Is Barack Obama going to be your next president?

Answer 1

The Presidential election is NOT determined by a popular vote of all American voters. The election is actually decided in the Electoral College after 50 separate and independent State elections.

With the exception of Nebraska and Maine, whichever candidate wins 50% +1 votes in each State wins ALL of that States Electoral votes. This has the effect as if 100% of voters in the State voted for the candidate with the most votes in the State, even if the vote is really 51/49 or 99/1.

270 votes are needed in the Electoral College to win the Presidency.

On October 25, 2008, RealClearPolitics.com was predicting on Nov 4, 2008 the Electoral College vote will be:

Obama 306

McCain 157

Undecided 75

So either candidate can still get the 270 Electoral votes needed to win at this point!

The10/23/2008 Newsweek poll of 882 likely voters had Obama with 53%, McCain 41%.

The10/22 CBS poll of 771 likely voters had Obama with 52%, McCain 39%.

The 10/23 Rasmussen poll of 3000 likely voters had Obama with 52%, McCain 45%

The10/23 Gallup poll of 2365 likely voters had Obama with 51%, McCain 44%

The 10/23 Zogby poll of 1203 likely voters had Obama 51%, McCain 41%

The 10/23 Hotline poll of 766 likely voters had Obama 50%, McCain 43%

The 10/21 FOX poll of 936 likely voters had Obama 49%, McCain 40%

The 10/23 ABC poll of 1321 likely voters had Obama with 53%, McCain 44%

The 10/23 IBD/TIPP poll of 1008 likely voters had Obama with 46%, McCain 42%

So, you can see that polls taken at the same time can report different findings.

You do need to read the wording of all polls in the press closely in order to compare 'apples to apples, Oranges to oranges'. The more people that are included in the poll, the more accurately the poll is going to reflect what voters actually think.

'Likely voters' are voters that voted in the last two elections and say they will probably vote again. "Registered voters' include everyone registered to vote.

Newly registered voters traditionally have not voted in as high of percentages as 'Likely Voters' vote. Whether the millions of registered voters signed up by Obama this year will be passionate about their candidate and actually vote, to reverse the historical trends, will be seen on Election Day.

Obama has been registering millions of new voters, and these are 'Registered Voters', but they are not, by definition, 'Likely Voters' because they did not vote in the last two elections.

However, all the Polls listed above show only 'Likely Voters', so it is likely that Obama's lead is greater than these Polls indicate if the newly Registered voters actually vote.

By law, pollsters are permitted to call cell phones and people on the 'Do-Not-Call' lists. However, most pollsters are only surveying people that have old-fashioned land-lines.

Pew Research found that among the 'cell phone-only group' (which is apparently just under 15% of the country) you get a massive shift. It goes up to 61% for Obama and drops to 32% for McCain.

That's a big difference when the polls ignore this segment of the population!

This practice of only calling Land-Lines may well be skewing all poll results in this election cycle, because more young people have only cell phones, and people with only a cell phone are more likely to vote for Obama than McCain.

If this year's polls do not mirror the actual voting in November, the next election may include polls with more cell phone users represented in the polls.

So learn about the candidates and then VOTE!

Wow, all that huffing and puffing and Obama still won. I hope to God he gets a second term, and not some Lunatic shill for billionaires from the Fringe Right.