The Pelosi Effect

We've been hearing forever about the Bradley Effect - the theory that black candidates don't do as well on election day as polls predict because people don't give pollsters their true opinions. If you look at the statistical dead heat of this race, plug in the Bradley effect, you figure McCain's leading by 6 or 7 points.

Nancy Pelosi has come with an opposing theory, available on Politico.com - she says that Barack's voters are so unique and so new that traditional polling methods fail to pick them up.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told convention-goers Tuesday morning that polls are underestimating the strength of Barack Obama, contending he will defeat John McCain with the support of new or intermittent voters, who are not generally polled.

Intermittent voters might not make the cut in polls of likely voters, but they would presumably be included in polls of registered voters.

“I’m very comfortable with those polls,” Pelosi said at a rooftop breakfast panel near the Democratic National Convention. “I think he is trouncing him. I want more of a spread, of course — I want it all.”

If you buy into Pelosi's theory, and you believe in the Bradley effect, they would cancel each other out, wouldn't they?

“Many of them are not even reachable by these pollsters,” Pelosi said. “These are polls of likely voters. Likely voters are people who have voted in the last two elections, and they are likely to vote again. They are not the universe of people who will vote on Nov. 4.”

Of course, the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, which today finds McCain in the lead for the first time since Barack wrapped things up in June, is a poll of registered voters. So much for Nancy's theory.

“We will own the ground Election Day,” she said.

McCain's lead

Of the two polls that take a daily, constant look at the race for President, Rasmussen is, in my opinion, the gold standard. With a sample size of 3000, it shows a running tally of the last 3 days of surveys of likely voters. Today, for the first time since Barack secured the nomination on June 3, John McCain leads.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

It's not a statistically significant lead, but it's a break-thru nonetheless, and one that continues a tightening trend that has been going on for some time.

This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3.

The other daily tracking poll, by Gallup, operates on the same premise as Rasmussen, but it tests registered voters, a less carefully filtered pool, for whether they are the voters likely to be taking part in the voting on November 4. In addition, it uses a smaller sample size. As a result, it's a bit more volatile. After having showed the race tied the last couple of days, it now shows Barack with a 3 point lead.

The three percentage point advantage for Obama matches the average since early June, when Obama clinched the number of delegates needed to head to the Democratic convention as the presumptive presidential nominee. Since then, Obama has never trailed McCain among registered voters, though McCain has tied Obama five times during this span, including Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports for last Friday and Saturday.

This is the second poll in a week that has put Barack in second place. A USA Today/Gallup poll that tested for registered voters and was released a week ago showed McCain with a four point lead.