% Republicans. This doubles the actual spread
on party affiliation, last surveyed by the more-reliable Rasmussen at
38.7%-33.6% D-to-R. When the WaPo/ABC poll takes leaners into account,
the spread gets even more pronounced: 54-38. That suggests a rather
strong bias towards Obama, and an almost insurmountable hurdle for
McCain.