These two stories, taken together, seem strange (via):
A new University of North Florida poll reveals President Barack Obama has a 4-percentage point lead over Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 45 percent.
And:
Pollster David Paleologos of Suffolk University told Bill O’Reilly that his organization will not be doing any further polls in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia because he believes President Obama has no chance to win those states.
A supposedly non-partisan pollster goes on a crazy right-wing show and says Obama has no chance of winning Florida…while another poll by a supposedly non-partisan pollster shows Obama ahead by 4 points in the state.
The Moar You Know
When composing excuses, it is best to pick one that is plausible.
chopper
gotta remember, with his embrace of vouchercare mittens has socked in the retiree vote. right?
muddy
I think the word “supposedly” is the key. I hate those more than the Fox ones that come right out with their bullshit. As far as I’m concerned, the “supposedly” group is so low they have to look up to look down.
Taylormattd
The polls today showing Obama ahead in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, as well as the current Gallup tracking polls showing Obama ahead, are all clearly in denial, given Obama was trounced in the debate.
Roger Moore
As somebody said in a previous thread, it’s a big, flashing red warning sign when a pollster bases decisions on what he believes, not what the data shows.
Butch
Right now I would pay $1,000 a month for a cable TV connection that ran no political ads and that featured no horse race political reporting.
PreservedKillick
Um. Could it possibly be that the money to pay this pollster is drying up?
shortstop
You always have me with the first “Pale Blue Eyes” reference.
arguingwithsignposts
Because ZOMG obama lost teh debate! Cue firebagger drooones and spatula to tell us how obama didn’t do his jerb.
shortstop
@Butch: Honey, just turn it off and turn the music UP.
red dog
Deny, deny, deny, is the definition of “head in the sand”. The Village’s ostrich asses are in the air about a lot of things we all accept as science.
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@shortstop:
I’ve always loved that song. It was in a dream I had last night too (though actually it was the REM cover in the dream).
SatanicPanic
He’s auditioning for a job at Unskewed Polls
Culture of Truth
I don’t mean to tell the man how to do his job, but how can you be so sure if you don’t you know, conduct some polls?
The Moar You Know
@PreservedKillick: Nailed it. “My polling indicates your client is fucked” does not tend to bring in a lot of repeat business.
Chris
I’m well aware that this is nothing new or unique to this election cycle, but these people’s absolute determination never to have to see any data that might contradict what they want to believe in is truly remarkable.
shortstop
@Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ: Well, I’m not work-working this afternoon, just doing some hideously procrastinated household stuff, so I just put on VU Live 1969. Thanks!
chopper
@Taylormattd:
OMG THIS SUCKER’S GOING DOWN!
seriously, one thing dems know how to do is fucking panic, usually when it’s most important to keep it down. remember 2008? everybody flipping their shit every 3 days? good times…
Hill Dweller
Even some of the wingnuts are laughing at the Suffolk pollster.
Brachiator
So if this guy is proven wrong, will he get out of the polling business.
Unskewed polls and unhinged pollsters. Everyone is losing his or her mind.
Steve M.
Frank Luntz is working for CBS now — maybe there’s a job opening for a pollster/spin doctor at Fox.
lamh35
you’re just in denial DougJ on just how bad Obama debate performance was dontcha know. This pollster like all the rest of the non O-bots has seen the writing on the way and unlike you, who refuse to acknowledge what a shitstorm Obama created by his abysmal debate performance, this pollster is dealing with the reality and he just telling you the cold hard facts that you just can’t see since you’re blinded by your Obama loyalty.
WAKE UP DOUGJ!!! WAKE UP.
Dan
I hate to agree with Chuck Todd, but as he pointed out on twitter this poll includes several days of pre debate polling. Its hard to trust the top line in that poll when the debate is clearly driving so many other poll numbers.
That being said the fact that Obama still comes out plus 4 on this debate must mean he had decent numbers in the past two or three days, otherwise that means his pre debate days had to have been a 9 or 10 point spread, which would be truly hard to believe……….
Joel
Sam Wang is required reading this week.
divF
Pretty much to be expected. As Sam Wang over at PEC observed, Rasmussen, Gravis, and We Ask America – all Republican-leaning pollsters – have been aggressively polling ever since last Thursday, with other polling organizations sticking to their regular schedules. There is no doubt that Obama is down from his peak, but the effect of these three polling houses are causing the numbers from the aggregators such as PEC, which does not exclude any “reputable” polls, to look worse than they actually are. If you must watch the polls, wait for another few days until some other polling results come out.
Actually, I can barely stand to watch baseball right now, with both the A’s and Giants with their backs to the wall.
Bobby Thomson
Suffolk’s last poll had Obama winning Florida.
Someone didn’t do a good job of hiding his bias and just blew up his entire firm’s credibility for nothing.
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
And why does he believe that when his most recent polls for Florida and Virginia (he doesn’t seem to have run any Presidential polls in NC anyway) show Obama ahead. If you believe Obama is going to lose in spite of your own polling that puts him ahead, it shows that either your political judgment or your polling skill is deficient.
Yutsano
@Steve M.: Note to self: no longer take CBS seriously. On anything.
LGRooney
Either no one is paying for his services because they don’t want to know the truth or they’re laying the groundwork for a shit storm. Their pollsters “know” Romney is going to win so when the O victory comes they can, at best, scream “Illegitimate!” for the next four years and try to stop everything he does – so, steady steaming.
At worst, they can hold up the whole process of actually counting actual votes, get their conspiratorial paranoia frothed up and attack this Chicago-Mooslim-blah-Kenyan-socialist takeover of America. If they hold it up long enough, no work gets done in DC and we head right over the fiscal cliff and they all shout, “Obama killed the economy… again!!”
Paul
Stunning to say the least! Before the debate his organization had Obama up by 3 in Florida. And now he claims that because of the debate Romney is winning by so much that Romney has already won Florida.
This, eventhough history shows that bounces like this after debates usually don’t last.
It seems like Suffolk’s polling results for future reference are just like Rasmussen – right-wing polling that can now be set aside.
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore:
This “nuh uh!” reaction is exactly why McCain lost Virginia. Well, that and sucking.
trollhattan
@Steve M.:
Speaking of Luntz, he and Maher had quite the scrapfest last Friday. Luntz is one oily dude.
Ash Can
@chopper: And people flipping their shit every 15 minutes over the ACA, and so on. (So far this time around, one of my all-time favorites is the apparent GOP operative in the previous thread declaring that the House is lost — on the basis of Obama’s performance in the first and only debate thus far.)
It’s obvious that an awful lot of time and energy is going to be wasted on gloom and doom this time around too. Maybe if we’re really lucky, though, the FPers here will limit the ratio of angst-and-wailing posts to regular news/sports/pets to 1:1 rather than 3:1 or 4:1.
Marty
I live in Florida. So maybe I will forward all future pollster calls to someone who lives in an “important” state.
Lurking Canadian
Are they high? Are you high? Am I high? Somebody around here is frickin’ high. I’m beginning to think it’s me, because the alternative is that the entire political world has gone bug shagging insane.
James E. Powell
@divF:
I don’t have a team that I care about in the playoffs, so I love, L-U-V, any elimination game and pray for every series to go the distance. It is the best baseball.
shortstop
@Bobby Thomson: That made me laugh.
LGRooney
@Lurking Canadian: “bug-shagging insane” – that’s a new one. Canadians is strange.
Wag
@Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ:
Now THAT’S a cool dream
Yutsano
@Lurking Canadian: That would sort of explain the Harper majority. And Bibi might get one too. Joy.
Dave
Maybe it’s just me, but any pollster who stops polling because they “believe” someone is going to lose is pretty fucking poor at doing their statistics and fact-based job.
beltane
It’s hard to believe that a Republican party which has spent so much time and effort in restricting Democrats’ ability to cast a vote isn’t going to expend a lot of time and effort to depress Democratic turnout in other ways as well. Someone called it right before the debate when Rass had an inexplicable spike in the president’s numbers, meaning they’d be able to paint a more dramatic post-debate dip. And then you had the sleeper concern trolls on DKos, UID’s not seen since 2008, out there stirring shit which far too many people fell for.
They warned us, though. All that pre-debate talk of “unskewed polls” was really the sound of Karl Rove’s A-team doing the nasty with their rodent friends. If Suffolk really believed all is lost for Obama you’d think they’d be pushing polls that show the race to be far out of reach instead of just asserting that they have THE MATH so shut up that’s why.
These people are slick, evil, and vile. The only thing they haven’t sunk to yet is widespread violence at polling places but I wouldn’t put that past them either.
Redshift
@Ash Can:
Yeah, I especially liked his citing Princeton/Sam Wang to back up the assertion that the Dems would only win the House with a 12-16 point Obama win, when in fact Wang says “3% or greater will suggest a likely Democratic takeover of the House.”
I gotta admit, though, “I’m really sad that Obama isn’t doing great any more” is more subtle trolling than the earlier “HAHAHAHAH LUUUSERS!”
Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ
@Wag:
Kind of depressing actually. I dreamt I was back in college. Made me feel old when I woke up.
shortstop
@Wag: When you think about it, that bassline could equally support the embarrassing suddenly-pantsless-in-the-Sears-appliance-department dream, the happy running-until-you-suddenly-start-flying dream or the ever-popular panicky forgot-to-go-to-class-all-semester-and-now-must-take-final-exam dream. A few minutes ago, it was the backdrop to my on-my-knees-recaulking-the-tub reality.
eric
so what the Suffolk guy is saying: you cant pay me enough to poll florida. really? that is some business model you got there chief.
cat48
Suffolk polled FL & VA last week & Obama was ahead in Both States. Sorry Suffolk Boy. We ain’t buying it!
Dave
@Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ: I have that dream all the damn time. But it always involves me having skipped class and having to take a final. I’m always GLAD I’m older when I wake up.
shortstop
@Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ: Dude, that song (Lou’s original, not the REM cover) came out before you were born and it was probably already 15 years old when I discovered it. A little perspective.
PurpleGirl
@PreservedKillick: That hadn’t occurred to me but I guess that if he can’t sell a report, he won’t to spend the money to take more polls.
currants
Is it me, or is anybody else wondering whether “Paleologos” is… I mean, is that really his name? For real?
beltane
@LGRooney: Although the whole plan to cry “illegitimate!” when Obama wins Florida would be better served by polls actually showing Romney with an insurmountable lead. Paleologos, I think, was a little too open about this. If he wants to be a full-fledged member of the Republican propaganda apparatus he’s going to have to step it up a bit.
Butch
@shortstop: I unfortunately do not control the remote. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage just to get away from the TV.
shortstop
@Butch: Do what you must do, my friend. Your mental health comes first.
FlipYrWhig
@currants: A name like that belongs to a slow-moving woolly mammoth on a kids’ TV show.
lonesomerobot
@shortstop: and here I was thinking this was a waaaaay-left field Tones on Tail reference
Tim I
Why would a university, in bright blue Boston, allow its reputation, or at least that of its Political Science Department, get trashed by some moron who is absolutely willing to go on O’Reilly and spew nonsense like this?
They should fire this dick immediately and hire someone who has a clue.
beltane
@currants: I think this was an actual last name of a Byzantine bishop or emperor. The name is kind of cool, the bearer of it is an idiot.
shortstop
@Tim I: Tenure.
PreservedKillick
@The Moar You Know:
That. But also, too, I suspect that Romney (the only right wing party who really, legitimately can sponsor a poll of the presidential race – the RNC and the PACs kind of can’t without looking like they are coordinating with him) doesn’t have the cash.
A bit of a problem for him there – his fate may well and truly rest solely on a group of people who are both (a) quite insane (b) entirely outside of his control and (c) not quite entirely aligned with him.
Bit of a problem there.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: It’s all Greek to me.
Davis X. Machina
@Tim I: It’s Suffolk. Stuck behind BU, BC, Northeastern, Tufts, and That Place in Cambridge, and That Other Place in Cambridge (the trade school) — and they’re going stride for stride with Quninnipiac?
They’re up for anything if it comes with headlines.
beltane
Frank Newport of Gallup says Romney’s bounce was fleeting and is now over http://www.gallup.com/video/157964/romney-debate-bounce-short-lived.aspx
Walker
@Tim I:
The purpose of tenure is to support this kind of behavior. Even when for “the other side.”
currants
@beltane: Agreed–the name is very cool. Which is why, given the context, I wondered if it were real, or hmmm…you know, trolls these days. But thanks.
David in NY
@shortstop:
Glanced at his website and didn’t necessarily look like a tenure-track position. But I could be wrong again.
David in NY
By the way (and ironically if I’m right) doesn’t his name in Greek mean something like “stone-knowledge”? How fitting.
EDIT: No, to answer my own question. Means “ancient knowledge.” Got the wrong word-stem from “paleolithic.”
Turgidson
This “VA/FL/NC aren’t in play” bullshit sounds like clumsy attempts at narrative-setting to me. Either trying to create a “Romney’s winning” self-fulfilling prophecy, or sowing the seeds for “Obama cheated!” when Obama wins some or all of those states, as I continue to expect.
RinaX
@beltane:
He clearly hasn’t read Bernard Finel’s post below.
scav
Somehow I’m getting strong pings of MBA / PR training where everything is about and invested in exposure and brand recognition and vapour blabblah, driving the message, seeding the market, building buzz and damn near nothing whatsoever goes into developing the actual product. Serious disinformation efforts and bugs lying downing with chickens in three-ways. Well, that and everyone just being off their rockers and hinges and meds all at once.
Haydnseek
@shortstop: This is great advice, politics be damned. It should be emblazoned on every coin and banknote.
shortstop
@Haydnseek: If you could see me dancing with a caulking gun in my hand right now, you’d be even more thoroughly convinced.
Calouste
@Dave:
Yep. Any pollster who uses the phrase “I believe that” rather than the phrase “my numbers show that” should be looking for a different job.
beltane
@RinaX: That’s OK, I also haven’t read Bernard Finel’s post.
smintheus
I checked out the Univ. of North Florida poll’s internals, and the demographics appear to check out pretty well. Very little jumps out to suggest it’s a bad poll sample, except that it somewhat oversamples older voters and white voters. So Obama’s lead if anything ought to be slightly larger.
Also, that’s a likely voter model that considerable minimizes Obama’s much bigger lead (9%) among the “Florida residents” who were polled (unclear whether that means registered voters, citizens, or just anybody who picks up the phone).
Bruce S
@Bobby Thomson:
“Someone didn’t do a good job of hiding his bias and just blew up his entire firm’s credibility for nothing.”
Not for nothing. This guy has a market scoped out for himself. Maybe, as has been suggested, a contract with FOX.
Haydnseek
@trollhattan: Maher took Luntz to school, took his lunch money, and then pantsed him for good measure. It was painful to watch. Well, almost painful. No, it was really fucking satisfying.
David in NY
Paleologos: “adjunct faculty member in Suffolk’s Department of Government”
Adjunct is non-tenure, methinks.
smintheus
@Dan: But the debate is not driving voters away from Obama or toward Romney. Check out Gallup’s tracking poll for the last week; it’s pretty stable.
FlipYrWhig
@David in NY: Yes, adjunct by definition means non-tenured and not on a track to being tenured. It applies to people who teach courses a la carte as the department needs them.
scav
@David in NY: “adjunct faculty member in Suffolk’s Department of Government”
Why does this instantly make me laugh in several directions at once and envision a shared closet office in a 3-year old dept? I really should be better but it’s too much fun.
Taylormattd
So is this Suffolk pollster guy simply the end-stage evolution of the emo-prog Obama haters in the left blogosphere?
Because I’m not sure I can tell the difference between this guy and the firebagosphere.
Woodrowfan
maybe he should ask President Dewey about what happens when you stop polling too early…
muddy
@trollhattan:
He should have put some of that oil onto his wig to make it look realistic.
gelfling545
@Metrosexual Manichean Monster DougJ: Sounds like a better dream than the one I had which is still nagging at the back of my brain. It was about carrying cats around in pink waste baskets and no musical accompaniment. God knows what that’s supposed to mean. Probably some incurable type of insanity.
Xenos
@SatanicPanic:
No shit. Telling fools only what they want to hear is a very lucrative business these days.
I just worry sometimes that I am one of the fools…
gelfling545
@David in NY: In some institutions “adjunct faculty” achieve the level of academic respect accorded to random strangers who wandered onto campus.
ellennelle
actually emailed paleologos, and he immediately replied that he’s been watching the FL trends (i presume, in his own polling only), and obama has never gotten away from 47% really, so he’s giving it to romney.
it essentially boiled down to a pragmatics defense; only so many polls they can do in the time left, so they’re concentrating on those that have more fluctuation.
makes sense to me. tho his wording on o’reilly – without this explanation – did not so much.
Matt McIrvin
@divF: Those snap polls did demonstrate something interesting, though, which is that you can end up with an unbelievably huge transient lead in the initial hours after a good debate performance. Had that been demonstrated before?
I’m thinking some of the apparently unprecedented size of Romney’s initial gain just comes from the fact that the Internet allows media of a sort to react to events, process them and turn them into conventional wisdom on a time scale of minutes. We can capture transient phenomena and misidentify them as The New Normal before the hour is up.
Matt McIrvin
@currants: It’s just a Greek name. Lots of those around here.
JK
Good thing he is still polling Illinois. Dumb shit.
Ellyn
It’s Fox
Thatgaljill
Isn’t this how Horton Wilde won the Congressional seat after he died? The pollsters said he had no chance so the RNC and DNC pollsters went home and Will Bailey brought home the victory? I swear, there’s a West Wing episode for every situation!