{"id":1223,"date":"2009-11-01T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/01\/reading-the-tea-leaves-dead-tie-clear-edge-for-hoffman-sheesh-who-knows\/"},"modified":"2009-11-01T08:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T12:18:00","slug":"reading-the-tea-leaves-dead-tie-clear-edge-for-hoffman-sheesh-who-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/11\/01\/reading-the-tea-leaves-dead-tie-clear-edge-for-hoffman-sheesh-who-knows\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the tea leaves: Dead tie? Clear edge for Hoffman? Sheesh, who knows?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pollster.com is home to some of the most interesting writing and thinking about political polls and surveys.  Yes, it&#8217;s &#8220;horse race&#8221; stuff, but interesting to readers up to their eyebrows in a race like NY-23.<\/p>\n<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pollster.com\/blogs\/ny23_siena_poll_again_some_hop.php\">their read<\/a> on how Scozzafava&#8217;s departure might impact Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman.<\/p>\n<p>The short answer is that they expect a slight majority of Scozzafava voters to break for Hoffman; but they also note that many of these voters really like Barack Obama.  So it&#8217;s&#8230;complicated.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the &#8220;Intrade&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intrade.com\/?request_operation=main&amp;request_type=action&amp;checkHomePage=true\">political market ticker<\/a> now gives Hoffman a 67% chance of winning.<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fivethirtyeight.com\/\">FiveThirtyEight.com<\/a> &#8212; another poll discussion site &#8212; Nate Silver also gives the edge to the Conservative.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Gun to my head?&#8221; Silver writes.  &#8220;Sure, I&#8217;d take Hoffman at this point.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Meanwhile, a respected polling firm called <a href=\"http:\/\/publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/ny-23-polling-odyssey.html\">PPP<\/a> reported yesterday that their survey on Saturday morning gave a clear edge to Hoffman, even before Scozzafava pulled out of the race.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So this morning around 10 AM I started up our NY-23 poll and after a few hundred interviews it appeared that Doug Hoffman was now running away with<span style=\"font-style: italic\"> <span style=\"font-style: italic\"><\/span><\/span>it-unweighted numbers showed him at 45% to 26% for Bill Owens and 17% for Dede Scozzafava.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For what it&#8217;s worth, I find those numbers sketchy.  Not because Hoffman looks so strong (he&#8217;s been surging over the last two weeks) but because Owens looks weirdly weak.<\/p>\n<p>This incomplete, small-sample survey would indicate a 7% drop for the Democrat fro m the Siena poll.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a really unlikely event at this point in the race &#8212; and it would require a huge defection of Democrats from his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line?  We&#8217;re in the fog-of-war stage here.  This really is one of those races where we don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going to happen, except that voters will go to the polls, pull for the guy who reflects their values, and someone will win.<\/p>\n<p>It just doesn&#8217;t get any better than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pollster.com is home to some of the most interesting writing and thinking about political polls [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}