Republican Mitt Romney has a 50-45 percent lead over Democrat Barack Obama in North Carolina, according to a new poll.
A SurveyUSA poll conducted for WRAL conducted between Saturday and Monday found the former Massachusetts governor leading in the state with five percent undecided or voting for another candidate. The poll had questioned 682 voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent.
Three polls released last week by Elon University, the Civitas Institute, and by Public Policy Polling, found the race within the margin of error.
Comments
Understanding Margins of error
October 31, 2012 - 8:26am — sesunceduIt's easy to get confused about what the margin of error when looking at poll results.
A margin of error of 3.8 means that, all other things being equal, the true value of the proportions will be have an error with that range nineteen times out of twenty.
It does not mean that all of the possible values within this range are equally likely. With a 3.8 MOE, and a five point lead, there is roughly a 90% chance that Romney is ahead by some percentage, with roughly a 10% chance that Obama is ahead.
There is a pretty good overview of the subject on wikipedia in the article Margin_of_error, in the section on Comparing_percentages .
Ignore this poll - it is totally inaccurate!
October 31, 2012 - 6:26am — MalleusMaleficarumPolls have an intrinsic margin of error. This one has a huge margin of error: 3.8% - so that means you can forget this poll's accuracy - because it means that Romney could have 3.8% less support and Obama could have 3.8% more support - thus putting Obama in the lead by over 2.5%. Forget this poll - it's literally worthless.