SurveyUSA has released its final round of polling out of Oregon gauging Democratic voters' sentiments about the presidential primary going on in the state (with an all vote-by-mail system, Oregon's election day is effectively two weeks long), and the numbers look like this:
| Candidate | All Voters | Already Voted | Likely Voters |
| Obama | 55 | 53 | 62 |
| Clinton | 42 | 44 | 34 |
The overall margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points, so Barack Obama's lead over Hillary Clinton in the state is statistically significant. Doing some back of the napkin math, it appears that the margin of error for the subsample of voters who have already turned in their ballots is roughly plus or minus 4.46 percentage points, meaning that Obama's lead in this category is just statistically significant as well.
Other pollsters who, to the best of my recollection, have never polled in Oregon before and thus do not necessarily have a good grasp as to how to poll such a drawn out election (or at least have the experience doing it before) show the race to be tighter, within the margin of error. However, with the pollsters who actually have a history of polling in the state (SUSA, but also national pollster Rasmussen Reports and Oregon pollster Tim Hibbits) pretty unanimous in having Obama up by a solid double-digit margin, it's hard to see this race being a tossup. What's more, although rallies are not generally the best metric for gauging support (a whole lot more voters don't go to rallies than do), the fact that Obama apparently drew 75,000 people to Waterfront Park in Portland says a lot.
Man, I kind of wish I had gotten up to Portland a day earlier...
|
|
|
Permalink :: 80 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
