The recent polls, showing Barack Obama running away to a sweet victory have come crashing down to earth. The latest CNN poll results follow:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/01/battle-for-presidency-remains-close-in-new-cnn-poll/
These results are consistent with other polls. This is very bad for President Obama. His margin has decreased and it still over-samples Democrats. It is significant to note that this poll has Independent voters going for Romney by a 49% to 41% margin.
When you combine this with the dramatic drop in Democratic registration, particularly in swing states like Ohio, I really don’t know how any honest analyst can even pretend this is favorable for Obama.
So what happened? The answer is “Filial Regression.” This is a mathematical law that applies when there are unexpected results. Let me give an example. Suppose you toss a coin 100 times and you get 65 heads and 35 tails. Any mathematician will tell you that the odds of getting a “heads” on the next toss remain at exactly 50/50. Just because there was a lucky string of heads does not mean that the odds have changed. But filial regression also comes into play. This is a mathematical law that applies when there are abnormal results. According to filial regression, when there are abnormal results, the most likely thing to happen in the future is a return to normal. That means that if you toss the coin another 100 times, odds are the results will return to near normal or 50 heads and 50 tails.
There were a string of polls that did not make any sense compared to well-known data. This is the age of computers, so we really know how many Democrats there are, how many Republicans and how many Independents. It is pretty rare for people to change party registration over-night. Yet that is exactly what some political pundits believed was happening. They believed that a lot of Republicans suddenly decided they were Democrats again. Wiser people were unconvinced. In other words, the results were obviously abnormal. The law of filial regression is what caused me to expect the results to return to normal over the next series of polls. That is exactly what has happened.
Don’t start celebrating a Romney victory just yet, but be comforted in knowing that the predictions of his death were more than a little premature. Also keep this in mind. If this poll is right about Romney winning among Independents 49% to 41%, then it is the Obama campaign that should be experiencing night sweats.
TDM