Sunday 26 October 2008

Obama within margin of error in Arizona

Following one poll which puts John McCain only four points ahead in his home state of Arizona comes another showing the gap at just two points.

Now, it would be a major surprise if McCain couldn't win his home state, and I fully expect him to do take it. But the fact that it's even competitive tells you a lot about how badly McCain is doing.

With today's polls showing decent leads for Obama in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Virginia, and Ohio, I think it's going to be almost impossible for McCain to turn things around at this late stage.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just in the interests of accuracy...

'Obama within margin or error in Arizona' - yes, because of the sample size of the poll.

The smaller the sample for the poll, the larger the margin of error. So, if the poll had been done with 1000 people, and achieved the same result, he would have been outside the margin of error.

However, before I am accused of spinning and doubting THE ONE's abilities to conquer the hearts of all men, I would say that, because one cannot directly compare the Arizona polls with each other because of their different sample sizes (let alone on account of the nature of the questions etc), you can nevertheless see a story emerging in terms of the figures showing a general trend which doesn't bode well for McCain (although, like you, I don't think he will not take Arizona based on figures to date).

Actually, that MoE thing sounds like it should have made it onto LibDem literature. If a Lib Dem candidate was, say, 15% behind the winning party, a poll of 30 people could theoretically throw up a result that Lib Dem support was within the MoE to overtake the front runner and so cliam you were 'winning here.' If it wasn't so complicated, it sounds like an excellent piece of dodgy stats for a Focus leaflet!

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