Tracking Poll Update: 7’s are Wild

Not only does Barack Obama continue to have a lead of around seven percentage points,  but there are now seven trackers included in our composite.  The latest tracker comes from ABC/The Washington Post, which started reporting a three-day average on Monday.

Date	Gallup	Rasmussen	Hotline	Research 2000	Zogby	IBD/TIPP	ABC	7-Poll Adjusted Average
10/20	9	4	5	8	6	6	9	6.7
10/21	10	4	6	8	8	6	9	7.2
10/22	8	6	5	10	10	4	11	7.6
10/23	6	7	5	10	12	1	11	7.3

It’s important to note how unstable Zogby and IBD/TIPP have been recently. Wild swings in only one or two of the trackers (especially in opposite directions) is concerning. In addition, take a look at the following TIPP cross tab:

Age 18-24: McCain 74%-Obama 22%. Yeah, I know that some hippsters are voting for McCain to be ironic, but this is over the top. Even a subgroup from this age group shouldn’t have a margin of error large enough to explain this.  Nate Silver believes that they must be under sampling young voters by a very tight likely voter screen. Either that, or they realized everyone would be talking about them if they reported a result like this (damnit all!) Nonetheless, they’ve secured a spot on The Drudge Report’s front page for the last two days (Zogby had been there before).

With all that said, we’ve decided to keep TIPP/IBD and Zogby in the composite. With seven trackers, their swings are largely mitigated. However, we are considering a slightly different methodology to deal with some of these issues. We’ll have more on that this weekend.