RT @fivethirtyeight Obama improves nat'l trackers BUT Romney had BETTER state polls. •State polls WIN•http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ #tcot
Oct. 18: Obama Gains in Forecast on Resiliency in Swing State Polls
By NATE SILVER
One of the risks in focusing too much on the results of any one poll, like the Gallup national tracking poll, is that you may lose sight of the bigger picture.
On Thursday, that story was one of President Obama continuing to hold leads in most polls of critical states. Of the 13 polls of swing states released on Thursday, Mr. Obama held leads in 11 of them.
In contrast to most days since the first presidential debate in Denver, the state polls did not necessarily show a decline for Mr. Obama. As compared with the previous edition of the same survey, instead, he gained ground in five of the polls, and lost ground in four others. (Two of the polls showed an exactly unchanged margin, while two were published for the first time.) Some of the polls, like the SurveyUSA polls of Ohio and Nevada, show a slight uptick for Mr. Obama since the Denver debate; others, like the polls from NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist College of Wisconsin and Iowa, show Mr. Obama’s standing holding even relative to his numbers before the debate. Read more…
