Obama Surges in New Hampshire

By: The Grey Havens
Published On: 8/1/2007 12:19:46 AM

American Research Group today released a poll of a small sample of New Hampshire voters.  In it, Barack Obama has shown an astonishing surge, reducing the 15 point lead Hillary Clinton held at the end of June to a virtual tie.  That's a huge shift in a short time.  What's happening?

Nationally, Rasmussen still has Hillary leading at 41% with Obama a "distant second" at 23%, but something is going on in the Granite State.  Maybe after this week's Clinton-Obama feud, NH Voters have chosen "Authentic ChangeTM" over "ExperienceTM".  So it would seem, is there more going on here?

Whichever Democrat you support, you'll love the numbers coming out of James Carville's polling organization, Democracy Corps.  The Republican party is sucking wind like never before, and you've got to love this headline:  Surveys Show House Dems Maintain "Nearly Landslide Leads" Heading Into '08 Elections. 

Happy reading below the fold...
No matter how much Republicans would like you to believe it, the supposed conventional wisdom that Americans are angry at Democrats in Congress is pure bunk. 

"Democrats are maintaining stable and nearly landslide leads in both the race for President as measured by generic performance (51-41) and the named ballot for Congress (52-42 percent)."
In a targeted survey of the 70 congressional districts most likely to be competitive in 2008 (half with Democratic incumbents, the other half with Republicans in office), Democracy Corps found that Democratic incumbents hold a solid 52-40 lead on average. In contrast, the Republicans are in trouble: when voters are asked whom they would choose between the named GOP incumbent and an unnamed (generic) Democrat, the Republicans are behind on average 44-49.

Comments



You might want to note the same set of polls also shows Hillary up 9 in Iowa... (SaveElmer - 8/1/2007 12:27:26 AM)
There has been alot of discussion on the boards about the methods ARG uses...I don't think they are purposely manipulating numbers...but Jonathan Singer at MyDD is not too fond of ARG (and was reluctant to post these numbers). It is hard to gauge them because the don't release their methodology or any crosstabs...

My guess is you will see subsequent polls point to thie set from ARG as an outlier...



Ha (brimur - 8/1/2007 12:33:26 AM)
That's funny you should mention that- my comment below was precisely to that point. We're on the same wavelength.


ARG sucks (brimur - 8/1/2007 12:32:06 AM)
I think they like to be the outlier just to get free media coverage. Look at the Iowa polls. (http://www.realclear...) Out of 25 polls taken in Iowa over the last 7 months Clinton has won 8 of those, but guess how many of those were from one polling outfit?

6 out of the 8 that Clinton has won were from ONE polling outfit - ARG. And ALL of the polls where she had a statistically significant lead were from ARG. More than half a dozen polling outfits have polled yet she only gets a statistically significant lead in one poll, OVER and OVER. That tells you something's screwy with their methodology.

Obama may be surging, but I'd wait for a real pollster to confirm that.



Yeah (Silence Dogood - 8/1/2007 11:04:39 AM)
I noted that the first ARG poll to get publicity this cycle was the first one that had Bush dip below Nixon's numbers.  It wouldn't have been worth the cost of running an unsolicited poll to publish the results that (*gasp*) President Bush is really unpopular with American voters, but conveniently they had a poll that demonstrated that Bush was statistically and officially the Most Unpopular President in the History of Scientific Polling, a dubious milestone in the modern history of our nation and one that got ARG's name in the papers.

I don't *know* that they fiddled with their sample or demographic weighting so they could trade off a little margin-of-error accuracy for that critical and historic point-drop in the mean approval score, but I wouldn't even have to wonder whether they did or didn't if Gallup had published the same results (it was Gallup that recorded Nixon's record-low).