Quote from AK Forty Seven:
Nationally I think Obama is +3-5. I also think the incumbent has about a 5-10 point built in lead that the polls don't show.Kerry was beating Bush by a few in some polls from nomination to election and Clinton was beating Bush by around 10 points for months to actually beat the incumbent
Thanks jem for the article which confirms my previous post about the built in incumbent lead that the polls dont show.I said 5-10 and it has actually been an average of + 7 for the incumbent
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/do-presidential-polls-break-toward-challengers/
The other anomaly has been in the summer months â June, July and August. In these months, the polls have tended to low ball the position of the incumbent partyâs candidate. In July polls, for instance, the incumbent-party candidate has trailed by an average of 4 points in elections since 1968. However, the incumbent-party candidate has actually won these elections by an average of a little more than 3 points. In other words, there has been a seven-point swing on average toward the incumbent partyâs candidate from the July polls until November