As the pollsters begin to report their final numbers they can no longer put influencing the election over accurately predicting it. That is because Election Day is the only day when these pollsters are accountable. The worse they do on Election Day, the fewer clients they will get and the less influence they will have in the next cycle. So, as if by magic, the Republican outlier polls will begin the “show” a surge for the president and the result can already be seen. The corporate pundits have called the race. A week ago is was “too close to call” and “incredibly close,” but today it is “baked in the cake” and there is “no way” for Romney to win. Absolutely nothing changed. Hurricane Sandy may have shut down the campaign rhetoric for a couple of days but it didn’t suddenly persuade millions of Americans to change their minds about who they intend to vote for. Obama was winning all along, from beginning to end, with never a single day when he would have or could have lost this election. The only real question was whether he could decisively win the argument and expand on his 2008 victory. If I had to guess, right now, I’d say that Obama will come up short of 2008. He will not win Indiana and he will probably fall a point short of 53% of the vote.
It’s a shame because, prior to the first debate where Obama let Romney stand with him on an equal footing, the trajectory was for a blowout election with Arizona coming into view and Missouri not far behind. Romney was staggered and flailing for two straight months and could have been knocked out. Obama let him off the ropes and the price is probably going to be control of the House of Representatives. And that means more dysfunction for two more years. Of course, the president doesn’t deserve all the blame for that. The districts are gerrymandered and corporate money is unlimited and unaccountable, the media isn’t an effective referee, and there are a lot of very gullible and misinformed people in this (and every other) country.
And, who knows? I could be wrong. Maybe we will win back the House.
If Obama gets 52-53% of the vote as you predict, its hard to see the Dems not winning back the House. Also if Carmona, McCaskill and Donnelly win in Arizona, Missouri and Indiana respectively, that should put those states in play in the Presidential election as well.
I appreciate there may be some cross-party voting helping in those Senate races, but it’s mostly about turnout. Democrats, independents, and women have something to vote for in those races, so why not vote for Obama as well while you’re at the polls? In riling up their smaller base, Republicans may have awoken the sleeping giant of the Democratic, Independent, women, minorities, youth, low information and sporadic voters as well.
As you say, the polls don’t really reflect it as yet, but we could still have a blow-out in the making. Some firms will adjust their polls coming up to the election to save their brands, others are little more than shell operations that have no reputation to lose and will still try to spin the election as close in order to shore up morale and get out the Republican troops. It’s will be interesting to see what Gallup (being sued by the Federal Government) does with its final polls…
The OFA operation may succeed in making a mockery of traditional likely voter screens especially in states with early voting. Next item on the GOP agenda will be to ban all early voting. Is there any Constitutional bar on Congress passing a law setting up a Federal Electoral Commission to oversee and set up common rules for all states conducting Federal elections? It would be nice to see an Independent Commission ending Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and unequal access to the polls in different areas.
Dream on.
Early voting is consistent with an Obama win, but a narrower one than last time. Florida and North Carolina are in pure toss-up territory. And I am not predicting 53%. I think the share of third party voting will be up a bit from four years ago, and I think Obama will get somewhere around 51-52% of the vote. It could be less, but Romney will also suffer from third party splitters.
The problem is that Romney is going to roll up huge victories in a lot of states, making it hard for Democrats to win House seats there. Obama could also win North Carolina while the Dems lose four House seats in the state the same night.
The problem is the Dems are going to lose too many House seats. They will win more than the 25 they need, but they will lose a bunch, too.
Most of those losses of House seats will be losses of remaining Blue Dogs and a few New Democrats. Not sure what the tenor of the pick-ups is likely to be. But as long a Democrats get a House majority, we might–emphasis, might–get a more progressive House.
It’s will be interesting to see what Gallup (being sued by the Federal Government) does with its final polls…
Gallup has not done polling since Sunday due to Sandy (they are based in Princeton, NJ). Just heard an interview with them on NPR. They will attempt to start polling again today.
Art. I, section 4 governs the holding of Congressional elections. It seems to grant Congress plenary power “at any time” to “make or alter” any state “regulations” relating to the holding of elections for senators and reps.
I’d say Congress has enormous power over the conduct of federal elections, should it ever choose to exercise it.
Congress has the ability to modify the time, manner, and places of federal elections. But not the franchise, e.g. nor the ability to modify the t-m-p in such a way as to contravene other amendments, e.g. 14th & 15th,
So it is possible for Congress to set a national election day that includes multiple day voting, a short lead time, and a restriction on the period for political electioneering without a Constitutional amendment.
Could Congress also require a separate polling place for each x number of population?
Could Congress pass legislation for a Federal Election Service that once every four years hires people to run national elections in all of the states and provides that service with the needed equipment and supplies to set up polling places?
IANAL, but yes to the first re date(s) — limits on electioneering gets into 1st Adt. conflicts — and probably yes to the others. The last, if states could opt-out, would be a slam-dunk.
I’d expect a lengthy appellate wrangle on all of them, though.
The way I understand stand it is that Congress has authority over federal elections. Most states will move their elections to accommodate and save the money rather than have multiple elections.
I don’t think that Congress has any authority over redistricting, that’s left up to the states.
Gallup (being sued by the Federal Government)
I knew nothing of this so googled it. Apparently a former Gallup employee filed a whistleblower lawsuit that Gallup overcharged for some work done on a government contract and, after review, the DOJ joined the suit as a plaintiff.
But to get that info I had to focus my search because the wingnutosphere is ablaze about this … of course, they paint this as Obama personally attacking Gallup because he didn’t like their polls. The fact that Axlerod sent a negative tweet 4 months later about the Gallup methodology was all the evidence the teavangelicals needed (as if they needed evidence at all).
Further digging finds that Gallup’s CEO has been steering the organization deep into wingnutosphere territory, being a full-fledged wingnut himself, and they have a lot of disgruntled former employees out there.
I don’t like dismissing polls because I disagree with their results, but given the background and the fact that Gallup is such a huge outlier it’s hard to give that poll any credit at all. It’s pretty clear that they RV results are consistent with the consensus, so it’s the LV screen that makes them the outlier – the kind of judgement call that a wingnut CEO could easily demand be made.
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ Coming Up Short While Winning
That has been my theory, (and my reason for mentioning the law suit) (Parenthetically)
Ah yes, the left version of Poll Trutherism. You forgot to mention to CELL PHONES!!1!11!
This isn’t a theoretical exercise anymore. There’s raw data on the ground with the early vote, that people are studying. And it is what it is. It’s not 2008. It’s just not. So move on, and take the win for what it is.
I’ve been following some of the early voting data, and the consensus seems to be that both Dems and GOPs seem to be voting early in greater numbers – cutting the Dem % but not the Dem absolute advantage.
The discussion seems to be around whether Dems are getting greater numbers of new and sporadic voters to the polls, whilst the GOPs are merely getting their reliable base to vote earlier, i.e. not actually adding to their potential total vote.
All of this may just be wishful thinking, although I have seen some evidence to back it up in some states. Being 3000 miles away doesn’t give me any on-the-ground credentials for commenting on the respective ground games so we will just have to wait and see as to who ends up being right.
Of course Obama has loss a lot of his “the Audacity of Hope” lustre, but Romney has a turnoff potential – even for tea partiers – that we just can’t measure at the moment. He has abandoned just about every policy position he used to obtain their (reluctant) support, and so far hasn’t been called on it (by the GOP side). Perhaps their support for him was motivated by pure racism rather than any policy position (on abortion or whatever) but I find it hard to believe some sort of enthusiasm gap will not appear on the GOP side.
The GOP side is full of people who get riled up when they hear “Press 1 for English.” It’s not a stretch to say they are powered by pure Obama hate.
I think this is very difficult to tell, so I personally take the polling averages at 538, Princeton Election Commission, Pollster at face value, all of which say that Obama has a consistent but not overwhelming lead.
The rest of the arguments are simply hand-waving, and get you into “skewed poll”-style arguments pretty quickly. (Or 2004 arguments about pollsters undersampling Kerry voters, if you prefer.)
I’ll be more than happy if the polls are wrong in Obama’s favor, but counting on that happening seems foolish.
Obama let him off the ropes and the price is probably going to be control of the House of Representatives.
IEM and Intrade never had a Dem House over 30% — and it was less than 20% from time to time
Did anyone other than Booman actually believe a Democratic House was more likely than not?
To be clear this isn’t intended to be some sort of jab at the guy. I’m just wondering if that sentiment was common anywhere.
It’s good to see the confidence coming back.
So, as if by magic, the Republican outlier polls will begin the “show” a surge for the president and the result can already be seen.
Well, we did see this for Rasputen … I mean, Rasmussen … in 2008. But, honestly, except for Rasputen the others are probably providing honest results using their methodology … to think otherwise is to give in to confirmation bias. Rasputen pretty clearly has a strategy of tons of cheap robocall-based polls designed to flood the aggregators and help improve the averages for the GOP. Even though they use a polling methodology that favors the GOP naturally they additionally put the thumb on the scale with the Party ID weighting factor that the rest of the industry shuns.
But otherwise it is troubling that the other national pollsters are still showing it a tie, except for the Gallup outlier. Yes, the swing state polls indicate a solid if not spectacular Obama victory, and yes intuitively swing state polls should be a better indicator for a variety of reasons. But right now there isn’t any data that explains the difference. The aggregators have examined the national/state polling accuracy for past elections but the data are really too sparse to draw any firm conclusions … yes, swing state data APPEAR to be slightly more accurate in past elections on average, which is hopeful, but there hasn’t been this degree of polling split before in a close election. We can speculate (maybe in non-swing states polling respondents behave slightly differently due to the fact their state is a foregone conclusion, thus skewing the national polls?), but until we know it remains a troubling issue.
Romney’s strategy in the last week is to flood the swing states with negative ads that replay the “greatest hits” of his campaign … the lie about the auto bailout, the lie about Obama ending the work requirement for welfare, debt-debt-debt-debt-debt, economy-economy-economy. (I know because my mailbox is full of mailers every day.) Could that be enough to push enough voters in his direction? I honestly don’t know.
Obama’s team may have a few last minute news items of a different variety, even if some are beyond their control. Obama-Christie as BFFs addressing the frankenstorm aftermath. A string of good economic news, some of which has already been announced. The UAW filing an election lawsuit, announcing today, that Romney illegally concealed his millions in profit from the auto bailout (oh that will go over well in Ohio).
The pro-Obama news plus the swing state polling trend gives me high confidence, too … but I’m still troubled by the national polls.
Obama let him off the ropes and the price is probably going to be control of the House of Representatives. And that means more dysfunction for two more years. Of course, the president doesn’t deserve all the blame for that.
One could make an argument that you’re wrong. Why? The President controls, by choosing, who heads the DNC. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea for a sitting Congresscritter to chair such an important position? Who is supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on in the states re: Voter ID laws and the like?
Dean would be doing better, but Schultz is a much better choice than Tim Kaine.
Well, I have to wonder if the prez election was such a forgone conclusion for so long why Team Obama simply refused to run against the most hated Congress in 150 years and never constructed a campaign meme along the lines of “Do-Nothing Repub Congress” ala Truman. Hell, they could have used Give ’em Hell Harry as an example!
I don’t see how Repubs ever lose the House again after Citizens United—corporate money will now decide those races. But it sure doesn’t seem like there was any attempt to “nationalize” the election by the incumbent prez, which seems odd given the sewage level approval of Congress by voters.
Or else Team Obama thought the prez election was very much in doubt and they couldn’t afford to open a huge second front to try and destroy the monstrous Repub House. Simple lack of resources.
I suppose we should be happy to have a paralysed government, and not an operating capitalist dictatorship under Rmoney, as Juan Cole used the term yesterday. But after 2010, I’ll believe it when I see it….most Americans are too often delighted to make insane political choices for the stupidest reasons imaginable.
In other words…the fix is, has and will be in. They had to make it look like a fight, but in the end the designated winner will win and the designated loser will lose. The only question that remains in my mind is whether Obama and Romney were complicit in the fix. The first debate remains a puzzlement. Did Obama throw the early rounds to keep the betting up or was that a convenient coincidence? Or…was he drugged?
Maybe the “price” that the champ has to pay for a reliable fix in his favor is control of the House of Representatives. They can’t give him too much power, now can they? Things might get done that the controllers do not want to see getting done.
I am happy that you’re seeing it in somewhat the same way, Booman.
Reality bites, I know. But there it is.
Better chomp, chomp, chomp than clomp clomp, clomp.
Or even worse…chump, chump chump.
Can’t wait to see 2016!!!
How ’bout a Clinton/Christie fusion ticket? That kind of fix would make the media even more money!!! Think of the headlines!!!
Cain’t wait!!!
Later…
AG
Media ad revenues and continued polling revenues and consultant revenues all depend on making it always and ever a close election.
Jay Leno last night:
Calvin Coolidge…ol’ Silent Cal himself…is often misquoted as saying “The business of America is business.”
Here’s the real quote, in context.
It was a PermaGov media call.
In the spirit of Noam Chomsky, I would like to translate a few phrases.
Intimate. Like in bed with. Married to. Controlled by. Owned by.
Can be relied upon to do the bidding of its owners rather than serve as a “purveyor of information and opinion.”
Pure, unadulterated bullshit. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is the chief business of all people. And work…not just
busyness“business”, but real work of any sort (physical work, mental work, any damned kind of real production)…is the true “chief business” of any and all who wish to pursue some sort of life, liberty and happiness. Bet on it. Real, productive work, not buying low and selling high. Buying low and selling high produces a feedback system that inevitably leads to a bubble. And you know what happens to all bubbles, don’tcha? Big, small and anywhere in between?Bet on it.
If the media…”the press” in his day…tells people that “producing, buying, selling [and] investing” is the prime way to get to the point of “prospering in the world” and that the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness is “buying, selling, [and] investing,” the schmucks will clomp, clomp, clomp on out there emulating the robber barons of their time on their own small scale and all will be right with the world.
Look where that shit got us.
Ol’ Cal…true believer that he was…goes on to say:
Riiiight…
The accumulation of wealth.
Some accumulate lots, others accumulate a little, and many lose everything. Capitalism in its truest incarnation.
Welcome to, OnePercentville, USA.
Over and out.
AG.
In other words…the fix is, has and will be in.
No, Arthur. When Mike Tyson fights Ethel Merman, the fight doesn’t have to be fixed in order for the outcome to be clear.
If somebody promotes such a fight fiercely enough for it to taken seriously by masses of people…that is the fix.
Think of all he clowns they threw into a ring w/Mike Tyson when he was unbeatable.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or fix a fight. Bet on it.
AG
.
More than happy with any margin on EC majority. For an incumbent coming out of the deepest recession since the 1930’s, Obama will follow in FDR’s giant footsteps and surprise the Wall Street gangsters. The economists said no one since WWII got re-elected with unemployment above 5 percent. Romney’s flip-flop on banking regulations.
Wall Street bail-out topped $1 trillion
On the popular vote it will stay very close: Obama 51% and Romney 49%. In today’s world, incumbents don’t get re-elected!
My prediction for months has been Obama will win by a smaller margin than in 2008, making him the first President since FDR to be reelected in a closer race than the one in which he first took office.
And FDR served for, like, 90 years, so that was bound to happen.
The Republicans were going to fall into line eventually and there is evidence they were starting to do so even before the first debate. Still if it wasn’t the first debate it was going to be some other event or series of events. Given that the House was always the longest of long shots.
This. I’m frustrated that the bogus narrative about the supposed outsized influence of the first debate is hardening into fake history. The available evidence (which you describe concisely and well)simply doesn’t support it, nor does the long track record of the relative insignificance of debates. But the human brain loves constructing narratives, so…
Just wait until the Repugs blame their loss on Sandy…
Well, heaven knows they’ll never, ever put the blame where it belongs- on their sorry selves.
I don’t think you can put the weight of the entire world on one (frankly decent) debate performance. Several of us mentioned, pre-debate, I think, that it was unlikely that Obama would replicate his electoral blowout and that the House was a longshot. It was always unlikely that Romney would somehow avoid having a single bout of competence throughout the entire campaign.
Before the first debate Romney had been exposed for being the weasel that he has been all along, destroying his campaign and all hopes he ever had for winning while demoralizing his party or what was left of it. Even Republican pundits were jumping on him. During the first debate, because Obama took a nap, the Republicans suddenly thought they might have a chance to win this after all so they tried to finally fall in line. The problem is Romney is still Romney telling even more lies but now so blatant that the MSM starts to call him out for it. The best characterization of Mitt Romney that exposes his true character, or lack thereof, is by David Leisure, the character of Joe Isuzu using Mitt’s own words:
http://youtu.be/Ne8RBpVs1Ls
Like others are saying, I believe pretty strongly that the impact of the first debate was not anything Obama did or didn’t do but that Romney showed himself to be stronger than his summer-long slump advertised. I don’t think a kick-ass Obama performance would have made much difference, because all the difference was Romney making Republicans and Republican-leaners a lot happier with their guy than they had been beforehand. IOW, Strong Romney jazzed up the Republicans; Weak Obama didn’t push Democrats towards Romney. And how you can tell is that the three consecutive strong performances by the D side didn’t have nearly the effect of that first one for the R’s. Romney flipped the switch and got his people back, and he’s held them ever since.