from over at BigGovernment:

The loudest coverage is touting new NBC/WSJ polls of three key swing states. The polls, purportedly of likely voters, show Obama with 5 point leads in Florida and Virginia and a 7 point lead in Ohio. In VA and FL, the NBC poll assumes an electorate very similar to the one in 2008. In OH, the NBC poll assumes an electorate that is more Democrat than the one in 08. I get a bit tired of saying it, but that isn't going to happen. The electorate will not be close to as Democrat as in 08, never mind being more Democrat. 

There is something else funky with the NBC poll. There is almost no discernible difference between Registered Voter results and Likely Voter results. This runs counter to other polling, and history, which finds a definite Democrat skew to RV results. Even demographic and partisan data is virtually the same. This suggests there is something wrong with their LV screen.

A new CBS/New York Times poll shows Obama with a 3-point lead nationally, among Likely Voters. The poll finds Obama has an 8-point lead among Registered Voters.  CBS no longer makes available the partisan composition of its poll, but its numbers suggest it oversampled Democrats as well. Both Romney and Obama win 90+% of their respective party's vote, but Romney beats Obama among Independents by 11 points. The only way Romney can win Independents by such a large margin and still trail Obama is if the sample is heavily skewed in favor of Democrats.

We play by different rules.  And it's not that we use the same rule book and enterpret them differently.  We're playing the same game using different rules books.

Need more proof?  As Jacob Sollum recently took notes at the 2012 DNC.  

The 2012 Democratic platform includes 1,400 words on "Protecting Rights and Freedoms." Among the alleged rights that the Democrats promise to defend: freedom from "discrimination in the workplace and other settings," "paycheck fairness" for women, "job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons," "evidence-based and age-appropriate sex education," government subsidies for Planned Parenthood, and taxpayer-supported health care, including "free access" to "prenatal screenings, mammograms, cervical cancer screening, breast-feeding supports, and contraception." These items all amount to promises of other people's money or demands that they be compelled to enter into contracts they would otherwise eschew.

Even "putting Americans back to work"—a rather vague mandate that presumably means whatever President Obama says it does—appears in the section on "rights and freedoms," specifically as a women's issue. Why? Because "the challenges of supporting and raising a family are often primarily a woman's responsibility." All right then.

Today's RCP Average of presidential polls show Obama leading Romney by a little more than 3 points. A big reason for this is the abundance of polls featuring heavily Democrat skews in their samples. Juice the numbers enough and you can show just about any Obama lead you want. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. A good example of this is today's Democracy Corps poll. It shows Obama with a 5-point lead over Romney. Of course, the sample for the poll is D+11. 

Now, I get tired of saying this but the electorate is not going to be more Democrat this November than it was in 2008. And, the Democrats are certainly not going to increase their share of the electorate by 50%. This is just fantasy.

from John Hood, to getting along with the US:

1) If you oppress, brutalize, or kill your own people, we will condemn and shun you; 2) if you oppress, brutalize, or kill any of our people, we will condemn you to death and carry out the sentence with swift and overwhelming force; 3) if your government sponsors anti-American terrorism — e.g., the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the Assad mob, or the mullahs in Tehran — it will forfeit its right to coexist with ours. Since the latter two responses may be costly for you, we strongly suggest that you clean up your own messes.

Former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania turned MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell said something on Tuesday's Hardball that is going to make a lot of jaws drop.

"Even people who lost their jobs are better off" under Obama.

Today's Washington Post/ABC poll finds Obama leading Romney by 1 point among Likely Voters (LV). But, they have to use a D+6 sample to get there.

Today's ABC poll uses a sample that is (D/R/I) 33/27/36. This assumes that the electorate voting in November will be almost the same as the one that voted in 2008, when Democrats had a +7 advantage. Repeat after me: This is not going to happen.

so I'll give you this.  Back at the time of the Mohammed cartoon troubles, an article published in the embattled Jyllands-Posten included this phrase: “Ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.”

Translate it yourself.

Tis the sily season.  And when your leftist acquaintances throw poll numbers at you ALWAYS ask the filter and the breakdown.

CNN was touting an Obama +6 poll after the DNC.  

The partisan breakdown is (D/R/I) 50/45/5. It perhaps isn't surprising that Obama is leading a D+5 poll by 6 points. Throughout the campaign season, Obama's margin usually is very close to the partisan skew in the sample. It is surprising, though, that Independents make up only 5% of the sample. Tellingly, Romney leads this group by 14 points. 

I've seen others suggest that CNN pushes voters to identify with one party or the other, which may account for this. Although, CNN identifies the breakdown of sample numbers as X "registered Democrats" and Y "registered Republicans." Other polls that push Independents to identify show their work. CNN should as well. 

There is another, more serious concern, however, The second question of the poll asks Obama and Romney voters whether their vote is "for" their candidate or "against" the other candidate. The sample size for this question is reported to be (top of page 3):

BASED ON 351 LIKELY VOTERS WHO PLAN TO VOTE FOR OBAMA -- SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5 PERCENTAGE PT

And,

BASED ON 340 LIKELY VOTERS WHO PLAN TO VOTE FOR ROMNEY -- SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5.5 PERCENTAGE PTS

Those numbers didn't look right to me, considering the headline number reported in the poll. There were 709 Likely Voters in the sample. The 351 votes for Obama is 49.5%. The 340 votes for Romney is 47.9%. In other words, a 50-48 match-up. That's a lot different than the 52-46 reported in the headlines. Consider: the question to Romney supporters samples more Likely Voters than he received in the head-to-head result.

What could be happening here is that these are the raw counts from the poll interviews, which CNN then "weighted" to reflect certain demographics, etc. Pollster do this often, but it usually results in very minor changes to the overall numbers. If this discrepancy is the result of CNN "weighting" their poll, it would reflect a 4 point swing in the overall results. That's a very significant change in the outcome. Their weighting added 2 points to Obama's support and erased 2 points from Romney's. Combined with a D+5 sample, this is a 9-point edge for Obama, simply from the composition of the poll. 

Again, it isn't unusual to weight a poll, for very legitimate reasons. But if the weighting produces this big of a swing in the final results, you really ought to show your work. CNN doesn't release its internal demos, but it absolutely needs to in this case. If they don't, then they've just been caught with their thumb on the scale.

from BigGovernment