Indiana Politisite Political Projections – Hoosier Pick?
Web Posted on May 5, 2008
By Albert N. Milliron, Chief Political Correspondent,
Iron Mill Interactive Media, Inc / Politisite.com
Hello all you pundits, politicos, politstes, pollsters, politisites, political junkies, and casual political readers. This is your place for Indiana Poll data. See also our PPP_ North Carolina
Check back Tuesday at 4:00 pm ET for exit polling data for Indiana and North Carolina. Then at 7:00 pm when the polls close we will bring you real time election results right from the election department of the Secretary of States offices from both states.
Politisite uses a Trend Line / Momentum Model in determining possible outcomes of elections. If you have ever traded in the stock market you are aware of these terms. Our model is based on the same ideas.
Trends & Momentum: Remember in statistics, one or two data points do not make up a trend. It takes more than 5 or 6 data points, in this case, polling data from pollsters. “The Trend is your Friend” is the title of a book on how to buy stocks by Peter Lynch. Mr. Lynch was portfolio manager of Fidelity Magellan, a mutual fund that had a 20% return per year over its life time. Lynch used a momentum/trending model by asking folks who read the book, “where do you shop”, “what products do you use”. His idea was that if you chose one store or product over another, other are probably making the same decision. Why do you like a certain candidate? What programs are they offering? If you like them for whatever reason, others probably have the same ideas.
I believe that anyone who does polling should go the extra step and look at trend lines and momentum. Had pollsters considered trending in New Hampshire, they probably would have had the numbers correct. Pollsters report data one or two days after it has been gathered. So what you get is data that is where a candidate was in the past. They do not consider where the candidates numbers may be. They don’t deal in speculation, we do. Our model projects where a candidates numbers will be on the day of the election. That’s why we call our model a projection rather than a prediction.
Real Clear Politics has trend lines below the polls so one can see how the candidates are moving. You can also use these graphs to gauge where a candidate will be on election day. Why is momentum very powerful? Picture an snow ball rolling down a steep hill. The snow ball gets bigger and moves faster as it rolls down the hill. It is very difficult to stop a rolling train. Here is where physics comes in, what did Newton say?. “an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” An object on our case is a political candidate. There is immediate resistance like the Rev. Wright situation in the Obama campaign. Gradient resistance which causes things to stop, like a rolling ball at the bottom of a flat hill. To look at gradient resistance take Mayor Giuliani. He was considered the front runner in the Republican party. He lost 3 contests then took a break to try to get momentum going again in Florida. The resistance was so large that he was unable to regain momentum. His big mistake was stopping his campaign through several primaries. Newton’s first part of the law of motion is “ An object at rest tends to stay at rest” If you are stopped, it takes much more power to get one going again. This is why the almost dead McCain was able to pass him. McCain was stopped but won a big primary, South Carolina, this was enough power to get him started. Enough momentum to pass Giuliani in Florida which has a large retired population from New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Giuliani believed he would win due to that demographic. Get the idea? O.K. Now lets get started.
The Polls Trends from Indiana
2008 Indiana Democratic Presidential Primary
Source: pollster.com via politisite
Clinton has a modest lead just above the margin of error since national pollsters began in Indiana. We will focus our attention on the last seven days of polling. Clinton has been wining with a 7% lead in recent polling. Undecided numbers have gone up. This is unusual as the percentage of undecided usually falls the closer to election day you get. This will happen is something in the news causes the electorate to re-look at their decision. Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko have been in the news. In addition Clinton has come out with a Summer gas tax holiday that Obama opposes. We think the number of undecided have gone up because of recent Obama negatives and Clinton positives. We think that Obama polls higher than his outcomes as we have seen this election season.
Conclusion: Clinton 53.5% wins Obama 46.5% +7
What Others are Saying
Zogby Has Obama up by 2% in last day of polling (Zogby got PA numbers right)
Here are the final polls when you allocate undecideds:
INDIANA Clinton Obama Margin
InsiderAdvantage 52.1 47.8 Clinton + 4.3
Zogby 48.8 51.2 Obama + 2.4
Suffolk 53.3 46.7 Clinton + 6.6
PPP (D) 52.6 47.4 Clinton + 5.2
ARG 54.1 45.9 Clinton + 8.2
SurveyUSA 56.3 43.8 Clinton +12.5AVERAGE 52.9 47.1 CLINTON + 5.8
Source: politicalbase.com via politisite
Public Policy Poll
There has been some minor movement in Barack Obama’s direction since PPP’s Indiana poll last week, mostly because Obama is shoring up his support with black voters.
The state’s open primary is working to Obama’s benefit. While he trails Clinton by ten points among Democrats, he has a small lead with Republicans and a 52-39 edge with voters who don’t identify with either party.
Clinton’s victory in Indiana will come almost exclusively from voters over 65. She leads with them 63-31 while trailing in the under 45 vote.
The bottom line on Tuesday’s primaries is that Obama is likely to win North Carolina by more than Clinton’s winning margin in Indiana. The delegate count will be largely a wash and Obama will just be one more day closer to the nomination, barring some massive new scandal that would send the super delegates in Clinton’s direction.
Full results here.
Source: publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com via politisite
Poll Tracker by CqPolitics
The latest poll from Indiana shows Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 48 percent to 38 percent with a 3.3 percent margin of error. However, the survey, conducted April 25-29 for 6News in Indianapolis shows 14 percent of voters still undecided. The poll was conducted as the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright erupted again, and pollster Jeff Lewis said, “In that period of time, Obama’s lead among men went from a 20 point lead on Friday … to a four point lead for Sen. Clinton.”
Three other polls this week had results showing Clinton ahead by 8, by 5 and tied.
Source: blogs.cqpolitics.com via politisite
SurveyUSA
Survey USA has had a pretty good track record this primary season so I find their last polls interesting to watch.
They show Hillary Clinton up comfortably in their last tracking poll in Indiana with 54 percent to Barack Obama’s 42 percent. Just 1 percent is undecided (isn’t that lower than other primary eves of late?) Although, Rush Limbaugh said on his show today that Clinton was notified last night that her campaign’s own internals show her losing Indiana by a slim margin. (Limbaugh also said her quip about him having a crush on her was her way of thanking him for Operation Chaos votes).
Source: primebuzz.kcstar.com via politisite
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