Pollster.com

BREAKING NEWS: Obama annouces VP pick! It's himself! He's got enough ego to fill both positions!

does this mean pink back to yellow N.C. very much in play.
Fox is running the Hillary pick!

I never expected NC to be this tight in both the presidential and senate race. As a Dem, I'm surprised. I doubt Obama can beat McCain here but Hagan may have a real chance at taking down Liddy. An incumbent polling 10pts below 50% and tied with her challenger this late in the game is bad news for the incumbent.

This state won't go to Obama. The religious forum put the icing on the cake for McCain in N.C..Doyle will also win.

Obama will carry NC only in a 350-EV landslide, which while still possible does not at this moment look terribly likely.

But poll results like this will at a minimum force McCain to put resources into NC that he could otherwise expend elsewhere.

@player

Turnout will decide this one, If Obama gets the Academic communities out, AAs and the 18-29s this is a potential steal.

dont assume the military is going McCain's way either!

marctx...
i tried that one a few days ago.

but could someone tell me what this poll was last time? i cant see it. thx

@thoughtful

I agree that Obama could come a lot closer than John Kerry did four years ago, when he (with North Carolinian John Edwards on the ticket) lost the state by 435,000 votes. But like Indiana, Montana, Georgia, and other deep-red states, North Carolina remains a long shot.

@boskop

I checked RCP and they didn't have a previous Insider Advantage poll for NC listed so maybe there wasn't one. The 2 point McCain lead is the closest poll in the state since Rasmussen's June poll of the state show the same numbers, a 45-43 McCain lead.

Elizabeth Dole is more than likely the least productive senator in the legislative body.

Like other polls before it, this one indicates a close race in North Carolina (McCain's 1.7 point lead is well within the margin of error). The poll's sample of 614 likely voters is not a huge number. Also, the poll was in the field yesterday, and therefore may not fully reflect the positive impact of Obama's visit to North Carolina last night.

One strength of this poll is that it includes Barr, the Libertarian Party's conservative (former Republican) candidate. Barr, a southerner, is already on the ballot in this state. He is likely to take at least some support from McCain. (Nader, who is more likely to hurt Obama, will be a write-in candidate here.) Rasmussen (a conservative evangelical pollster) has not included Barr's name in his polls of North Carolina.

A weakness of this poll is the fact that it is an interactive voice response (IVR) poll. It is my understanding that these polls do not include cell-phone only voters. A recent Pew study found that including cell-phone only voters boosted Obama's support by 2-3%.

Also of note is the fact that college students in North Carolina (of which there are many) are still on summer break. They are likely under-represented in this poll, which hurts Obama due to the fact that this group is one of his strongest constituencies.

Finally, one number in the crosstabs is curious--McCain getting 17% of the African-American vote. Does anyone really believe that Obama will not win at least nine out of ten African-American votes? Adjusting this number alone gives Obama the lead in North Carolina.

boskop: yeah i copied and pasted it from someone else's post. But right now everyone is anxiously awaiting the announcement.

Notice NH went yellow??? Seams premature with just one recent poll.

@justin

The encouraging thing for Obama is he is starting with a much higher base of support>

You know the Obama efforts in the field, the voter registration and then the organization to get supporters to the polls bring these states into play.

Ohio is the State for me where recent polls have been very disappointing.

@thoughtful:
I don't see it. I was born and raised in N.C.. I have a lot of family and contacts there. Obama isn't a big deal. I did notice that the poll weighted blacks at 30%. I think that is way to high don't you?

@player

Its in play, I don't know why New Hampshire has gone yellow and NC is pink?

Faithhopelove seems to have a handle on the numbers.

I used NC to illustrate the possibilities of Obama's impressive ground game (see link) and I agree that an energized, organized base will be a tremendous advantage in any close contest.

You're also right that from the Democrats' perspective, the Ohio numbers point to a worrying trend. There are other ways of getting to 270 (e.g., VA, CO + NV or NH) but winning Ohio would be the surest means of putting it away.

yeah, nh went yellow and obama just lost four electoral votes.

if i were he, i'd be chugging little white pills
to stop the palpitations.

when he was in berlin, i emailed a black journalist friend who writes a weekly column for a big city paper, whether he thought obama ever had a moment of panic alone with himself in the hotel room after such an enormous high.

panic over whether he might NOT WIN.

he said he doubted it. but he cant be doubting it now.

that's not to say he'll lose. these polls are so fragile and mercurial. but the one single mounting trend is the remarkably large (30%) of voters who are now finding him VERY UNFAVORABLE>

this close to the election and with the heat of the season just begining to get turned up..it can't be feeling too good.

@Player

Blacks make up 21% in the poll, which is reasonable. Do your math again (you might have compared to white vote instead of total vote).

Obama needs to do soemthing to stop the movement of support to McCain. He can't just let it trickle away like this or he will find himself 15 points down in November. He needs to give a knockout speech in Denver which he is capable of doing....but needs to back it up at the debates, if he goes into those debates and stumbles around with unclear answers and his ahh, uhhh, ahhh stuff, he will lose. The people want clear answers to questions, what will you do about Iran, give us an answer. Are you going to raise capital gains taxes, if so to what?
....and he better flip flop on drilling. 3/4 of Americans want domestic drilling to increase. He goes in there with the inflate your tires speech, then stick a fork in him cus he's done.

There is no issue in Rasmussen polls regarding the cellphone issue:

"Calls are placed to randomly-selected phone numbers through a process that insures appropriate geographic representation." The key word being randomly; a random 10 digit phone number statisticlly includes cell-phone users in propotion to their actual numbers in the field.

@Stillow

I don't think that Obama has lost any support to McCain or really that there has been much pick up in support, at best patchy.

On the other hand Obama looks to have lost 2-3% to undecided!

Obama can only be Obama and that's carefully considered.

I think he will have to show a better thinking on his feet situation.

Boskop is still obsessed with the unfavorables for Obama they have been consistently over 26% for the last 5 weeks, so I don't think its a prob though.

Regarding cell phones:

"Federal law prohibits automated dialing to cell phones...."

http://www.livescience.com/technology/060528_cell_polls.html

I just looked at the poll again. It's true that blacks make up 21% of those polled. However, 17% of the blacks went to McCain. In the primary in N.C., Obama got most all of the black vote. Clinton got most of the white; less than a third of the white vote went to Obama. However, the totals of both Clinton and Obama didn't equal the total republican vote in 2004. Obama isn't going to get all of those white democrat votes that Clinton got in the primary. McCain has to have a similar 2004 republican turnout to win. That religious forum performance might have gave it to him.

@player

The poll weighted African American responses roughly in proportion to their population in NC. But according to exit polls, African Americans accounted for 26% of NC turnout in 2004, and 85% of those voters preferred John Kerry. I don't know anyone who thinks black turnout will be lower this year than it was in '04, and I doubt seriously that Obama will fail to out-perform John Kerry with that demographic.

That said, I remain convinced that the Tar Heel state is a long shot for Obama.

@faithhopelove:

(C) may, by rule or order, exempt from the requirements of paragraph (1)(A)(iii)[The illegal to autodial a cellphone clause] of this subsection calls to a telephone number assigned to a cellular telephone service that are not charged to the called party, subject to such conditions as the Commission may prescribe as necessary in the interest of the privacy rights this section is intended to protect;

It looks like you can call cell phones so long as the cell phone is not charged. Now I wonder if there is a way to tell what service provider a number is using (that way they could eliminate that number); similar to how websites can figure out what browser a user is using.

Also, I don't know this for a fact I could be completely wrong, but does anybody pay for incoming calls anymore?

Two things that would make me happy if this poll is right:

1. African-Americans are 21% of the IA sample, compared to 26% in the 2004 exit polls, and Kerry carried them 85-14. [But PPP's last poll also put Af-Am at 20%. Hmmm....]
2. Obama does slightly better among Whites (32.5%) than Kerry (27%, with Edwards); but McCain (54.3%) does much worse than Bush (73%)! [Agrees with PPP.]

Still, I'd wait for the next PPP poll - it's a local outfit, so they should know conditions better.

BTW, my exit poll numbers are from MSNBC.

Again, the bottom line is North Carolina is too conservative for a Democrat to carry it, minus a national landslide.

It may not be sexy to default to a base partisanship level instead of grasping the most recent polls and dissecting their meaning. But it's a more accurate perspective. North Carolina was 17% liberal, 44% conservative in 2004. That's out of reach.

A good guideline is to look at the 2004 exit polls. Any state with 38% or lower conservatives is in play this year. Democrats have a landscape edge which extends the reach beyond the normal range of 34% or 35%, but it won't extend to 40% or higher.

Party ID is comparatively meaningless. Respondents may be shy to align as a Republican based on recent years, but there's been very little movement in the liberal/conservative percentages and gap, maybe a point.

Have you heard? Those of you worried about protests at the Hillary role call can now relax. Hillary is putting together a 40 member whip team at the convention to stop any anti-Obama protests. They plan to accomplish this by handing out Hillary for President signs. Sounds like a good plan to me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080820/pl_politico/19572;_ylt=Au14WyrCk.gkELwUp0iNl_yyFz4D

@marctx

I hope you're not suggesting this an attempt to foment discord. After all, they're only handing out Hillary signs to supporters who "request" them.

Rasmussen's methodology page does not say that cell phones are included in its random calling. Does anyone here know that they are?

@Justin:
I think that is where the poll goes wrong. Why not use the exit poll data from 2004. Not much has changed since then except that Obama has registered thousands of new black voters. However it isn't enough. The white democrats won't back Obama the way the blacks do. A large portion that voted for Kerry will either vote for McCain or stay home.

@player:

OK, weight African Americans according to their 2004 turnout and assume that Obama does no better with black voters than John Kerry did. On those assumptions, Obama would come out a couple points ahead of where this poll says he would.

I agree with you that NC is unlikely to flip in a close election, but if this poll is wrong, it's wrong despite having underestimated Obama's African-American support.

NC dis NOT MN or Maine... or WI with no history of strong 3rd parties. 5% for Barr ?? come on does anyone REALLY beleive that crap?

@faithhopelove:

Some more info on the cell phone issue:
This exemption clearly shows that it is not illegal to include cellphones in a random sample so long as the service provider of the randomized number is known. A quick google search reveals that such a thing is possible. ReverseGenie runs a service that allows a user to enter a phone number, and returns the service provider along with a boat load of other information; the service is $40 a year and allows for an unlimited number lookups. Using this service, or a similar technology would clearly allow a pollster to sift out the numbers they cannot legally dial from a randomized set. Whether pollsters do this once they have a randomized set is unknown (SurveyUSA uses a phone number provider that does include cellphones), but if they take the time to ensure they are not autodialing a hospital (which is illegal and must be done) they likely also have the ability to check the service provider.

As for the Rasmussen part, I'm really not sure. I plan on looking into it further tomorrow.

I think that Barr could win 4-5% of the vote in North Carolina because of the fact that he is a southern conservative and former Republican. As I noted earlier, his name will be on the ballot here. He could play spoiler.

voteforAmerica--curious to learn what you discover re: cell phones.

The crosstabs show equal numbers of Dems and Reps. Currently, Dems have a 12.5 point lead in the registration numbers and that margin is growing daily.

If the Dems actually show up on election day, McCain is doomed.

@faithhopelove:

I called Rasmussen Reports and asked: "Are cell phones included in your random samples?" The response: "No."

I next called Quinnipiac University and asked the same question. Their response: "The numbers are randomly generated and through that course cell phones are occasionally called. When this happens, the respondent's number is removed from the pool of available numbers." This was a very curious response because Quinnipiac University does not use an autodialer and could therefore legally talk to the respondent, but ultimately they seek to only include landlines in their polling samples.

I'm still in the process of contacting other pollsters to determine whether cell phones are included in their samples.

Ah! It seems to me that it is then safe to assume that Rasmussen under-estimates Obama's support--perhaps by as much as 2-3%.

Thank you for your research.