According to RCP, McCain is ahead by 4 points in North Dakota. Pretty rough given how ruby red that state is. But it's worse than that. The only reason it's got a McCain lead at all is that RCP is including a poll from September 8 - the height of McCain's popularity and excluding a recent poll by a partisan pollster. The two non-partisan polls from the last week show Obama up by +2 and tied with McCain respectively.
North Dakota, "my friends," is now a swing state.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Fargo: Polling North Dakota
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 1:28 PM
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5 comments:
Count me as a skeptic. fivethirtyeight.com currently gives Obama a 21% chance of winning North Dakota. He pulled out from the state a while back, and I have a feeling his campaign is going to decide it's not worth going after those three electoral votes.
Still, the fact that it's even worth discussing is remarkable.
I am not sure he can win it either, but fivethirtyeight.com has already announced that they just "don't buy" Obama can win ND, so I am not sure about their methods on this one. Two polls in a row showing a statistical tie do tell us it's a tossup state for now.
Well, they don't change their methods from state to state, so any bias they might have shouldn't show up in their numbers. I'll believe it if the polls still look like that in a week.
I think the methodology includes history, doesn't it?
I checked 538.com. It gives significant weight to two polls from early September. That's what's affecting the projection. If they were eliminated (and they should be, because that was McCain's peak and no longer pertinent) we get a different result. I suspect that 538.com will change if the numbers stay as is in a week or so.
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