Election Blog Post #4

For this blog post It asks to analyze 2 Polls on the Presidential and Senate race soooo...

Presidential Polls:
-Gallup Polls, October 14th, 2008 Obama leads the poll 51% to 42%, by 9 points difference

-Rasmussen Report Polls, October 14th, 2008 Obama leads 50% to 45%

-Recently the big news is that Obama has had a lead by double digits (by 10) and it's causing McCain to change his campaigning tactics.

VA Senate Race Polls:
-Rasmussen Report Senate Polls, September 25th, 2008
Warner leads 60% to 34% Gilmore

-Survey USA Senate Polls, October 6th, 2008
Warner leads 61% to 31% Gilmore

-Since the beginning of the race Warner has also been leading the whole time in polls, Gilmore has not won a poll yet and has always been behind by at least at 20% deficit. As it shows, the polls are consistent and has changed much.


Polls are useful to get the opinion of the public and of who registered voters are going to vote for. Sometimes though it creates changes in votes such as changing people's votes just so one candidate would win. It can also base on determining the winner, but can be incorrect such as the 2000 Election between Al Gore and G.W. Bush when they based Gore as the winner by polls rather not waiting all to the end. But, it is very useful to base on determining how votes change and how the candidates are doing in their campaigning. Overall I think they analyze trends such as Warner's correlation that seems like he will be the winner of the house seat, but I don't think we should rely on polls because they can change very easily in a good amount of time. Like we shouldn't rely on say Obama will win because he has a 10% lead, because that can very well change in 3 weeks

Guess that's all I gotta say!