Category: International Politics

A thread for discussion of the US presidential debate as it happens. As with last week’s vice-presidential debate, I won’t tell you shut up if you indulge in partisan name-calling. The other thread remains open for those wishing to discuss the presidential race more broadly.

As much for personal amusement as anything else, I will henceforth be doing my own polling aggregates for swing states. To account for the fact that state polling lags behind the nightly national tracking polls, each result is adjusted according to the change in the Real Clear Politics national average since the date of the poll (if the polling period was more than one day, the last date is used). For example, the only poll from Indiana was a 46-all result from October 3: the RCP average has since had Obama up 0.6 and McCain up 0.2, so into the Obama column it goes. The results are also adjusted so that greater weight is given to polls with larger samples. I’ve only been doing this for a few days, so at present the only polls used are those ending October 1 or later. This means I have no data for Wisconsin, which Electoral-Vote says was most recently polled on September 23 (I’m following their lead and giving it to Obama). As you can see, Obama currently has a clean sweep of the swing states: I’ll have to reconsider which ones to include if this keeps up. (UPDATE: I’m progressively updating this as new polls come in, so much of what I’ve just said is now out of date).

As was the case last week, tomorrow I will have an open thread for discussion of the presidential candidates’ debate, which will run independently of this one.

UPDATE: Polls from Time/CNN shift Indiana to the McCain column.

Call it as you see it here. The purpose of this thread is to quarantine the kind of partisan name-calling that is the hallmark of live debate discussion from the main thread, so I won’t quite be holding commenters up to this site’s normal high standards. The other thread remains open for those wishing to discuss the presidential race more broadly.

Either due to the market meltdown, the debate or both, much has changed in Gallup tracking poll land since our last thrilling instalment.

We also have this entertaining survey on Australian attitudes to the presidential race from UMR Research, showing 66 per cent of respondents preferring Barack Obama against 13 per cent for John McCain. Sarah Palin and (especially) George W. Bush also appear to be none too popular in our part of the world.

Gallup‘s three-day tracking poll shows the situation in the US presidential race throughout September as follows:

Barack Obama held a slight lead as the month began, which seems to be the long-term status quo. Then came the Republican convention and Sarah Palin bounce, which briefly put McCain well ahead. This moderated into a slight lead when the dust settled, before being wiped out with the onset of the banking crisis. However, Obama’s six-point lead at the start of this week has narrowed, despite polls giving him a clear lead on economic issues – surely a great boon in the current environment. Much is being said of an ABC-Washington Post poll which has Obama nine points in front, but this appears to be out on a limb. In any case, Gallup’s historical analysis reminds us that a lot can happen in the next six weeks, one way or the other.

A new thread for discussion of matters American, as the polls return to level pegging following the Republicans’ convention bounce.

A thread for the discussion of the American elections, now a little less than eight weeks away.