according to PPP
Yesterday SUSA released a poll where McCain had a 20% lead. A lot of us couldn`t believe it and when I saw the crosstabs I where shocked, they where laughable. But according to PPP McCain only has a 4% lead, not 20%. 4% is 1 up since last PPP poll. 4% is close to MOE.
I think this really shows us that we have to read the polls carefully because not all pollsters to a good job when it comes to crosstabs. SUSA have been extremely bad at it and not only with the NC poll. They claimed that McCain was getting stronger in WA and VA, but once you adjusted for the change in party affiliation (which SUSA had without any good reason) we could actually see that Obama was doing better in both states. I`m not saying that other pollsters are perfect. PPP did the same thing with FL a couple of days ago. But when SUSA consistently does it and it favors McCain, its not good.
SUSA also has a clear tendency to have to few African americans in their polls, specially in the south. VA is a good example where they had AA at 19% which is lower than the number in 2004. They did the same thing with North Carolina. Why in the world would AA turnout go down in 08 when Obama is on the ticket and AA turnout was huge in the primary.
I think its important that people take polls with a grain of salt, because it is obvious that several pollsters are doing a very very poor job. Even PPP which have Obama much closer in NC compared to SUSA seems to "underestimate" AA, they have 22% AA, while turnout in 2004 was 26% in NC. I`m not sure if we should take this as a sign of Obama probably doing a couple of points better in reality? That was the fact in the primary, specially in the south.
PPP used 49% democrat, 36% republican and 15% independents
SUSA used 40% democrat 41% republican and 16% independents
I`m not sure how the real numbers are, but I doubt the difference between democrats and republicans in NC is only 1% and I doubt there are more registered republicans.
PPP:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
SUSA:
http://www.surveyusa.com/...