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

Well, the thing is - like, I know I've used "downscale" once or twice lately - probably picked it up from the media talk. But how do you call lower-educated / lower-income voters? I'd call them "working class", but that doesnt seem to fly very well in America... :wink:

Considering Okie's concerns, and the additional point that many low-education, low-income people are not working class because they're unemployed, why not go all the way to "proletariat"?

From New Hampshire to California, and from Arizona to Wisconsin, exit polls from this year's contests show the Democratic coalition evolving in clear and consistent ways since the 2004 primaries that nominated John Kerry. The party is growing younger, more affluent, more liberal, and more heavily tilted toward women, Latinos, and African-Americans.

Which means:

This year's changes have accelerated a clear movement away from key elements of the historic New Deal coalition on which Hillary Clinton has based her candidacy.

MYSTERY POLLSTER
Telling Good Polls From Bad

By Mark Blumenthal
National Journal
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008

Earlier this week, the managing editor of a prominent newspaper e-mailed me a tough question: "Given that you take great pains to explain the differences between pollsters... why do you announce and link to the results of all pollsters without regard to their methods and transparency?"

While his question pertained to my Web site, Pollster.com, it touches on a broader question that journalists, political professionals and ordinary news junkies grapple with: What is a good poll? How do you tell a good poll from a bad one? That question can be surprisingly difficult to answer, even for a professional pollster.

Unfortunately, when it comes to pre-election surveys that aim to measure the preferences of "likely voters," pollsters rely as much on art as science. No two pollsters agree on the best means of identifying and "screening" likely voters. We disagree about whether we should rely on procedures that define the likely electorate based entirely on the responses to survey questions or whether the pollster should make a priori judgments about the geographic or demographic composition of the likely electorate.

We have heated debates about the best way to draw our samples: Should we begin with a sample of adults who have working phones (achieved by randomly generating the final digits of known telephone number exchanges), or should we sample from registered voter lists that allow for a more accurate identification of actual voters but miss those with non-listed phones?

Pollsters disagree about the merits of automated surveys. Some argue that substituting a recorded voice for a live interviewer compromises random selection, especially when it comes to picking a respondent within a sampled household. Proponents of automated surveys claim, with empirical support, that the automated method makes for a more accurate selection of "likely voters" and vote preferences by better simulating a secret ballot. Unfortunately, these various disagreements limit our ability to provide a neat checklist of dos and don'ts that would easily differentiate "good" polls from the "bad."

What about measurements of accuracy that compare poll results with election outcomes? Unfortunately, these measurements can also be frustrating for those hoping to make decisions about which polls to trust. As my Pollster.com colleague and University of Wisconsin professor Charles Franklin likes to say, this task is more complicated than compiling "a list of good polls that are always close to right and bad polls that are always closer to wrong." Whatever our judgments about the underlying methodology, polls that use "good" methods can be wrong (as compared to election results) and those that use "bad" methods are often right.

The process of measuring accuracy is itself a source of some debate among pollsters. The firm SurveyUSA, a well-known provider of automated polls to local television news broadcasts, has long provided pollster "report cards" that compare the result of the final poll by each organization to the election result. That approach mixes "final" polls conducted in the last 72 hours before voting with some conducted a week to 10 days before an election. Is that a fair approach?

I put that question to Stanford University professor Jon Krosnick. "Most election pollsters," Krosnick says, "believe that surveys done long before Election Day are not intended to predict election outcomes, but they would agree that final pre-election polls should predict election outcomes well." As such, he would only measure accuracy for polls conducted within three days of an election, with at least a handful of surveys for each to avoid accuracy scores that are especially good or bad by "chance alone."

Of course, restricting accuracy measurements this way will leave out many media pollsters that typically conduct longer, in-depth studiesas the basis for analytical stories over the final week of the campaign.

Back to the question posed at the top of this column: One reason Pollster.com does not provide more specific guidance about individual polls is that virtually all polls fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum that runs between completely trustworthy and utterly flawed. Some may be strong on disclosure but weak in other ways. Some excel on accuracy scorecards but provide little beyond horse-race numbers. Not all "likely voter" models are right for all applications. And all of these judgments -- and others like them -- aresubjective. Other pollsters may reach different conclusions.

Our ultimate goal is to provide a variety of tools and empirical measures of accuracy, disclosure, perceived reputation and so on that let poll consumers reach their own conclusions. As the editor's question implies, however, we still have a lot of work to do.

I just went down to the Rich Street office here in Columbus to try and get some yard signs. To my surprise, there were a bunch of Hillary supporters across the street with signs saying things similar to "Obama panders Nafta" and such. I asked one of them why they are not out supporting Hillary rather than picketing Obama, and he replied "that's just what we do". He looked pretty defeated, so I told him that at least he could look forward to having a democrat in office, and he agreed. :-)

This just seemed to perfectly illustrate some of the more obvious flaws with the manner in which that campaign has been run. Instead of making phone calls or campaigning FOR Clinton, you got a bunch of sour and sad looking folks standing in a low traffic area interacting with people who are already in the Obama camp. To me, it was a pretty pitiful sight. Just wanted to let everyone know.

IS OBAMA A WIMP?

The new Pew Poll has some worrying portents for Obama. In addition to his high rate of Democratic defections -- see Kevin for more on that -- he's got a long way to go convincing the electorate of his foreign policy bona fides. A solid plurality, as you can see in the chart [below], think Obama is "not tough enough," and a vanishingly small number think he's "too tough." Compare that to McCain, who has a strong plurality believing he's "about right," and some bleeding over into "too tough," which has tended to be the safer direction in which to err in American politics.





This isn't only affecting Obama among the class of folks who would sooner vote for a six-legged pig in lipstick than a Democrat. Says Pew: "Obama suffers a significant number of defections from Democrats with more conservative foreign policy views, particularly on the issue of Iraq. A large majority of Democrats -- 70% -- say they want U.S. troops in Iraq to return home as soon as possible; these Democrats overwhelmingly favor either Obama or Clinton over McCain. But roughly a quarter of Democrats believes the troops should remain in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. These voters would support Clinton over McCain by greater than five-to-one (83% vs. 14%). Democrats who support maintaining U. S. forces in Iraq would support Obama over McCain by a smaller margin (66% to 31%)."

On some level, there's nothing odd about that. If you want to hang out in Iraq forever, you should probably vote for the candidate whose policy is perpetual war. Nor should Obama's shortcomings in the toughness sweepstakes shock anyone. Insofar as the foreign policy conversation is going to be about "toughness," Democrats will always lose. The question for Obama, and one of the central rationales behind his candidacy, is that he could help shift that discussion, he could "change the mindset." But it won't be easy. As you can see in Pew's offhanded use of toughness as a stand-in for national security credibility, the conflation of aggression and competence runs pretty deep in our polity. If, by the election's end, this poll question is still being used, Obama's probably not doing too well.

The Dallas Morning News gets hold of Clinton caucus "training materials," in which supporters are instructed to fight for procedural control of caucuses.

The materials say in part, "DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles." ..

"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions."

"Yeek," is that a combination of "Yeah!" and "Eek.."?