The Latest Polls

The Associated Press reports: “Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama’s 10-point advantage in a head-to-head match-up, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday.”

At the end of the story, it included this paragraph: “The poll questioned 1,005 adults nationally. Included were interviews with 489 Democratic voters and people leaning Democratic, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 points; and 369 Republicans or GOP-leaning voters, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.1 points.”

I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me that the poll oversampled Democrats and undersampled Republicans. If that is the case, John McCain should be very happy indeed. His lead among likely voters could be 4 to 5 points.

Media polls need to be reviewed very carefully to see if they have any validity whatsoever. For example, if a poll simply asks questions of all Americans, regardless of whether they are registered to vote or not, the results will be much different than if the poll includes only likely voters. Likely voters tend to vote more Republican, while polls of all voters tend to skew Democratic.

And polls that oversample Democrats tend to skew Democratic. Some news organizations, looking for ways to make news, look the other way when the samples are inherently biased.

That is why relying on polls is not always the best way to predict the future.

John McCain is going to do a lot better than the media is willing to believe at this juncture. Their love affair with Barack Obama has only become deeper after his “heroic” and “courageous” speech on race.