20 point swings.....

A couple of weeks ago I reacted to a very favorable twenty five point swing towardsObama poll with disbelief.  I'm reacting the same way to the American Research Group poll that shows a twenty point swing in two weeks towards Hillary Clinton.  As I said in that post, there is not enough believable causation for this to be plausible:

Hillary Clinton has not eaten the head of a three legged kitten on national television nor has Barack Obama begun... healing the sick with his uplifting rhetoric or horrendous bowling abilities.  I'll be voting for Obama in three weeks, I just don't believe these numbers as no one else is picking up that type of swing, and the type of events that could typically cause that type of swing have not occurred --- neither candidate is picking up prostitutes, barbecuing babies or snorting coke at a bestial bacchanal.

The only plausible explanatory action is the 'bitter' controversy, but Gallup and Rasmussan are showing stable races with Obama holding a ten point national lead.  Furthermore the areas where this type of comment would theoretically hurt Obama and make people less likely to vote for him are already heavily pro-Clinton.  Obama's base in Pennsylvania are the major cities, and not the smal towns.  The small towns are already heavily pro-Clinton so there is not space for a twenty point swing to occur.  Most likely this is an outlier.

Comments

[JohnShreffler]

ARG is an outlier acc, to Polster.com.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/bialik_asseses_arg_teases_quin.php

Pollster says that Quinnipac leaked to WSJ that nothing in PA changed. Their poll comes out tomorrow. We'll see.

[JohnShreffler]

No change at all, the poll is out.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1327.xml?ReleaseID=1168

[Annole]

I have been reading alot lately about ARG and how wrong they are in their polling data.

It made me wonder about companies that do polling. After googling Gallup, Quinnepiac etc., I found the websites all had "about us" features, except for one.

American Research Group.

Luckily, another person had the same questions. I found a slew of information at "Dumb Looks Still Free" (http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2007/12/problem-with-american-research-group.html)

After reading the information, I am amazed that anyone still takes this company seriously.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Annole