If things go as expected, and I hopefully can get a few more bets, just let me know your favorite charity and I'll share.
"...the poll numbers that matter will unfold in the final weeks or days, the way they always do." http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/wouldnt_touch_it_with_a_ten-foot_poll.html
Intrade and polls like NBC/WSJ and Pew have debunked that.If something drastic happens of course things could change but in normal elections with no big surprises Intrade and some polls will forecast the winner long before the election.Only bad polls like Rasmussen needs to be close to election day to pick the winner
I cant believe you think that this is what polls are about. The purpose of polls is not to make a random prediction of what will happen 3 months out, its to say what would happen if the election was held immediately, or today. This is one of the most ridiculous statements i have ever heard. For all we know Romney could be winning right now(though i dont believe he is), Obama could be winning next week, and Clinton could win come election day, and they wouldnt care, their job isnt to GUESS whats going to happen 3 months from now, its to figure out exactly where both candidates stand today based on a prediction as to the likely demographics that will show up on election day
I now see that Pew has written an article addressing this very issue...an excerpt....... In every campaign cycle, pollwatchers pay close attention to the details of every election survey. And well they should. But focusing on the partisan balance of surveys is, in almost every circumstance, the wrong place to look. In every presidential election since 1996, our final pre-election surveys have aligned with the actual vote outcome, because we measured rising Democratic or Republican fortunes in each year. In short, because party identification is so tightly intertwined with candidate preferences, any effort to constrain or affix the partisan balance of a survey would certainly smooth out any peaks and valleys in our survey trends, but would also lead us to miss more fundamental changes in the electorate that may be occurring. In effect, standardizing, smoothing, or otherwise tinkering with the balance of party identification in a survey is tantamount to saying we know how well each candidate is doing before the survey is conducted. http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/03/party-affiliation-and-election-polls/ So what could be happening is that people are reassessing what being Republican and Democrat really means. They see an out-of-touch rich guy who wants tax breaks for the wealthy, more defense spending, and cuts to social programs. They see a guy who's gamed the system for all it's worth with off-shore tax havens etc. They see a guy who bullied a gay person. They are finally starting to realize that this is the essence of Republicanism today, and they don't like it.
You interpret polls the way you like,I'll interpret polls the way I like.Obama is winning the 2012 election