Well, I was kind of hoping that we’d see some closing of the gap in the polls as election day drew near and people started paying closer attention to the candidates. It hasn’t happened. In most cases, things have gotten significantly worse. I don’t really have anything smart to say about that. Sometimes the polls are off by a few percentage points, but unless the Democrats’ turnout operation has a miracle up its sleeve, we’re going to be sobbing in our beer tomorrow night. I’ll believe it’s really this bad when I see it. Until then, I’m not going to try to assess why it’s so bad. Maybe it isn’t.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Nate Silver says that there is a 4% point difference between opinions of cell-phone users and non-users. Users are young, liberal, and also less likely to vote. I think that some races will go Dem that are currently not listed as that.
Plus Michael Steele said that a 37 seat GOP swing will be a victory.
Make some calls.
Michael Steele said the fact that there still is a Republican Party is a victory.
Kind of? I remember you sounding a lot more certain of it in what I assume was expectations setting. Kevin Drum argues that a 45 seat loss is what should be expected given conditions. So stuff above 45 is Republicans beating us instead of the economy beating us (though some part of that has to be credited with Obama).
I’m being a little more cynical of the Media….or just being curmudgeonly and thinking what you’re worrying over is last-minute Media atte3mpts to define the narrative.
I’m finding (personally) that a lot of the big-brand media I come across these days is nearly as ‘yellow’ as it was in 1898 when Hearst/Pulitzer were said to have stated: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” The Fix is in, the Narrative already written….not all that’s left is to mold the facts to match the Narrative….
How many undecideds are left in the polls as compared to a typical year?
How many people are lying to pollsters?
What is the sample variance?
Where will weather be a factor?
How will the willingness of the poll judges to enforce the electioneering boundary around polling places vary? Will these be random differences or systematic differences?
Which party will get voted a higher percentage of those who told pollsters they were likely to vote?
There is a lot of randomness bouncing around in the difference between national polls and votes. Or even the polled districts and the ones in play.
My OoMA estimate of the results is 210D-225R in the House and 50D-50R in the Senate.
And the ignored important races will be the legislatures, which do redistricting for 2012.
What is OoMA?
“Out of My Ass”
You had to ask.
Like you, I’m still partially in denial. I still can’t get over the women switch. There are other areas where I have a strong disbelief in the polls, but that one ranks the highest. It makes no sense.
If I were to make a prediction right now based on how I normally do it (Senate):
Dems win:
Connecticut
California
Washington
West Virginia
Illinois
Republicans win:
Colorado
Nevada
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Kentucky
Missouri
Louisiana
North Carolina
Those are the most contested seats. Alaska I frankly can’t even put that in my standard prediction model.
Oh, and I’d have us losing 54 seats.
But something isn’t right and I can’t tell what it is. I just don’t know how things are going to end up, but once the polls close, I’ll be headed to the bars with my laptop.
No one worth their stuff seems to know. I agree, something weird is going on.
That’s what pisses me off to no end, though. When used properly, models and polls can get us more or less a perfect picture of what the election should look like. I mean, hell, I said Obama would win everything he did except for Missouri, including that one vote in Nebraska. We should know with a good deal of certainty what it will look like with our standard methods and procedures.
So why the eff is this so different? Maybe it’s not, and maybe every sane person is just in denial. That is what I’m most afraid of, and the logical side of me (about 85% of me) keeps saying to just accept it, move on, and make a last minute phone call or two. My gut…something’s not sitting well. It’s very eerie and weird.
I think (as a statistician) that there are factors going on:
On number 3, I definitely think that’s what Rasmussen does and has done in the past.
I don’t think cell phones will make up that much of a difference.
I can see reluctance to answer polls, just not with the politicians. I can definitely see that with Prop 19.
An electorate that has maybe made up its mind about preferences but not made up its mind about going to vote.
An electorate with a huge number of “a plague on both your houses” registered voters being listed as undecided.
And one of the difficult methodological issues – auto-correlation in some of the data as the result of the framing of the question.
My analysis: “Vote for us because the other guys are worse” was a failure as a GOTV ploy and for the last two weeks it was all the Democrats had to say. I think this killed Democrat momentum. I don’t think Republican turnout is going to be a good as expected, but I’m not sure Democrat early voting will make enough of a difference.
President Obama was on one of the nationally syndicated urban radio shows this afternoon (this one is heard in 75 markets, which are in cities/states with large and/or significant Afr Am communities).
The strategy of “they would be worse” WILL work within the African American community. When you’ve always voted for the “better of the worse”, then of course it works. the added bonus, is that yes POTUS is the first Afr Am president. I’ll let ya’ll in on a little secret; the fact that “white voters have turned their backs” on Obama ((meme being heard all over black radio and blog, news, etc..) was a sadly, kinda foregone conclusion in the minds of a good number of Afr Am, so not surprisingly, the ads you hear on urban radio, tv programming, etc are calling on Afr Am to vote because “our President” needs us (I’ve heard this ad on urban radio for the last almost month and a half).
I have anecdotal evidence (in my own little sphere of the world) that leads me to believe that the Afr Am vote will be larger than in past midterms. Which from my understanding means a good chance of keeping the Senate.
Isn’t the problems with the House that it will take more than an increased Afr Am vote to win the contested districts. Aren’t most of the districts that are in play conservative leaning with a small percentage of Afr American voters? So even with a large AFr American push, that still won’t be enough to hold those seats?
Yes. Put another way, the problem is gerrymandering. Many states with decently-sized African-American populations have cut their Congressional districts such that most of the African-Americans are shoved into one bizarrely shaped district. Those seats are usually safe Democrat seats – in fact it’s where the bulk of the House progressives come from. But the downside to that kind of gerrymandering (and I’d say it is more downside than up) is that it prevents African-American voters from influencing races in more conservative districts where their individual votes might have a greater impact.
There’s nothing complicated about it. The only thing that makes it SEEM complicated is that white folks refuse to admit it. But the Village Voice called it clearly a month or so ago:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-09-29/news/white-america-has-lost-its-mind/
Didn’t help that lefty bloggers/writers merrily hopped on the ihateobama bandwagon for the last couple of years.
It’ll be hilarious watching all the (almost all white) lefty bloggers do their best to avoid the obvious and true explanation, choosing instead to contort themselves massively in their efforts to come up with ANY OTHER THEORETICALLY POSSIBLY explanation.
lols
I would say less hilarious than sad and frustrating. Because instead of reflecting and perhaps changing their ways, many of those white lefty bloggers will just keep on trumpeting their anti-Obama horns indefinitely.
Well yah. On such issues that go on and on and on and on for no reason other than people pretending not to know why (so that it keeps going on), I generally mean “funny” in a dark way.
A lot of those lefties hate all Democrats because they see them as standing in the way of the great revolution.
(shrug) Anyone who expected a miracle after only 2 years with a shitty Senate and after a decade of republican rule is either an idiot or was just waiting for the ihateobama bandwagon to roll by all along.
Or both, of course. lols
Round 2:
In most places the issue is not supporting or punishing Obama, even for independent whites, it is about the specific people who are running. And the failure of “huge Democratic majorities” to turn the country around through less spending and tax cuts.
For the lefty political junkies, it is:
I am frustrated that the Blue Dogs in Congress stood in the way of the Democratic platform from 2008. or
I am angry that Obama did not push harder (whether true or not) for the Democratic platform from 2008. or
Obama was never, is not, and will not ever be progressive. or
Obama never intended to do what he promised in 2008. or
Obama is a corporatist and might as well be a Republican.
And most of them seem to be white, in progressive strongholds, and either unemployed and frustrated, well-off enough not to worry about Republican rule again, or diehard 1960s radicals without a practical lick of sense.
lols. We white folks thank you for your continued efforts at helping hide The Issue Which Shall Not Be Named.
I have to go now – it’s time for my hourly It’s Not Race It’s Class prayers.
Socialissm ummm Communism? I’m drawing a blank here. Oh racism! There are no racists anymore didn’t we tell you that? Its a miracle. Go to church, worship Jesus the pale white man, and all the racists magically disappear its a proven fact. Sheesh the thought police are going to get you.
Those were paraphrases, not analysis.
You are quite right about the continued existence of Mr. Dogood White Liberal who is never there when you need it. Screwed the labor movement in the South when blacks and whites were organizing the textile industry. Screwed the civil rights movement by shifting to voting for Ronald Reagan. Screwed school desegregation by making it apply to everyone but their precious. And now once again.
Actually it is race AND class AND gender AND language AND religion AND sexual orientation AND geographic location. Some of those just don’t excite Mr. Dogood White Liberal as much as Karl Marx does.
…and simple revenge. The right was going to smear Obama and his policies no matter what. We saw it with Clinton when he got in office. Healthcare was the devil’s work then too.
Yep, but white liberals didn’t have to get so picky and decide to “punish” Obama for not being agressive enough.
The right was predictable. The fragmenting of left blogosphere was not quite so predictable. But in hindsight we should have expected it. It was a coalition held together by contempt of George W. Bush. When Bush was gone, there was no unifying focus.
Didn’t help that lefty bloggers/writers merrily hopped on the ihateobama bandwagon for the last couple of years.
Care to name names and cite instances, or are you just babbling? Do you consider Atrios and Krugman haters? Because there are legitmate beefs. If you think liberals are just going to fall in line with a Democratic President, you are nuts.
I think the whites “turning against Obama” theory is only true among borderline Obama-voters. The more important factor is the racial gerrymandering. The big problem is the House, and in fact, the House has been more effective than the Senate over he last two years. The Citizens United decision hasn’t helped either, and I think that, with the Bush vs. Gore decision, proves the utter corruption of the Roberts court. It’s not only the decision, it’s how — and when — and therefore, why — it came about.
Ironically, and despite “these troubled times,” President Obama is more popular right now than either Clinton or Reagan at this stage in their terms.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/obama-approval-reagan-clinton-poll-data/
That could not be the case without considerable loyalty on the part of white voters.
We focus so much on that sector of the electorate that absolutely hates Obama, we forget that an awful lot of people like Obama and appreciate what he has been trying to do. This suggests to me that groups like Moveon.com, etc. are going to be even more important over the coming years. But the real problem is that our democracy is broken. And that is a very serious problem.
Reversion to the mean. All the stats texts cover it.
“The mean” is some former car dealer or real-estate spiv with a flag pin on the lapel of his badly cut suit who has promised the median mid-term voter that:
He’ll let them keep their guns.
He’ll make sure every knee bends at Jesus’ name — even though he keeps saying he’s a ‘libertarian’.
He’ll make sure foreigners live in fear of us.
From time to time he’ll try to have some of them blown up for your gratification
He’ll make sure that that colored people, and those gays, know their place.
And most importantly…
He’ll piss liberals off.
In turn the median mid-term voter has promised in return to go hungry without complaining if necessary, and that no child of his will ever see the inside of a college, if that’s what it takes to achieve this earthly paradise.
That’s America.
You could run and win in 1846 on that platform, or in 2010. You’ll be able to run on it in 2050.
That’s what America has been pretty much since its inception.
That’s what We The People want, have wanted, will still want, when everyone on this board has died of old age.
2006 was an aberration, and 2008 was a miracle.
There are a lot of theories out there which attempt to explain the present state of affairs. But the simplest one is being overlooked– an alarming percentage of the electorate doesn’t have a clue what the issues are, has no idea what the candidates in their district represent, doesn’t understand the relevance of politics to their personal life, and is bombarded daily with disinformation from the likes of FOX News. We have an extremely unsophisticated political culture, and that opens the door for the big economic interests to manipulate the system and advance their agenda. Democracy’s fatal flaw is that ignorant people get to vote, too.
We have a culture that is preoccupied with work (or unemployment), handling child care, …, and then entertaining itself to death.
John Kerry, commenting on the 2004 election, noted that all the trends were headed his way until the video tape attributed to Osama bin Laden was released on the eve of the election. For irrational reasons, many low-information American voters lean towards the Republicans after security scares.
So it’s quite a coincidence, then, that on the eve of the 2010 elections the most serious terrorist bomb plot against an American target since 2001 is uncovered.
But, no, I am not trying to imply there is any kind of conspiracy. I mean, that would be crazy. Oh sure, the Republicans have spent something like $2 billion on this election, and they have resorted to all kinds of interesting strategies and tactics. But we all know that deep down they play by the rules and wouldn’t do anything illegal, even if they thought they could get away with it.
Someone who gets it:
And paid the price to get it in a way no one of us white progressives or white liberals have dared to since 1970.
Sometimes it takes an extreme event for people to wake up and react against it; sometimes they just dont react against it. It looks like we will see