Get yer polls, bets, numbers & pretty graphs! Elections 2008

It appeared a bit after Iowa if I remember right. It's too messiah-ish, I don't like it. I think they'd be better served by just a straightforward shot of him looking at the camera, maybe a little smile, not necessarily the thousand-watter though. Also don't like the quote. Seems like another one would better encapsulate the good things about the campaign.

We're way off-topic now, though, sorry nimh!

On the shenanigans in Nevada...

sozobe wrote:

The 11:30 thing seems to be a common thread. But I dunno.

Marc Ambinder has more:

Quote:

Obama: Clinton Won Dirty.... Clinton Campaign: Obama Lost Dirty

One thing is clear: Nevada has to figure out how to do a better job next time.

Barack Obama's campaign is accusing Hillary Clinton's of deliberately violating caucus laws to prevent late-arriving Obama voters from participating.

Obama's campaign counsel, Bob Bauer, said: ""There was a clear disenfranchising effect. We want a full review of this."

He said the campaign received more than 300 complaints from folks who were not allowed into caucus sessions even though they had been in line to register by 11:30, the stated time. The campaign obtained what it said was a copy of Hillary Clinton's caucus manual and what it said were misleading instructions to caucus chairs.

Here's the page from the Clinton caucus guide.

One entry says: "11:30: Deadline for registering (or standing in line to register) to participate in the Caucus. And then: "11:30: Caucus chair closes door."

Nevada Democratic Party rules say: "In order to participate in the Nevada State Democratic Party Caucuses, attendees MUST be in line, or signed in, by noon. At noon, Presidential Preference Cards should be given to any person in line, and after that point, no Presidential Preference Cards should be given to any new arrivals, as they will not be allowed to caucus."

Clinton's campaign just held a conference call alleging that Obama precinct captains engaged in the same type of shenanigans. "As a result, many of our supporters were harassed and intimidated when they tried to register at the caucus," said Robbie Mook, Clinton's Nevada state director.

Mook said the team had discovered "numerous instances of miscounting" to Obama's benefit.

Clinton senior adviser David Barnhart said he was at the Mirage at-large caucus heart and "witnessed...voter intimidation." He said that many union workers told him that they would not be given permission to take a break from their jobs and caucus unless they voted for Obama. He said one woman was told by supervisor that she would not be given preferential shifts unless she voted for Obama.

Barnhart said that before the caucus began, Obama's team formed a "gauntlet" and tried to "intimidate" voters as they entered the caucus room.

Mook said the Obama campaign's allegations were "completely false, and frankly, pretty desperate."

sozobe wrote:

It appeared a bit after Iowa if I remember right. It's too messiah-ish, I don't like it. I think they'd be better served by just a straightforward shot of him looking at the camera, maybe a little smile, not necessarily the thousand-watter though. Also don't like the quote. Seems like another one would better encapsulate the good things about the campaign.

We're way off-topic now, though, sorry nimh!

This is funny. It is about image, isn't it? I have read about the emergence of Obama being somewhat messianic, and even the supporters on this forum seem to project that. They seem to somehow believe this man is the second coming or something, yet, really how are his political proposals much different than the same tired old politics? The truth is he is just another run of the mill politician that knows how to talk fairly good, at least that is what we've been told (I don't see it) but for which very very few people in this country actually know what his political platform consists of. I would venture to guess less than 10% of the people, maybe alot less than 10%, on the street could tell you what he stood for on issues.

That's something I worry about, though. He's shown in Illinois (Senate) and in Iowa (primary caucuses) that when people get to know him, they like him. All kinds of people, unlikely people. This is a big part of why I support him, that I've seen him do that so often. But I worry that as this primary season goes on he just won't be able to get the eyes and ears long enough, in the right way (face-to-face talks, or deeper policy stuff, not just soundbites) for people to get to know him in the way that has typically won them over.

Arguably, the election results that will get the least attention today involve the hand recount underway in New Hampshire at the request of Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich. The results of the recount so far, as posted by the New Hampshire Secretary of State, show some minor discrepancies but nothing that would explain pre-election surveys over the final weekend of the campaign showing Barack Obama running ahead of Hillary Clinton.

In most cases, the minor glitches appear to involve uncounted write-in votes or minor clerical errors. As the Union Leader reported yesterday:

The widest variations so far were in Manchester's Ward 5. Vote counters there mistakenly transposed write-in votes for vice president as votes for presidential candidate. As a result, all major candidates lost votes. Kucinich lost three in the ward and has a total of 20 votes there. Hillary Clinton lost 64 with a new total of 619; John Edwards lost 38 and has 217 votes; Barack Obama lost 39 and has 365, and Bill Richardson lost seven, leaving him 39.

For those interested, Salon's Farhad Manjoo has a nice review of the various fraud theories and the evidence (or lack thereof) behind them. One possibly overlooked point is that New Hampshire uses no touchscreen voting machines. Every ballot cast there was cast on paper, although as Manjoo reports, four out of five of the ballots were counted with optical scan equipment: "The machines that read the ballots and the computers that count the ballots and report the results are made by a company notorious for shoddy practices: Diebold."

Those who have raised questions about the count have pointed to vote returns showing Barack Obama doing better in the minority of mostly rural precincts that counted the votes by hand, while Clinton did better where votes were counted by Diebold machines. The most likely explanation, as Manjoo puts it: "Those places simply vote differently." See his article for the details, or the analysis of past vote results by the Washington Post's Jennifer Agiesta and Jon Cohen.

What about exit poll results cited by Chris Matthews showing Obama ahead? The problem is that the numbers that Matthews saw were likely based on a "composite" estimate that melds exit poll tallies and pre-election polls. It would not be surprising if those results showed an advantage for Obama (I blogged about that issue on Election Day well before any results were available).

I had no access to the "end of day" exit poll tallies available to the network decision desks, but Manjoo went directly to the source:

Daniel Merkle, who heads ABC News' "decision desk" -- which was getting the exact same exit polling data that folks at NBC were getting -- told me that the numbers he was receiving during Election Day did not show a certain Obama win. Merkle said the data indicated "a very close race on the Democratic side," and "that's what it ended up being." "It was within a couple points," Merkle said. "When we're seeing an exit poll within a couple points, that's a close race." The exit poll numbers, he added, were a "surprise" compared to pre-election polls. "The exit poll was not showing an 8- to 10-point Obama lead. It was showing a close race."

Manjoo's piece is well worth reading in full, but he closes with a point made so well that I want to quote it in full:

Last night I had a long discussion with Brad Friedman, who runs the election-reform news Web site Brad Blog. Over and over, he said, "My biggest concern here is that 80 percent of the vote is uncounted by any human being." His request is simple and straightforward: "Why not count the damn votes?" He's right. Why not count the votes? And thanks to Kucinich, that's what will likely happen now. It will probably take some time; weeks, if not months. But soon, we'll know what happened. But as many voting-reform experts have argued, manually counting the votes should be a routine in any race. There are logistical reasons why it would be impractical to hand count every vote in every election. But if we're going to use machines -- optical-scan machines that use paper ballots, that is; touch-screen machines everywhere ought to be burned -- we should, at least, conduct a randomized, accountant-approved audit of ballots. In other words, after every election, officials should randomly count some number of ballots to double-check the machines' results. It is amazing that this is not a standard procedure across the country; it is a disgrace that election officials aren't rushing to implement such procedures now.

I couldn't agree more. Exit polls are extremely useful to those of us that want to understand who voted and the meaning of election outcomes, but they are a terrible way to verify the vote count. Random, hand-count audits coupled with optical scan voting would help raise everyone's confidence in the integrity of our elections. Without regular, independent, random audits, these perennial conspiracy theories will continue.

-- Mark Blumenthal

Are you trying to tell us that more than 10% of people on the street would be able to tell us what the political platforms of all the other candidates consists of?

What do you perceive are Senator Obama's political platforms, Okie?

What about Huckabee, what are his political platforms?

Why wasn't the Romney win forecast in NV? He was the only one to actively campaign there and there is a large Mormon population. Is that correct?

Why wasn't the Romney win forecast in NV? He was the only one to actively campaign there and there is a large Mormon population.

Nimh responded:

(P)olls are not analyses - pollsters cant, say, look at the data that their survey has yielded and decide to increase Romney's percentage because they know that Romney's done the most campaigning. All they can do is ask their randomly selected respondents whom they're thinking of voting.

nimh, it looks to me like the last few days has coalesced a few things enough in the Republican Party for me to make an observation. Huckabee seems to be fading unless he can revive the spark. Giuliani's chances are hinged on Florida, and he is fading, not greatly, but enough that it might doom him. What did he get in SC, 2%, good grief, the guy has to show he can do better than that if he is a serious candidate. It now looks to me like its McCain and Romney the frontrunners,

and the latest Rasmussen poll has Romney on top in Florida.

I still think McCain has just about tapped out his percentages, and as other candidates drop off the scene, they will go to either Huckabee or Romney

The winner take all states vs the split delegate states could have a huge impact on all of this.

What I was going to say, though, is being able to go everywhere in America and campaign and to compete -- and I grew up in the rural south, in small towns all across the rural south, and I think I can go everywhere and compete head-to-head with John McCain.

And, actually, the last time I saw one of your polls that had all three of us against John McCain, I was the one that beat John McCain everywhere in America.

let me just get in here, because there are a lot of polls showing that I'm beating them higher than anybody else. I don't think that has -- I don't think, frankly, that has much to recommend this far from an election.

So Fred Thompson has officially droped out, ending a half-hearted effort.