|
Tuesday’s presidential election was a sharp setback not only for the GOP
but also for major national pollsters who saw their gloom-and-doom predictions of a
double-digit drubbing of John McCain blow up in their faces.
Many pollsters predicted the McCain-Palin ticket would lose by almost twice
the actual margin.
As of noon Wednesday, Obama had won 63 million votes — 52 percent of the
vote — compared with McCain’s 46 percent and 55.8 million.
This amounts to a 6-point difference between the two candidates.
Two polls emerged as the most accurate: The Pew Research and Rasmussen
Reports, which showed the race precisely at 52 percent to 46 percent.
But poll predictions of Gallup, Reuters/Zogby, ABC/Washington Post, and CBS
all had Obama winning by between 9 and 11 points.
The election’s outcome clearly was outside the margin of error for several
of the polls.
Even the RealClearPolitics “poll of polls,” an average of 15 national
polls, showed Obama ahead by 7.5 points.
“One thing is clear at this point,” Newsmax columnist Dick Morris reported
just before 9 p.m. on Tuesday. “The polls were wrong!”
Morris predicted early in the night that Obama “is not winning by the
margins the polls predicted.”
Some GOP pundits, pointing to polling errors that favored Democrats in 2000
and 2004, warned before the election that the Obama campaign was using inflated polls numbers
to make the election’s outcome appear inevitable, dampening enthusiasm and support for McCain
in the closing days of the campaign, and reducing GOP voter turnout.
"Final Predictions - Major National Polling Organizations"
Red Indicates OUTSIDE The Range of Probability
- Tilted
|
Organization
|
Final Poll Results
|
Margin for
Obama |
|
Gallup
|
Obama 55
McCain 44
|
+11
|
|
Reuters/Zogby
|
Obama 54.1
McCain 42.7
|
+11
|
|
Marist Poll
|
Obama 52
McCain 43
|
+9
|
|
ABC/Washington Post
|
Obama 53
McCain 44
|
+9
|
|
CBS
|
Obama 51
McCain 42
|
+9
|
|
NBC News/Wall St.
Journal
|
Obama 51
McCain 43
|
+8
|
|
IBD/TIPP
|
Obama 51.5
McCain 44.3
|
+8
|
|
CNN/Opinion Research
|
Obama
53
McCain 46 |
+7
|
|
Ipsos/McLatchy
|
Obama
53
McCain 46
|
+7
|
|
FOX
|
Obama
50
McCain 43
|
+7
|
|
Pew Research
|
Obama
52
McCain 46
|
+6
|
|
Rasmussen Reports
|
Obama
52
McCain 46 |
+6
|
|
George Washington University
Battleground Poll (Lake Research)*
|
Obama
51.5
McCain 46.5
|
+5
|
|
Diageo/Hotline
|
Obama
50
McCain 45
|
+5
|
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved. |
