Jonathan Bernstein has some pretty bad advice for poll watchers and other presidential election prognosticators. He has come up with five “myths” that contradict conventional wisdom. The first myth is that we should watch the state polls and ignore the national ones. His reason is that elections generally track with the national polls and there are a lot more of them (a bigger sample size) than any particular state poll. My answer to this is that national polls contain a bunch of irrelevant information. I simply don’t care how Obama is doing in Texas or Romney is doing in California. And I have no reason to believe that those two states cancel each other out. I want to know how the candidates are doing in the states where they are putting their resources. The only thing national polls can tell me is if one candidate is making some kind of generalized progress against the other. If you think about it, if a candidate is spending a ton of money to win New Hampshire and nothing to win Texas, you should see almost no correlation between a national poll that surveys many Texans, and a state poll of the Granite State. If you are picking up support in New Hampshire but not in much larger states that you’re conceding, the national polls will show nothing. Al Gore can tell you what the popular vote is worth.
Bernstein next tells us the vice-president candidates don’t have much impact. But, of course, they do. Sarah Palin was very harmful to John McCains’s campaign, even as she gave it a temporary spark. Dan Quayle did Poppy Bush no favors. The selection of a running mate is important for the challenger because it allows the public to judge them on at least one presidential decision. But, it’s true that picking, say, a Marco Rubio because you think he can help you win Florida is a high risk/low payoff decision. At best, Rubio might buy you a point or two, but it’s more important that he’s a crook with an embarrassing record of unethical behavior.
Bernstein’s third myth is derived from a single study that contradicts the common wisdom that people form their opinions of the health of the economy by the ease or difficulty of obtaining a job in their community, and not by watching Lou Dobbs and other media figures pontificate about the economy. I want to see quite a bit more than one study before I believe that.
Bernstein’s fourth myth is basically true. The list of swing states isn’t constant, and just because an election was close in a state 4 years ago or 8 years ago doesn’t mean it will be close this time around. Bernstein would be less impressed with himself over this if he paid more attention to state polls, which tell him things he might not expect, like the president is still strong in North Carolina and the Dems have the frontrunner in the North Dakota Senate race. In any case, the two campaigns know which states are swingy this time around and are using their resources accordingly.
Bernstein’s last myth is that the Republicans can’t win the general election without winning Ohio. He then uses the example of Romney winning California, and points out that if Romney wins California then he will have won in a giant landslide. Somehow this is supposed to happen without Romney winning Ohio? We should think of this saying that the GOP can’t win without Ohio as meaning that Ohio is a bellwether. If Romney loses it, you can forget about him becoming president. This isn’t a mathematical thing. If Obama loses Vermont, he’s toast. I could just as easily say that if Obama wins Missouri, he’s going to be reelected, even though Obama doesn’t need Missouri at all.
In any case, this is pretty crappy advice from Bernstein, all down the line.
Yeah. I’ve always thought the best political advice was to put blinders on.
Aside, UP with Chris Hayes panel had a fascinating (and might I ad fact based) discovery conversation on the role of racism during Obama’s candidacy and presidency in areas that so far have flown under the radar. I do wish MSNBC would knock off the weekend jail time and replace it with UP for just one repeat.
I’ve never understood why they don’t repeat Hayes’ and MHP’s shows on the weekend. Are they trying to build a following for those two shows at all? Not everyone can be up at 5am West Coast time, and not everyone has a DVR(or even knows how to use it).
As my sainted father used to say: “The race is not always to the swift nor the fight to strong”. he would quickly follow that up with: “But only a damn fool bets against speed and strength”.
I’ve held for a long time that the Obama “popularity is low” is a mis-nomer. Nationwide, Obama’s popularity is low. However who in their right mind gives a flying FUCK what Obama’s popluarity is in MS, TN, AL and TX? Who cares?
The whiny professional left who aren’t satisfied unless they can complain about something. And who cares about them?
The whiny professional left who aren’t satisfied unless they can complain about something.
Why don’t you just state who specifically you are talking about. Bernstein isn’t the professional left. He’s a Beltway hack. He became one once he basically started writing full time for Kaplan. And look, you can complain all you want, but as we have seen you don’t get anywhere unless you bother, harass, and otherwise cajole this President. His interests are not the same as yours. So you have to force him to change his interests. Heck, have you even read either of his book?
A very good post except for the cheap shot at Leftists.
And the specific part I mean re: Obama’s two books is the one where he talks about raising campaign funds and becoming more like those he’s trying to raise funds from. Sounds like a problem to me. Or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9KC8SMu3o
And yet, he was hanging out a few weeks ago aboard Air Force One with the union-busting asshole CEO of Honeywell.
Bernstein next tells us the vice-president candidates don’t have much impact.
Tell that to Hubert Humphrey!! Or was it George McGovern?
McGovern of the “thousand percent”.
I used to follow an economic statistics site, I can’t remember the name, that had a Presidential model that predicted elections based on the local economy and the state’s political history. It predicted the 2000 election perfectly except it predicted Florida for Gore by a small margin (Cough! Cough!). They went to a paid model at a lot more money than I could afford so I don’t go there anymore.
It seemed like a super model.
Boo… good work!
For example…due to Metro D.C. hiring ever more federal workers who live in Northern Virginia, that state is lost to us evil Republicans as reliably Red…on the other hand, your Blue grip on the upper Mid-West is weakening (you know…all of those racist white Middle-Class folks)…I’ll trade Virginia for Michigan!
Speaking of V.P. choices…Boo, how will excoriate Susana Martinez when Romney chooses her…War on Women?…War on Hispanics?…”Crook”?…Racist?…another Palin (oops…She’s really smart)…
You really think R-money is going to pick Susana Martinez? I don’t. And after picking Palin last time, it’ll backfire. People know it’s not sincere.
He needs to vet her competence as a Governor…I’m pretty sure he’ll choose a Governor…if she’s as, or more, competent as the other contenders, then she should be the V.P. nominee…
Martinez has already asked to be counted out as she has a disabled sister whose care is on her shoulders and a move to DC she has said would not be in the cards.
To be fair, it’s been show the VP contributes about 1-2% at most jump in his home state and little else. There might be exceptions, but that’s what the data shows generally speaking. The gist of this is that you shouldn’t pick them for some political advantage, you should pick them because if you DIE you have a responsibility to pass it on to someone who can do the job. So basically an exact argument against Sarah Palin.
Also a huge part of the reason for ND is because Rick Berg is like a king duchebag.
Obama has very little to do with what’s going on with PG and HH. Though let me just say I think PG would be a great Rep. and I support her and will be voting for her.
The main reason to look at national polls instead of state polls is the same reason people look at the poll of polls, instead simply picking their favorite pollster. It has nothing to do with Texas “canceling out” California.
The poll of polls helps cancel out the errors in the different polling models. The national poll helps cancel out errors in the individual state polls.
Polls (particularly this early on) are notoriously poor predictors of what voters will actually do on election day. And state polls are far worse than the national ones. They have higher margins of error, are polled much less frequently, and assumptions about voting constituencies are much less precise.
The poll of polls still has a large error rate. It’s just much smaller than the alternative.