September 08, 2008
Polls and Google Trends Agree: McCain-Palin in Lead
****Bumped. Because I can.
I had a lengthy post about to go, but stupidly I closed Firefox without saving. Oh well, here's the gist of it: Add the Zogby poll released on Friday to all the polls used by Real Clear Politics and one thing because clear: McCain is now in the lead.
Every RCP poll has McCain either up (five of them) or tied (two of them).
And remember how I accurately predicted that McCain would choose Palin by using Google Trends? Check. This. Out.
Also recall that Google Trends has a better track record of predicting elections than individual choices (such as VP picks) and I double-dog dare you to not leave this post whistling a soon-to-be standard of a ditty called Barracuda.
For a variety of methodological reasons I like Google Trends as a better forecaster than future markets such as Intrade (eg: sample size, selection error), but I'll throw that in to the mix: it still has Obama up. Barely. But consider this: Barely a week ago Obama was trading near 62. Today's closing price was closer to 52. And McCain? Up nearly 10 -- in a week.
But, like I said, I like Google Trends as a predictor is much better than Intrade.
This far out it's way too early to call, but the facts are the facts: McCain leads in nearly all the polls and people are energized about the McCain-Palin ticket.
Any bad news bones to throw at all you gloomers out there? Well, Election Projection still has Obama ahead with 278 electoral votes. So, there you are. Something for all you Obama backers to hang on to and for all of you too-good-to-be-true McCain backers to hedge your gloom against.
But look at the Election Projection data a little closer and you'll notice that they have Obama ahead nationally by under 1% --- which simply doesn't jibe with any national poll that I'm aware of.
Anyway, I had planned for much more analysis than this but just ran out of time.
UPDATE: Check out Brian Faughnan's take on the Intrade slide.
