Let me ask you a question. Do you think that Latinos, Asians, Native Americans…basically our non-white/non-black population…are going to vote for the Republicans in this election by a 52%-42% margin? Yeah, neither does Simon Rosenberg, but that is what Gallup’s model is predicting.
The non-white, non-black portion of the American electorate went more than 2:1 Democratic in 2008 and 2006. Hispanics who make up the largest portion of this slice of the electorate, voted 70% to 30% for the Democrats in 2006, and 67% to 31% for President Obama over John McCain in 2008. In two recent polls of Hispanic voters, these basic ratios have not changed, and if is any movement to be found in these polls it is a drop in support for the Republican Party since 2008. A Latino Decisions poll has the Latino vote now at 59% Democrat, 22% Republican. The most recent, and highly respected, Pew Hispanic poll had it at 65% Democrat, 22% Republican. The gap between the most respected Latino poll in the nation – Pew – and this recent Gallup model is 50% percentage points.
Much of the remaining portion of this non-white, non-black slice of the American electorate is Asian. This community actually voted more Democratic in 2008 than Hispanics.
The problem here is not differential turnout. It could be true that Latinos and Asians and Native Americans will not turn out in the same numbers as whites, blacks, or the rest of the electorate as a whole. That would change Gallup’s prediction on how many people vote, but it would have no effect on their prediction on how they vote. As Rosenberg points out, it defies common sense that Latinos will be more supportive of the Republican Party this year than they have been in the past.
Given that the Republican Party has actually ratched (sic) up its anti-immigrant rhetoric and activities in the last two years, the idea that the most heavily immigrant portion of the American electorate would see the largest swing to the GOP in 2010 of any slice of the American electorate simply doesn’t pass the political laugh test.
I’m not saying that all pollsters are liars and that we don’t have some pretty big concerns going into the midterm elections, but people need to remember that a bad profile of the electorate is going to yield a bad prediction of the election results. We’ve come a long way in getting more sophisticated about interpreting polls over the last four years, but we are still influenced greatly by them.
I’ve mentioned this before but it demands retelling. The only day that pollsters actually pay a price for being wrong is election day. The rest of the time, there is no penalty for jiggering your model to get the results you want. No one can ever prove that you were wrong because there is no objective fact to compare your poll to. Pollsters do want to have a record of accuracy, and that’s why a lot of these dubious polling outfits change their models to something realistic just before election day.
One more thing. All these internal polls that are paid for by candidates for office? It’s not that they only release them when they have good news. They pay those pollsters to create good news. Any polling outfit that continuously produces polls unfit for release is going to get replaced by an outfit that understands its job description.
Rasmussen is destroying not only his own credibility, but the entire polling industry. I have never seen such a divide between polls and what people believe. Yes, the Republicans are going to do well, but a switch of 80 seats in the House?
I think the entire profession have become prostituted by Rasmussen.
Silver’s throwing up 50 and still climbing.
Anyhow, couldn’t it work like this: Of all the depressed Dem voters, it’s the minority ones that are suffering this the most. This makes sense since they historically vote in smaller numbers. So the small but extreme core of GOP minority voters is all going to vote, but less of the Dem “soft” voters. I tend to think it’ll be ~55-45 myself but at this point who knows. Grijalva’s seat wast just downgraded to Tossup status.
He called for boycott of Arizona. He’s an Arizona congressman. That’s a tough position. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in trouble.
It’s definitely the case that the extremes dominate in the midterms.
The one and only question is “is there any regulation of polling?” And if the answer is no, then this is all just a corporate media game at our expense. We are all fools to pretend that it’s legitimate just like we were all fools to watch Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa blow up into freaky looking baseball players and pretend that it was all real.
I just got back from making a bunch of calls to registered Democrats for Alexi G. and Pat Quinn – Gov in Illinois tonight. I had to write down what their level of interest was in the candidate, etc. Which I did but quite honestly my interpretation of what someone says could very easily be interpreted differently by someone else.
By the way, amazingly I got a lot of people picking up the phone and almost all voting Dem the whole way. It was a good night for GOTV. I’m thinking Alexi will win but Quinn won’t only because of the horrible state budget situation on the heels of Blago.
As I’m somewhat rambling here, I might as well continue and say that Nate Silver is pissing me off big time with his latest post. He’s so black and white with his “GOP chance to take the House increases from 72% to 75%” but then goes on to say a lot of blah blah blah things in play that could change that… Well then dammit, it’s 50/50!
It’s not Nate that is pissing you off. It’s Nate’s methodology.
Remember, everything he says is premised on the election being held right now, not two weeks from now. And he’s using Rasmussen, which I don’t understand. I think it is because he hasn’t been able to prove their fraud, and many races would be unpolled if not for Rasmussen. So, he needs their data.
Gallup’s usually good compared to the rest, PPP leans Democratic, although not nearly to the degree that Rasmussen leans Republican. SUSA sucks, always has 18-34 year olds overwhelmingly Republican and urban areas leaning Republican. Zogby sucks. Research 2000, as DKos found out, sucks.
The questions in the likely voter screen are:
That is a lot different from just asking who folks are going to vote for. And given the anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric in this election, do you think that a random selection of Latinos who pick up the phone are going to be for Republicans, Democrats, or misrepresent who they will be voting for?
There are some implicit cultural assumptions in the way polling is done that can put the accuracy of polling results for minority groups in question.
And it makes a difference whether your polling of random number hit heavily (it is random after all) in Florida or Arizona as to what Latino responses are.
And Asian-Americans might swing Republican in some areas this year — like Louisiana or South Carolina.
Which is why I have said that the polling this year is more uncertain than usual. And because polls set narratives, being the underdog may motivate Democrats to get out the vote more.
The narrative added to the fear of the far-right agenda could indeed motivate democrats to vote.
But how about independants ? Are they going to vote with the “wind” ? I’m concerned about that.
Another question: will the new democrat ads pointing out that big money is trying to buy the election have a measurable impact ?
Which independents are you talking about?
The independents to the left of the Democrats will tend to sit it out.
The independents to the right of the Republicans are part of the Tea Party crazy.
The independents between the Republicans and Democrats are most likely in the end reflect the views of their friends and neighbors. And that is the unknown number that Obama has been trying to move for two years. We’ll see if it works.
The problem is knowing (1) how many are in each group and (2) how many independents will bother to vote.
One more thing. All these internal polls that are paid for by candidates for office? It’s not that they only release them when they have good news. They pay those pollsters to create good news. Any polling outfit that continuously produces polls unfit for release is going to get replaced by an outfit that understands its job description.
This can only go so far. You can maybe fudge things up to about 5 points, but that is it. Besides, you don’t want to tell your candidate that you’re winning by 20 when you are losing by three, or are neck and neck.
I actually trust the internal polls more than Rasmussen’s shite. I remember the 1980 election when the closest to get to the final result were Reagan’s internal polls. Rasmussen can burn in hell as far as I’m concerned. Eighty f’n seats! Has that ever happened before? Didn’t happen to Reagan in ’82 or Clinton in ’94. It’s hard me to believe it now when there are a lot of Senate seats that are looking fair and Obama is still in the mid-40’s. Bullshite!
Not true.
You can lie by 20 points if you are far enough from the election and no one else is polling the race. And I’ve seen outliers nearly that big this year, but they’re gone now because they have to maintain their credibility.
Yeah, totally disagree. When you are 6 months out, you can do anything you want. Rasmussen is totally out of step in a lot of races, and he is coming back. He uses a totally biased turnout model 6 months out.
Rasmussen is trying to affect the narrative. He knows that the polls drive the debate. Thus, he is a fucking liar, to drive the narrative.