Ground Game

Today's biggest political story is Newsweek's new poll showing Barack Obama with a 15-point-lead over John McCain. Given that we're also mourning the death of legendary comedian George Carlin today, it's only appropriate that we call out this poll, and the treatment it has received in the press today, for its absurdity.

Progressive blogs like Daily Kos have been blogging about the Newsweek poll findings today, but it's conservative blogs who have been digging through the poll's methodology. After all, nearly every other poll has Obama up between 2 and 5 points. As Outside the Beltway's James Joyner writes:

Newsweek has huge swings from month-to-month that just aren't showing up in the other polls. Simply put, there's either something serious wrong with their methodology or that of all the other major polls.

The problem with Newsweek's methodology is that they vastly oversampled Democrats in the poll compared to Republicans. Granted, there should be some degree weighted sampling in favor of Democrats, considering national poll numbers. But most of that shift will already be represented in independent sampling, where Obama has a measured advantage. Conservatives have often complained about Republicans being unfairly undersampled in national media polls. Newsbusters says this is no exception:

As the reader should suspect, the poll questioned more Democrats than Republicans: 231 Republicans to 324 Democrats, plus 307 independents

So, if the poll was so poorly conducted, why no outcries from the McCain campaign? Well, McCain does relish the "underdog" role, so maybe that's part of it. The other major political story of the day is about how McCain's monthly fundraising for May was on par with Obama's. Maybe the McCain campaign wants to use the underdog status to further prod those sometimes reluctant Republican fundraisers who seem to be coming on board?