For What It's Worth - the IBD/TIPP Poll

Since polls are a'plenty these days, the one that a lot of people watch pretty closely is IBD/TIPP since it has a record of being pretty accurate. Here's today's results:

Overall: Obama 46.7%, McCain 44.6%, Not Sure 8.7%

The race tightened again Sunday as independents who'd been leaning to Obama shifted to McCain to leave that key group a toss-up. McCain also pulled even in the Midwest, moved back into the lead with men, padded his gains among Protestants and Catholics, and is favored for the first time by high school graduates.

There are a lot of things spooking pollsters these day. For instance, many are reporting "do not respond" rates of up to 80%, meaning 80% of the people they call refuse to cooperate or can't be reached. Many people don't like the idea of telling some stranger how they'll vote, how much money they make, what their race is, what kinds of things they're interest in, etc. The people that are willing to do all that are the ones making up these poll numbers.

Secondly, nobody really knows what the actual voter mix will look like this year. Many pollsters are heavily weighting these polls toward Democrats assuming there is more excitement and motivation there, but some of the weightings have shown Dem margins over Republicans by as much as 10-12%. There's no way the spread will be that large, and that kind of spread has to be skewing polls toward Obama. It's more likely to be 3-5%.

And, let's not forget the dreaded "Bradley Effect". How many of those "not sure" voters just don't want to tell the pollster they've decided for McCain against Obama? How many of those Obama voters will secretly push the button for McCain when the curtain closes? Although some "experts" have assured us the Bradley Effect doesn't apply anymore, we've never had an African-American run for president before and there are plenty of knowledgable people who think the polls could be inflating Obama's numbers by as much as 7%.

Bottom line, I think Obama wins the popular vote rather handily, even with inflated numbers, but the trifecta in Pennsylvania ("bitter clingers" comment, John Murtha's "racists and rednecks" comments, and today's news that Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry) could swing that state to McCain, and that makes an electoral vote victory by Obama a lot tougher.

A split decision is very possible...followed by days of civil unrest.

UPDATE: More thoughts on the IBD poll from Don Surber. He's encouraged by McCain's 45-43 advantage among independents.