I keep hearing rumblings that the internal GOP polling which shows McCain up by double digits in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other key battleground states. I caught a reference to it once again this morning on XM’s “The War Room”. The stated reason for the huge difference in reported numbers is over-sampling by the commercial pollsters, in eastern PA, (say, I81/I476 and east, such as Philly), and less in the way of sampling in places like the I79 corridor… (Erie, Pittsburgh and so on).
While there is a historical trend of over-sampling in such areas, and as such I have no reason to doubt that such skewing is hapening this time, I also have no confirmation it’s hapening this time, either….
Except: Obama’s internal polling. according to RedState [1], is also showing things are not nearly so rosy for Obama as the commercial pollsters are suggesting. As David Rasbold points out:
I know is that we’re being sold a bill of goods by the media. Why? Not to be conspiratorial, but they likely just want to dispirit us, precisely because Obama has yet to seal the deal. He should be way ahead this season, but he’s not.
I’ll close by saying that we have several weeks left. The Obama camp internally knows they haven’t wrapped this thing up.
Exactly why I pointed out over the weekend that Obama has yet to seal the deal, and has repeatedly shown an inability to do so.
Add to all this the figures that even the commercial pollsters are showing, where Obama is down by 3 points among independant voters [2]and we have a situation that’s quite differernt from what the MSM is describing to us. Maybe that’s why Obama’s been sounding so nervous the last week or two, telling Democrats ‘don’t get cocky’, blaming the tight race on racism, and just generally trying to lower expectations.
Even Joe Biden… the walking trainwreck, is getting into the act; [3]
“Mark my words, you’re going to see these polls drop this week,” Biden forecasted. “We got a bump. We’re going to be in good shape. You’re going to see them drop. There’s nothing automatic about this at all.”
You can forget that mental picture of Obama measuring the drapes in the Oval office. He’s gotta win the race first, and believe me when I tell you that’s by no means assured.