2008 Speaking of John Edwards and Early Polls in Iowa…
posted by on August 17 at 10:30 AM
Following up on the recent Slog discussion, Jenny Durkan, the Washington State Chair for the John Edwards for President campaign, is calling my attention to this new poll, which finds John Edwards leading in Iowa.
(Unlike this poll, which I mentioned in my Stranger column this week. It found Edwards losing ground in Iowa and statistically tied with Hillary Clinton.)
Both polls were conducted around the same time. The poll I cited has a smaller margin of error (+/- 3.5), contacted more likely caucus voters (787), and was conducted over the course of six days (July 29 - August 5). The poll Durkan is citing has a larger margin of error (+/- 4.3), contacted fewer likely caucus voters (509), and was conducted over a very short period of time (August 2 - August 3).
The poll Durkan cites consists of 15 Q's on poverty (Edwards signature issue) followed by one Q on presidential preference ... producing the desired effect, but not one to be taken seriously by horserace enthusiasts.
So basically, they're both completely irrelevant to whom Iowa voters might be backing today, August 17th.
Interesting numbers. But we are still HOW far away from a vote being cast? There can be some huge changes coming up.
But I still contend all of this worry about who is electable etc. is simply going to hurt the Democrats in the long run. Voter burn-out leading to no one wanting or caring to vote come 2008. I am a political junkie but am sick of the whole lot of the candidates at this point. They need to "disappear" until December and give us all a break!
It's so funny that we have all these campaigns that my friends are working for - in fact two of my friends are behind the Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama campaigns and they're engaged to each other.
But it's great to have so many good candidates.
Gore/Obama 08 for me.
The only "unelectables" are on the Red Bushie side ...
The poll I cited has a smaller margin of error (+/- 3.5), contacted more likely caucus voters (787), and was conducted over [a longer period of time].
Isn't a lot of that redundant? I assume that the reason one poll has a smaller margin of error is because of obvious factors like polling size and time.
@5 Yes, it is redundant, though the period of time has nothing to do with it. The margin of error is determined applying some formula (which I'm not motivated enough to look up) to the size of the sample.
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