When it comes to political public opinion polls, if I had to pick the one which I would trust more than all the others, it would be the Battleground Poll. Unlike most other polls, the Battleground presidential poll is a bipartisan effort of The Tarrance Group, a company with Republican clients, and Lake Snell Perry & Associates, a polling firm which serves Democrats.



Of the four presidential elections since 1992, the Battleground Poll was the most accurate predictor of the actual outcome among all public polls in three of the four, coming within a tenth of a point to the actual results in the 2004 election. The only one they were off the mark on was the election of 2000.




The least accurate of all political surveys, IMO, is the ABC News/Washington Post poll, which oversamples Democrats to the point of being farcical. Last week this poll showed Barack Obama with a lead of 14 percentage points, an outlier so far removed from the cluster of the other polls’ data points that it may as well have been in another galaxy.



The rest of the polls fall somewhere in between, but most of them oversample Democrats to one degree or another. The result is a very distorted view of the electorate, like a Photoshopped graphical image on the computer which puts one person’s head on another person’s body. For a brief discussion of polling methodology, including weighting and oversampling, look here. What I have maintained all along, despite what some polls may indicate, is that the presidential race is tightening.



Today, according to the latest Battleground Poll, it’s a one-point race. It was a four-point contest yesterday, and a thirteen-point race last week. The recent trend is shown graphically here.



What events have occurred in the last week which might account for this? In general, most presidential races tend to tighten up in the closing days. More specifically, despite the mess on Wall Street, most banks outside of Manhattan Island are doing just fine, and pump prices for gasoline keep falling. John McCain had his best debate performance in the final such encounter. Sarah Palin appeared on Saturday Night Live and showed the elites that she’s good-natured, good-humored and is not the monster their media harpies have made her out to be. She has also broken free of her handlers’ grip to become more accessible to reporters and is drawing huge crowds to her campaign rallies. Barack Obama acknowledged his embrace of the socialist principle of wealth redistribution, and he made Joe the Plumber a rock star and a target of the drive-by media. Last, but certainly not least, Joe Biden opened his mouth again.



So take all of the drive-by media stories that the election is in the bag for Obama and the fudged polls with a pound of salt. In the real world, it’s come down to the wire, and victory is a very doable proposition for McCain and Palin.



The republic may well be saved from socialism after all. I think Benjamin Franklin would be pleased.



- JP