Itz News to Me

I left this in the comments at Ace’s place:

FWIW, here’s my prediction of where things go from here:

I think there’s going to be a deal. That deal will include at least a nod to the plan put forth by House Republicans and helps put some of the pain on Wall Street rather than Main Street. [Dems don’t want a deal without cover from House Republicans so they’re going to give them something, maybe not much substantial, but enough that McCain can claim a victory and House Republicans have something to take home to their constituents to say “Hey, we did the best we could for you.]

House Republicans will publicly thank McCain for fighting to make sure that the Average Joe was protected. The MSM will try their damnedest to spin another story, but McCain is able to get his message directly to the people at the debate (which he will participate in Friday night) before they can get their spin machine in top gear and before Axelrod can give Obama a full set of talking points with which to respond.

Expect the Obama campaign to go back into all-day, every-day smear mode (a la the initial reaction to Palin) ASAP. Internal polls are going to look awful for them, so the flop sweat of desperation is going to begin showing in a big way.

I see McCain up in Gallup and Rasmussen by +3 or more by the end of next week….

I may wind up right or wrong, but unlike Obama at least I’m willing to commit to a position one way or the other…

Popularity: 7%

Over at Patterico, he reports on the latest Presidential polls which includes a Rasmussen report showing a dead heat between McCain and Obama.

But as I commented there, there’s a big problem with Rasmussen’s methodology in this poll:

If you read the full Rasmussen report, you see the following caveat:

For a variety of reasons, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll is less volatile than some other polls and always shows a somewhat smaller convention bounce than reported by others. This is primarily because we weight our results by party identification (see methodology). Looking at the data before adjusting for partisan identification, the Republican convention appears to have created a larger surge in party identification than the Democratic convention the week before. If this lasts, it could have a significant impact on Election 2008.

After running it through the secret decoder ring, this reads:

we’ve seen a significant swing in party self-indication towards the GOP since the convention, but we’re going to wait and see if that continues before we start including that factor into our regular polling adjustments.

Basically, they’re admitting that their current poll results aren’t accurately reflecting what the mood in the country is right now: rather it’s a projection based on a “what if” scenario that requires the Republican base to return to its previously demoralized state. Unlike Gallup, they’re actively factoring out the uptick in Republican enthusiasm rather than simply reporting it.

Barring some major problem with Palin, I’d bet that the Rasmussen polls start moving towards McCain as they will have no choice but to accept that the swing in party self-identification isn’t just a one week phenomenon and correct their current “tweaking” of the raw data.

Popularity: 8%

A Rasmussen poll out today is spelling potential disaster for Barack Obama:

In the overall population, Obama only beats Palin on experience by 10%. With independents, it’s only 5%. That’s the #1 on the ticket vs. the #2, and he’s only barely winning. Oh and, by the way, did I mention this poll was taken before her speech last night in which she laid the wood to his backside over his lack of executive experience….repeatedly and to great effect…

…This is definitely not going to help Michelle’s children.

Popularity: 4%

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that 71% believe that reporters try to help their favorite candidates with favorable coverage….

Fewer than 1 in 6 believe that reporters are even trying to be unbiased. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of people willing to buy what they’re selling…

Three guesses as to which candidate they believe is being shown the most favoritism…

Popularity: 5%

Mickey Kaus posted today about new polls that show the “generic” ballot polling question showing a much smaller Democratic advantage than in previous polls. Does that mean that the race is tightening or does it mean something else?

The answer: It means that the polls were intentionally slanted all along, and now they’re moving closer to where they should have been all along.

I’ve watched this phenomenon in 2002, in 2004 and now again we have it in 2006: the “late Republican surge” which suddenly tightens races which were previously advertised as sure-bets for Democrats. It defies logic that three elections in a row would suddenly and inexplicably have the exact same phenomenon occur at the exact same time in the election cycle.

Except that it’s not so inexplicable. Polling firms are commissioned by media organizations which are inarguably liberal bastions who want to put forth a certain point of view in the months leading up to an election. They want the Republican base demoralized and the Democratic base optimistic, and producing polls that show the popularity of the Democratic talking points is a sure way to achieve that goal (along with slanting coverage of stories, etc.). So in order to keep the paychecks coming, the polling firms dutifully produce the polls - and the results - that their employers request.

But then it comes to election time. If the polls were consistently way off on Election Day, who would ever again pay attention to them during the interim periods? The desired effect of simultaneously attempting to suppress Republican turnout and increase that of Democrats would disappear overnight. So how do you go about reconciling the knowingly inaccurate results leading up to the elections with the actual polling results?

It’s simple: Just say that there was a “late Republican surge!” Since polls are always snapshots in the rearview mirror, then they can never be expected to accurately keep up with the surge as it continues through Election Day. So pollsters can always argue that Republicans magically picked up momentum that their most recent poll couldn’t pick up because it hadn’t happened yet!

Voila! Everything is explained and no one is the wiser for the game that they played all along, and everyone gets to keep collecting their paychecks….Except they’ve gone to this well so often that you could have bet money in Vegas that this was going to happen this year too…

I’m not buying it, and neither should you…

Popularity: 27%