Or at least that's one way to look at this new poll. In it, Obama leads McCain 47% to 44% among registered voters, but trails 49% to 45% among likely voters. There were 900 respondents in the registered voter poll while only 791 people were included in the likely voter poll.
Setting aside the fact that having nearly 88% of registered voters being likely voters is silly to begin with, let's dig into these numbers.
In the registered voters poll, Obama wins 47%, or approximately 423, while McCain wins 396 people. Among likely voters, McCain wins 388, while Obama wins 356 people. All of these are +/- 4 people, depending on rounding.
So, looking at the average, Obama had 67 people dropped by the likely voter filter (with a range of 75 to 59). That represents nearly 16% of Obama's registered voter support. In the meantime, McCain lost 8 people (with a range of 0 to 16). That represents 2% of McCain's registered voter support.
So what USA Today/Gallup is basically saying is that eight times as many Obama voters will stay home than McCain voters, at least based on percentage. If basing it on actual hard numbers, at best it is 3.6 times, and at worst it could be as high as, well, undefined since McCain potentially lost no one in the likely voter filter.
This shows how utterly stupid (and open to manipulation) likely voter screens are (again, igorning the fact that filtering out only 12% of voters is ridiculous anyway). Yet, does anyone doubt that the media will flash up the McCain up by 4 graphic up on the screen?
P.S. I have to thank omgitsparishilton for pointing this out originally.
Crossposted at Mad Wombat
Update
Here are last month's numbers:
Registered voters: Obama leads 48% to 42%, 1,460 people
Likely voters: Obama leads 50% to 44%, 1,310 people
Obama had 701 registered voters while McCain had 613. Obama had 655 people among likely voters, while McCain had 576. These are +/- 6.5 people (sometimes it's 6, sometimes it's 7).
Obama loses 46 people in the likely voter filter (about 6.5%) while McCain loses 37 people (about 6%).