By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : With Barack Obama leading comfortably in most national polls, pollsters, pundits and publications are vying with each other to declare him the winner. But election watchers caution against calling the game over so soon.
To make their predictions, the pundits point to polls that put Obama ahead in even such previously Republican states as Virginia, Iowa and New Hampshire, but as some commentators noted there has been great variation in the plethora of polls financed by media organizations, and several have been tightening.
With only six days to go for the Nov 4 poll, the most recent national CNN poll of polls showed the Democratic presidential nominee with an eight-point lead over Republican rival John McCain, but the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll saw his lead narrowed from 12 points just five days ago to four points.
A Washington Post-ABC tracking poll Monday had Obama ahead by seven percentage points, down from an 11-point margin one week ago.
“The media still misunderstand and, to a great degree, still misrepresent polls,” veteran pollster John Zogby was quoted as saying by the Washington Post. “It’s a cliche, but what we offer is a snapshot in time. We don’t predict, can’t predict.”
As the Post noted on the eve of the 2004 election, Zogby predicted that Democratic nominee John Kerry would beat President George Bush, “a move he now attributes to ‘hubris and naivete’.”
After Bush won, Zogby says: “I wasn’t in a fetal position, but I vowed I wouldn’t do that again. And I haven’t.”
Commentators also cited the example of Republican challengerThomas Dewey and President Harry Truman in in the 1948 presidential race. Polls predicted that Dewey would win, but Truman pulled off the upset.
“If the mainstream media are wrong about Obama and the voters pull a Truman, that is going to be the end of whatever shred of credibility they have left,” says Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean of Boston University’s College of Communication, cited by the Post.
Reporting a lead ranging between five points and double digits in most polls, CNN said a look at its polling during the same period before Election Day in 2000 and 2004 suggests that political observers and campaign supporters ought to be cautious in declaring the race over because of current polling numbers.
When a presidential race has a non-incumbent in the lead, like this year, the poll numbers tend to tighten as Election Day gets closer, CNN senior researcher Alan Silverleib said.
“Any time it looks like they are on the verge of voting somebody new into office, there is buyer’s remorse,” he said. “Based on that, and the fact that the country has been so polarised in recent elections, there’s pretty good reason to think that the polls might tighten up a little bit.”
However, in what might be a bit of sobering news for the McCain campaign, since 1956, front-runners in late October lost the popular vote only twice after being ahead in the Gallup poll a week before Election Day, CNN noted.
Obama held a lead in both of Gallup’s likely voter tracking polls released Tuesday.
But “if, as a former McCain strategist put it to Politico, ‘the cake is baked’ for his man’s defeat, it’s fair to ask whether the media have provided the flour, the frosting and the candles,” said Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz.