Every few days from now 'til the election, I'm going to be reminding you — as a way of reminding myself — that polls are nowhere near as reliable as we often wish they were. The time to remember that is not when your guy is a little behind. It's when he's a little ahead that you have to remember that.
This does not mean the polls are meaningless. I think it's safe to say that Obama's going to win California and McCain's going to take Utah…but states where the candidates are within ten points of each other are probably best viewed as toss-ups. You can especially use up a lot of stomach lining between now and November 6 if you watch the states where they're three points apart switch back and forth, back and forth.
There are countless examples that could be cited of pollsters getting a vote wrong. The one I like to dredge up is pollster John Zogby calling the New York Senate race of 2000. The day before, he said it was dead even and announced, "I think we're looking at a one point race." The next day, Hillary Clinton beat her opponent 56%-44%.
That's not even close…and in a poll taken 48 hours before the election. How accurate do we think polls are this far in advance? Pollsters never seem to brag a lot about how well they called an election 2-3 months before it occurs. If they have anything to boast about, it's how close they got with their final pollings, the ones taken a day or two before.
All that said, I notice that Rasmussen, which usually skews a bit Republican, now has Al Franken and Norm Coleman tied in the Minnesota senate race. A month ago, Rasmussen gave Coleman a nine point lead and some other polls still have that kind of spread. Did Franken come up? Did Coleman go down? Was the poll just plain inaccurate a month ago? Is it inaccurate now? Who knows? At the moment, the presidential race feels like Obama has a small but sufficient lead…but between now and Election Day, we still have the naming of the running mates, the political conventions, the debates, a lot of advertising and endorsements, and big question marks of what will happen in many foreign locales…plus, you can count on Obama and McCain each saying a couple of really, really stupid things that will be blown all out of proportion and put each on the defensive for a time.
Oh, yeah. And after the votes are in and counted, we're going to hear that the winner "stole" the election and that it was all rigged. So we may not even know then.