Modern Bunk

The Presidential election of 2016 is over, even if millions of people seem to be in serious denial about that fact.  An appalling example of this trend-to-tantrum is evident in the recount efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and to a much lesser degree Pennsylvania.  A number of pablum excuses have been offered up to explain the recount demands, usually based on some assumption that any hacking can be discovered and ‘corrected’ by the recount, that recounts mean improving ballot validity, or that denying the recount is somehow proof that Trump is unethical. This article is written to address those canards.

Let me start with the stated reason for the recount demands – in laughable hypocrisy, the Clinton campaign has said they will “participate” in the recounts, even as they assure people that they are not disputing the election results, and are not the parties asking for the recounts in the first place.

Bunk.

Jill Stein, for example, only raised $3.5 million by the end of October for her campaign, yet by last Friday she found $5 million for the recount effort. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/25/jill-stein-raises-more-funds-for-recount-than-entire-presidential-campaign.html   

There is no realistic way her supporters suddenly decided to become that generous.   The obvious truth is that someone funded the recount through Stein, to hide the true purpose of the recount.

Let’s also look closer at the ‘hacker’ claim that was used to excuse demanding a recount.  Speaking for  former Senator Clinton, Jill Stein said that ‘hacking concerns’ were the reason for the recount demand, which claim does not begin to stand up to inspection.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2016/11/28/jill-stein-cites-hacking-concerns-as-reason-for-recounts-not-election-outcome.html

Especially amusing to me is that even as she demands recounts, Ms. Stein admits she has no evidence to support her claims.  She wants multiple states to do recounts just because she claims there was possible hacking, even though she has no evidence, experts agree the recounts won’t change the election results, and even though it wastes time and resources.  

But let’s play along for a little bit.  Let’s look at the three states where Stein wants recounts; Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.  If someone was to hack the election in those three states, how would they do it? 

It’s not like they show on TV.   TV is there to tell you a story, not get into the hard facts of how something is done, especially illegal activities.  Let’s skip the question of why someone would want to hack an election (besides the candidates) and look at the logistics.

The recount crowd insists that there is something wrong with those vote totals in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Unfortunately for them, their argument is classic circular fallacy – ‘we lost, so someone must have cheated’ .   A lot of folks on the left seem to be claiming people’s votes were changed in the machine, so let’s start with the machines used.  If the election was hacked, it’s a big point for them to hack the same kind of machines, since machines from different companies will use different operating codes and processes, meaning what works on one type won’t work somewhere else.

Hmm.  

Pennsylvania uses the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine.

http://www.montcopa.org/1388/Voting-Machines

OK so far, let’s see what the next two states use.

Michigan uses the Automark ES&S M100.

http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1633_8716_45458---,00.html

 So already our hackers have to know coding for two different kinds of voting machines.  On to Wisconsin.

Wisconsin does not use voting machines in all places, and the state uses six different kinds of machines – the Optech Command Central Eagle, the Sequoia Insight, the Automark ES&S M100, the Automark ES&S DS200, the Premier Accuvote US, and the Dominion Imagecast Evolution.

http://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/voting-equipment/voting-equipment-use

So now our poor hackers are up to five different makers of voting machine, and eight different specific models, each with its own process code.

That pretty much kiboshes the idea that precinct-level machines were hacked.  And here’s a fun piece of trivia:  Sequoia, the company that makes all those voting machines used in Pennsylvania, also supplies voting machines to fifteen other states, but for some reason Stein and Clinton don’t want to recount votes in other states using Sequoia machines, probably because that would mean recounting states Clinton already won.

The next argument would be that someone must have hacked the votes at the state level.  You just need three access points, right?

That doesn’t work either.   Before each state certifies its results, they manually verify the precinct totals with the state tallies, so even if someone got in and changed the totals at the state level, they‘d have to fudge the reported numbers from the precincts … which would be caught when the manual review was done. 

But this all becomes plain when you go all the way back to the argument made by those ‘computer scientists’, who claimed that the votes looked irregular when compared to the polling data.    I went to Real Clear Politics and looked up the state polls.  These are the state polls reported by RCP over the last month before the election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/state/

I then counted just the most recent poll from each agency for a state.  In all there were 204 ‘final’ polls reported for 37 contests.  Here are the results for six states, three of which are the states for which Stein/Clinton want recounts, and three are for states Clinton won:

State A:

Trump poll averages 7.1 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 2.2 points below her election result

Undecideds make up between 0% and 15% of poll results, average 6.7%

  

State B:

Trump poll averages 0.8 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 7.3 points below her election result

Undecideds make up between 4% and 8% of poll results, average 6.3%

State C:

Trump poll averages 2.0 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 2.4 points below her election result

Undecideds make up between 3% and 10% of poll results, average 5.8%

State D:

Trump poll averages 7.2 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 5.1 points below her election result

Undecideds make up between 7% and 11% of poll results, average 8.7%

State E:

Trump poll averages 7.3 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 0.7 points above her election result

Undecideds make up between 0% and 10% of poll results, average 6.5%

State F:

Trump poll averages 5.9 points below his election result

Clinton poll averages 0.2 points below her election result

Undecideds make up between 2% and 13% of poll results, average 5.0%

Note that in all six states, Trump outperformed his poll averages, and there was significant average undecided response to polls even at the end of the campaign.  Note that in five of six states, Clinton also outperformed her poll averages.  The data is consistent with two candidates with high unfavorability numbers whose supporters may not want to confirm support for the candidate.  Note also that the vote to poll performance is consistent within standard margins of error used in polls, debunking the claim that the vote results were incompatible with the state polls.  In fact, Trump’s performance against state polls was very consistent; in 204 polls Trump’s performance beat poll numbers by an average of 5.69 points, and Undecideds made up an average of 7.11% of all poll responses.

The noise about recounts is just more whining from Democrats and Socialists who cannot accept that they did, in fact, lose the election.

* State A is Michigan, Trump 47.6% to Clinton 47.4% in vote results

* State B is California, Trump 32.8% to Clinton 61.6% in vote results

* State C is Nevada, Trump 45.5% to Clinton 47.9% in vote results

* State D is Massachusetts, Trump 33.5% to Clinton 60.8% in vote results

* State E is Wisconsin, Trump 47.3% to Clinton 46.5% in vote results

* State F is Pennsylvania, Trump 48.4% to Clinton 47.3% in vote results 

The Inexcusable Arrogance of The Pundits

Tuesday, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Cinton to become President-elect of the United States.  Trump celebrated the win late that night, Ms. Clinton conceded early Wednesday morning, but as the week ended the major pundits were largely unwilling to admit that they were wrong.   Excuses for blowing the call ranged from blaming inaccuracy on late voter decisions to complex explanations that – statistically – the pundits weren’t that far off.  

                     

For example, Nate Silver (who boasted for four years how well he did in predicting state and national results in 2012),  presented a weak defense of his statistical model.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/

Silver also claimed that the results were within the standard margin-of-error, implying that he didn’t really get it wrong.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/

Silver gave Trump a 29% chance of winning early Tuesday night.  It’s important to keep in mind that Silver also limited Trump’s chances of winning to 12.6% back on October 18,

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

and that Silver’s forecast fluctuated as polls did; Silver locked his forecast into poll accuracy, even though he claimed to adjust for bias and outliers – he bluntly failed to consider the effect of groupthink.

Next up is the Huffington Post, which boldly predicted a 98% chance of a Clinton win, then blamed the loss on a “black swan event” (and Trump only a 2% chance),

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pollster-forecast-donald-trump-wrong_us_5823e1e5e4b0e80b02ceca15

which amounts to claiming no one could have seen it coming.   This would be a lie.

The New York Times gave Clinton an 85% chance of winning the day of the election, down a bit from 93% on October 25.   This equated to giving Trump a 15% chance, up from 7% on the respective dates.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html?_r=0

Rather than candidly admit their bias and its results, the NYT actually blamed … the data itself.   Hypocrisy in print, folks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/the-data-said-clinton-would-win-why-you-shouldnt-have-believed-it.html

Larry Sabato, who has made a nice living from predicting elections over the years, actually claiming a 99% success rate in 2004 and 97% in 2012.

http://ijr.com/2016/08/667335-famed-election-predictor-with-97-100-track-record-reveals-his-trump-vs-hillary-2016-results/

Sabato called 347 Electoral Votes for Clinton this year, which cannot be sanely called anything but a faceplant.

Forbes, best-known for business reporting, also got into the election forecast game, and when they got it badly wrong they blamed ‘statistical error’.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/09/the-science-of-error-how-polling-botched-the-2016-election/#452ff2e27da8

And so it goes.    At this writing, exactly none of the people who made money and gained fame from predicting elections, had the guts to plainly admit they got this one completely wrong.

Why should we care?  Because a lot of media paid attention to these pundits all through the election, especially at the end.  They threw out predictions that were clearly way off the mark.  A lot of them have offered excuses, but let’s step back and see why the explanations are worthless.

Silver, for example, goes into great detail about different factors and how they influenced the election results. 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/

Some of that is interesting reading, but the sum effect is that it comes off as butt-covering, not least because any professional should have properly included such factors in their pre-election forecast.

So what should the forecast have looked like?  To answer that, we need to step back and ask what we expect from a forecast.  A forecast should have general similarity to what actually happens.  For example, in a weather forecast we often hear about, say, a ‘30% chance of rain’.  That’s actually a little vague, since it doesn’t tell us where that rain will happen or when, but if we hear 30%, we would expect some clouds and only in some places.  A completely clear, sunny day or a torrential downpour would mean the forecast was wrong, no matter what explanation the weather guy offered. So the election results can be seen this way:

In a straight look at the Popular Vote, Hillary Clinton claimed 47.8% to Trump’s 47.3%.   Of course, the actual election does not depend on the Popular Vote, but this result is consistent with a national picture, and the main point is that none of the major pundits gave Trump a 47.3% chance.  By this metric, the major polls grade out this way in their calls:

FOX News: Called 44% for Trump (-3.3%), called 48% for Clinton (+0.2%), aggregate (-3.5%)

LA Times:  Called 47% for Trump, (-0.3%), called 44% for Clinton (-3.8%), aggregate (-4.1%)

ABC/WaPo: Called 43% for Trump (-4.3%), called 47% for Clinton (-0.8%), aggregate (-5.1%)

IBD/TIPP:  Called 45% for Trump, (-2.3%), called 43% for Clinton (-4.8%), aggregate (-7.1%)

CBS News: Called 41% for Trump (-6.3%), called 45% for Clinton (-2.8%) aggregate (-9.1%)

Bloomberg: Called 41% for Trump (-6.3%), called 44% for Clinton (-3.8%), aggregate (-10.1%)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/president/

Pretty much everybody was outside a statistical margin of error (Fox was almost inside that line). No one can claim to have nailed that call, but each poll got close-ish on at least one candidate.  Grade them C’s and D’s at a professional standard.

But Presidential elections depend on wining electoral votes from state contests.  In the end, Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232 electoral votes, or 56.9% of the EV to 43.1%.  No one at all came close to predicting Trump would nearly 57 percent of the EV.  Absolutely none of the pundits listed above were anywhere close to being right.   If these were students, we’d be comparing different levels of ‘F’ grades on an exam.

Again using Real Clear Politics’ published results,

http://www1.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/2016_general/president/map.html

we can see the average results of each state by vote for each candidate; the average should give us a reasonable forecast for a candidate winning election.  Using the vote results by state, Trump claimed an average 48.9% of the vote to Clinton’s 45.2%.  Again, none of the pundits came close to this result.

Pundits will sometimes point to variables, margin of error, and other technicalities to excuse blowing the call. But never forget that the main reason for any forecast is to give you a reasonable expectation of what is coming.  It’s fair (but very rare) for a statistician to admit that he cannot forecast a clear outcome; pay attention here to the fact that both Gallup and Pew refused to publish election predictions this year.  But if a pundit publishes a forecast that projects a clear winner by a wide margin, as Silver, Huffington, the New York Times, Sabato and so on all did, they cannot pretend that they did anything but fail when results are so plainly different from their predictions.  Aggregation is a poor tool in election forecasting, and sooner or later the public should demand better work from people who are happy to take credit and publicity for their projections.

Man up, you wimps.  You blew it.         

Pollsters Ignored Their “Check Assumptions” Lights

Back in 2000 and again in 2004, I enjoyed a small piece of influence through political opinion poll analysis.  Statistics is an intriguing science, all the more because it tries to quantify and predict human behavior.  But that same human behavior also skews how people think, including analysts, and in 2008 and 2012 it caused me to miss important trends in American politics.  I was embarrassingly wrong in predicting the Presidential elections, especially missing the energy of Obama’s 2008 run.  So I backed off, paid more attention to my regular job and family, and paid less attention to statistics.  Others enjoyed the attention of poll mavens, especially Nate Silver, who turned his statistical devotion to baseball into political success with Obama’s success.  But Silver made the same mistake I did, and in his case the embarrassment is greater because as a professional statistician, he really ought to have known better.  Silver let his enthusiasm for Democrat opinion cause him to ignore warning signs until it was too late to avoid a face plant.

Let’s have a quick review of how polls saw the 2016 Presidential Election, and also how polls work, and finally how predictive analysis is created. 

Hillary Clinton announced her decision to run for the White House on April 12, 2015.  This is important because Clinton already enjoyed significant name recognition and with the roles of First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State on her resume, she would start as an obvious front-runner for the Democrats’ nomination.  Nate Silver gave her a 59.9% chance of winning the party nomination at the beginning (I’m using Silver here for two reasons – first, his projections are built from aggregates of major national polls, and second, Silver was the most prominent poll analyst quoted in the media).  She enjoyed media support through the end of 2015 as the presumptive front-runner, but by the end of October 2015 Clinton’s lead over Sanders in Silver’s chart was down to 46.8% to 26.1%, notable not for Sanders’ strength but Hillary’s weakness.  By February 2016, Silver put the race at 49.6% Clinton to 39.1% Sanders – note that Hillary’s campaign was failing to win over most of the undecideds, losing them to Sanders more than four to one.  By April 23, 2016 Silver had the race 49.6% Clinton to 41.5% Sanders; note two important factors apparent, first that Hillary appeared to have a lead bigger than Sanders could close, but second that Sanders had more momentum than Clinton, and had enjoyed higher energy for some months.  By the end of June, Silver showed the race 55.4% Clinton to 36.5% Sanders, essentially a done deal for the Democratic Party nomination. 

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/national-primary-polls/democratic/

Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the office of the President on June 16, 2015.  At that time Silver counted his support at a 3.6% chance of winning the GOP nomination.  Let’s stop there and consider that this meant the polls showed Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning her party’s nomination were more than sixteen times greater than Donald Trump’s chances of winning his party’s nomination.  Part of this was due to the heavy number of candidates for the Republican nod, but also Donald Trump – while known as a face and name – was unknown as a political contender, so he had to establish his bonafides with both the GOP and the voters.   Trump’s campaign quickly gained support, however, as he passed the 20% threshold on July 26, 2015, and the 40% threshold on March 21, 2016.  This means that Donald Trump had not won over most voters until after his Super Tuesday wins in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont.  On March 22, Trump claimed another 58 delegates by winning the Arizona primary.  By the end of May, Trump had essentially locked up the GOP nomination.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/national-primary-polls/republican/

Both Clinton and Trump finished the win-the-nomination part of their campaigns with damage, however.  Trump’s problems were obvious – to energize his base, Trump attacked establishment Republicans and demographics aligned with opponents of populist theory, and this cost him nationally in polls. In early June, polls showed Trump’s support at 38.1%, compared to 42.1% for Clinton.  But Clinton had obvious problems, too.  The way Clinton won the Democrats’ nomination left many Sanders supporters convinced the primary had been rigged, which may be one reason Trump made similar claims as the General Election reached its resolution.  But also, given the many demographic groups Trump had – allegedly – attacked, a four-point lead for Clinton was a clear warning sign that something was not as described. 

Call it a poll version of that annoying “check engine” light on your dashboard.  Until you have someone get under the hood, you don’t know what exactly has gone wrong, but you can’t ignore it unless you don’t mind spending hours on the side of the road beside your smoking vehicle, at the mercy of passing traffic.  There is science behind a poll that is put together and analyzed properly, but laziness or assumptions in your data or procedures can invalidate your conclusions, and make you look a fool in public. 

By the way, Nate Silver uses an aggregate of polls, but he is also guilty of some subjectivity in his source selection.  For example, Silver’s aggregate shows Clinton had a wire-to-wire lead over Trump in polling, with Trump never enjoying a lead in the aggregate polling at any time:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/

 Real Clear Politics, however, which also uses an aggregate of polls, showed Donald Trump with an aggregate lead on May 24 and from July 25 through July 28 of this year.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

That’s not to say one aggregate is ‘better’ than the other, but to illustrate the fact that any aggregate is subjective and contains implicit bias. Ironically, Silver was aware of this bias and tried to correct for it – he calls this “trend line adjustment” – but in the end Silver’s own bias still influenced his conclusions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_us_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f

It’s important to remember that Silver was wrong about Trump winning the GOP nomination.  After trump won the GOP nomination, Silver admitted “we basically got the Republican race wrong.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-republican-voters-decided-on-trump/

There was no evidence that Silver went back to find the evidence he overlooked in his initial analyses, which could have corrected his results in the General Campaign.  But here is, at least, evidence that Silver knew something in the numbers was wrong.  Just before the final day of the election, Silver put out his “final election update”, giving Clinton a 71% chance of winning.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/final-election-update-theres-a-wide-range-of-outcomes-and-most-of-them-come-up-clinton/?ex_cid=2016-forecast

This ran contrary to far more aggressive posts from the New York Times, which gave Clinton an 82% probability of winning,

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president

the Princeton Election Consortium gave Clinton a 93% chance to win the White House,

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/11/08/final-mode-projections-clinton-323-ev-51-di-senate-seats-gop-house/

left-leaning pundit Larry Sabato did not offer a probability, but called for Clinton to win 347 Electoral Votes,

http://ijr.com/2016/08/667335-famed-election-predictor-with-97-100-track-record-reveals-his-trump-vs-hillary-2016-results/

and of course the Huffington Post posted that Clinton had a 98% chance to win the Oval Office.

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2016/forecast/president

Anyone who turned on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, or Fox was also flooded with assurances that Clinton was poised to win by large margins.   That all of these analysts were wrong, and to such a large degree, is amusing given their hubris, but concerning given their prominence in media coverage of the election.

The last week of the election, Nate Silver’s concerns about the polling data caused him to scale back his probability for Clinton (he initially had Clinton at 89%, but as the election approached he walked it back to 71%), while Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post kept Clinton at a 98% chance to win. This led to some ill-advised words on Twitter between the two men about each other’s methodology.  

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/6/13542328/nate-silver-huffpo-polls

Ironically, while Silver was correct that weighting Clinton’s advantage beyond anything supported by poll data was foolish, he failed to properly test the underlying assumptions installed in his own model.

I found it intriguing to notice that neither Gallup nor Pew published polls for the Presidential election, each focusing instead on issues rather than candidates.  A business reason was provided, 

 http://time.com/4067019/gallup-horse-race-polling/

but given the long history and prominence Gallup and Pew enjoyed in  polling Presidential races, the reason given rings false.  A more likely explanation is the difficulty in addressing behavior changes in the voting public.  In addition to the shift from landline phones to cell phones, voters are more likely to discuss opinions on line than in a phone interview, but there is no statistically sound means to randomly contact respondents online and the results of online polls are as varied as there are opinions reported by them.  Pew observed that online polls are “non-probability” polls, which eliminates by definition the random nature of polls, and therefore calls into question any political conclusion presented by such a poll.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/28/qa-what-the-new-york-times-polling-decision-means/

  

Pew also posted an article yesterday about why the polls were essentially wrong, but was wrong to pretend weighting mistakes were not a big part of blunder.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/why-2016-election-polls-missed-their-mark/

Forbes boasted that analysts predicting a Hillary win “used the most advanced aggregating and analytical modeling techniques available”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/09/the-science-of-error-how-polling-botched-the-2016-election/#4d6c04257da8

but that is a false claim on its face.  What happened was not a “statistical error”, but human error.  Weighting for party affiliation or other demographics, is risky at best and often leads to unreliable results.  To see what I mean, let’s start with the exit poll from the 2012 Presidential Election, by party affiliation, gender, race, and age:

Party Affiliation: Democrats 38%, Republicans 32%, Independents 29%

Gender: Women 53%, Men 47%

Race: White 72%, African American 13%, Hispanic 10%, Asian 3%, Other 2%

Age: 45-64 38%, 30-44 27%, 18-29 19%, 65 & over 16%

http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/

And from 1984 through 2014:

Party Affiliation: Democrats 38.6%, Republicans 32.6%, Independents 27.5%

Gender: Women 53%, Men 47%

Race: White 76%, African American 13%, Hispanic 7%, Asian 2%, Other 1%

Age: 45-64 33%, 30-44 28%, 18-29 14%, 65 & over 25%

http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics

http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/

Any poll with demographics different from these numbers is fiddling with the numbers out of clear bias.  Without wasting time going through them this skewing invalidates polls from ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, NBC News, CNN, and CBS.  If you want to check for yourself, simply find one of their polls and drill down to the demographics which are usually included at the end of the topline detail.

Weighting is not supposed to produce the “right” answer, but to line information up according to known population demographics.  Sadly, a lot of polls screw up the results by trying to sell a message, rather than accurately report the current situation.  This is not an attempt to “rig” an election, I believe, but simple human laziness and a habit of using assumptions instead of due diligence.

This becomes ever more salient, when you realize that the aggregates used by analysts like Silver and Grim incorporate these biased reports, which invalidates their own analyses.  Aggregation is really just group-think, even if some people publish such results with impressive names like “meta-sampling”.  Everything that goes into an analysis should be tested for its own veracity, and while this is very difficult for a national report, at the very least you should be candid if you are trusting someone else’s report as a source for your own analysis.   Yes, Silver claims he ‘unskews’ polls by other agencies, but that’s kind of like a guy admitting someone spit into your drink but he scooped it out and it’s fine for you to drink.  If you know the source is biased, it does not belong in your own work, none of it.

One last thought on polling.  The Presidential Election is not a national race, no matter what the media tells you.  It’s actually fifty-one different races, which results are summed up and produce the champion, in this case the President-Elect of the United States.  So the polls you ought to have watched are the state polls, especially according to the respective electoral vote value of each state.   Most media ignored the state-level polling, and when it was reported it was usually just from a single source that the media found reliable.  I will be publishing a report on the accuracy of the state polls for the 2016 Election when I have all the data, but for now it’s important to know the limits of what analysts even can tell you, and keep in mind that most media people are there to sell you entertainment, not facts.

Why He Will, Why he Won’t

President Obama has made it quite clear that he has one goal, and only one goal, on his mind: Getting re-elected. It seems therefore appropriate to give a look at his chances, and his problems.

First, a look back at 2008. Barack Obama and Joe Biden teamed up to beat John McCain and Sarah Palin, 365 electoral votes to 173 and 66.86 million votes to 58.32 million. In other words, Obama claimed 95 electoral votes more than he needed to win, and enjoyed a popular margin of eight and a half million votes. Reasons for the win depend on who you ask, but common responses point out the novelty of Obama’s run as a black candidate, McCain’s lack of charisma and eloquence, the declining public image of the Bush Administration, worry over the economy, and conservatives abandoning the GOP. It produced a perfect storm for Obama, which raises the obvious question about whether he can work such magic again.

First, the factors which work for Obama. There has been some discussion about a possible fight for Obama to claim the Democrats’ nomination in 2012 if he gets into public trouble, but it’s not very likely to work out that way. The media, for example, has been very much a pal to President Obama; his ‘honeymoon’ has lasted throughout his first term with every indication that the major networks and press will continue to act as lackeys for him for the foreseeable future. To change support for a different candidate would require these networks to abandon Obama while he remains in office, an unlikely prospect. Further, there is the historical record. No president running for re-election has failed to claim his party nomination since LBJ in 1968 (and no incumbent party has nominated a candidate who was neither the sitting president nor vice-president since 1952). It’s reasonable to say on just these two points alone, that if Barack Obama is not nominated by the Democrats in 2012, then the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election will be the Republican.

The next point to consider is Obama’s Job Approval. Obama’s present approval according to Gallup has dropped to 42 percent, just one point above his worst ever from April this year and October 2010. The thing is, the worst Obama has received is 41 percent approval. Compare that to Bill Clinton, whose approval support in the first seven months of 1995 ranged from 42 percent to 51 percent. Pretty similar, it seems. In any case, the numbers show that despite his abysmal job performance, Obama continues to enjoy enough support that he is very well-positioned to win another term.

The third factor to consider in Obama’s favor is the Republican field. Obama won in 2008 with unintentional help from the Republicans, who spent the bulk of the campaign feuding with each other, which led to a nomination which pleased few and angered many on the Right. One might think the bitter lesson would have been learned, but so far the field for the coming election is behaving much like the 2008 field did, with serious reason to fear a similar outcome.

Put these three factors together, and you have a problem for Republicans, and given how he has performed, for the nation. Fortunately, there are also a number of strong reasons why Barack Obama will have a hard time winning re-election.

First and foremost is Obama’s record. Since 1916, seven of the last ten presidents to seek re-election won their contest, but the three who lost (Hoover in 1932, Carter in 1980, and GHW Bush in 1992) all lost because of the economy. In a word, Jobs. If unemployment is high, the incumbent is in trouble. And that problem is especially bad for Mr. Obama, whose policies have pretty much done nothing but make things worse for the economy. Obama inherited an unemployment rate of 7.8% but has averaged 9.4% since taking office; the rate has not been below nine percent since May of 2009. Despite his attempts to blame Bush for the problem, Obama owns this record. What’s worse for Obama, his pet programs target employment at most public corporations, so Obama can effectively reduce unemployment only by abandoning his signature policies.

The second problem for Obama is the polling. Frank Newport of Gallup observed Presidents who have a 48 percent or better approval tend to win re-election, while those below do not. In that context, his present 42-43 percent approval levels are a warning to Obama that he is in trouble. Worse for Obama, he’s been able to get bumps only for short periods of time no matter what he says or does; not very much like Clinton after all, perhaps. Especially since Bill Clinton understood that his political survival depended on the economy improving, something Obama shows no sign of grasping. While it’s certainly believable that Obama could find a way to bring his approval up a few points to reach that tipping point, the clear momentum is working against him, and if he drops below 40 percent as he seems to be headed now, then time will become an implacable enemy.

The third problem for Obama is, well, Obama. He ran on a lot of promises in 2008, casting himself essentially as a non-partisan visionary and peacemaker. It’s more than plain by now that the real Barack Obama is a thin-skinned paranoid narcissist with delusions of competency; he wavers between indecision and bad judgment, all the while complaining that he doesn’t get enough credit and admiration. On the one hand, it may be observed that Obama has fired up conservatives to get back into the national debate again, although some may argue that Obama should not waste time thinking about people he cannot win over anyway; but on the other, Obama has also outraged many on the Left with his broken promises regarding Guantanamo, Iraq, and other liberal demands. While as President of the United States Barack Obama holds tremendous power and influence, his habit of making enemies so readily means that if pressed into desperation, he has few allies who will come to his aid unless they gain from the action themselves; no one supports a tyrant out of agreement with his character.

Obama’s next problem is the Tea Party. Political movements spring up all the time, but officials would do well to note those which genuinely start at the grassroots, and which focus on only one or a few key issues, because those don’t go away without making changes in the landscape … and in politicians who refuse to notice the change in reality. The Tea Party was a significant force in the 2010 midterm elections, and ignoring them is just plain foolish. Dismissing the Tea Party’s significance can be a bad idea, in battleground states where concerns about federal spending and accountability influence not only votes but the debates of the election. This does not mean that Obama will lose because the Tea Party does not like him, but his ignorance of the movement’s identity and influence could damage his campaign in several states.

The next problem, and the big one, is the Republican nominee. Obama had an easy time beating John McCain in 2008, but it’s very unlikely the GOP will nominate someone that weak this time. In 2008 conservatives were disillusioned and bitter, producing no significant candidates and contributing little to the campaign. The main body of republican voters this time is more conservative and active, and they are also better-focused. Guys who talk but can’t deliver (like Thompson), or ‘centrist’ republicans eager to give in to democrats in order to ‘get along’ (like McCain) will find the going harder than last time. This does not give the inside track to image-first candidates with weak resumes (Bachman or Palin), but builds a stage for experienced leaders who understand what will really work. While this will mean the republican nominee won’t emerge for a while yet, when he does it will be someone the voters can identify by values and commitment, and he will be a sharp contrast with President Superficial.

How it shakes out, is in the math. There’s no doubt that Obama has lost a lot of support, and in all likelihood will be less compelling in 2012 than he was in 2008. But having 95 more electoral votes than he needed in 2008 means that even a weakened Obama could still win. The question is just how many of the states will swing away from Obama to the republican. In 2008, Obama won DC and 29 states, but if his support falls by just three points he loses five states, and if he drops by five points he loses eleven states.You may choose to disagree, but unless the republicans thoroughly destroy their chances, they’re looking at their best opportunity to rout the democrats in a presidential election by the largest margin since Reagan’s win in 1984.

A Clear Sign, But What Does It Say?

I have not written much at all about President Obama’s Approval Ratings in the polls since he was inaugurated in January, but noting the recent trend it seems appropriate to do so now.

I have said many times that for me, the gold standard in opinion polling is the Gallup Organization. This is due not only to Gallup’s long history, but also because Gallup follows a very consistent methodology and set of questions. This allows interested researchers the opportunity to track support within a poll over a period of time, to better gauge the actual cause and effect of his policies and decisions.

The people at Real Clear Politics provide a very useful resource, where general polling support can be easily tracked.

Looking at these polls, the following polls provide a track of Obama’s job approval since January:

Gallup: 68% when sworn in, 56% now, loss of 12 points
Rasmussen: 62% when sworn in, 50% now, loss of 12 points
CBS/NYT: 63% February 22, 58% now, loss of 5 points
NBC/WSJ: 60% March 1, 53% now, loss of 7 points
Pew: 64% February 8, 54% now, loss of 10 points
NPR: 59% March 14, 53% now, loss of 6 points
FOX: 65% when sworn in, 54% now, loss of 11 points

In every case of long-term tracking, President Obama’s levels of job approval are the lowest overall he has seen since taking office, across the board.

But a closer look shows the problem may be more serious, nothing to worry about, or paradoxically, both.

In addition to a high-level overview, the Gallup Organization also publishes support by demographic groups.

An examination of those 28 demographic groups, determined by gender, age, geographic region, race, education, wages, political affiliation and orientation shows that in 22 of 28 demographic categories, support for President Obama is at its lowest or tried for the lowest level since he took office. The six demographic areas where support for President Obama is not at its nadir, are Non-White voters (85% support highest on April 26, 75% lowest on April 5, presently at 79%), Black voters (96% highest on July 5, May 4, and March 8, lowest at 86% on January 25, presently at 95%), Hispanic voters (85% highest on April 26, 70% lowest on April 5 and March 22, presently at 72%), Voters making below $24,000 a year (76% highest on May 4, 66% lowest on June 21, presently at 68%), Republicans (41% highest on January 25, 20% lowest on July 12, presently at 21%), and Liberals (90% highest on June 28, May 31, May 24, and April 26, 83% lowest on January 25, presently at 86%). All of those demographics are relative minorities to the voting population at this time.

Even with the loss of support, however, President Obama still enjoys support levels above 50% across the board, indicating that his personal popularity is strong and the general theme of his administration is well-received. Therefore, it may be reasonable to consider the loss of support nothing more than a shaking out of the fair-weather support, and displaying a strong core of support for the President. That is, of course, assuming his numbers do not continue to fall.

It should, however, be noted that President Obama has lost significant support among major demographic groups. Between February 1 and July 26, President Obama lost twelve points of support from female voters, who were the dominant gender in the 2008 election. White voters made up 74% of the electorate in the 2008 election, and since taking office President Obama’s support among whites has fallen sixteen points according to Gallup. The largest demographic age group in the 2008 election was the 30-49 age group; among this group President Obama has lost twelve points since taking office. Among moderates, the largest political philosophy demographic, President Obama has lost ten points since taking office. The South was the most important geographic region in the 2008 election, and among Southern voters, President Obama has lost twelve points of support since taking office. In the 2008 election, the largest demographic by education was the ‘Some College’ category, and in that category President Obama has lost fifteen points of support since taking office. And among voters earning between sixty thousand and ninety thousand dollars a year, again the largest demographic in their section, President Obama has seen his support fall by twenty points since taking office. The conclusion is unavoidable that, if this loss of support is not rebuilt and assuming the Republicans can present a credible candidate, that at this time President Obama has seriously damaged his re-election chances, since every dominant demographic group from the 2008 election has significantly reduced support for the President since his Inauguration.

Con Poll Alert

First off, if you are reading this to get a review of what happened Friday night, you’re in the wrong place. I presume that everyone interested enough to read about the debate after the fact, will have had enough interest to watch the debate for themselves, or at least chase down the details from a few of the many places which did offer detailed accounts. Wizbang, for example, has five different threads about what was said, as well as the tone and pace of the event. What I am writing here is a heads-up on what to expect this week, or more accurately, what not to expect.

For me, the most significant observation during last night’s debate came when John McCain said ”I'm afraid Senator Obama does not understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy". Besides the obvious reference at the time to military operations, it was a significant observation as to how Barack Obama misunderstood the strategic purpose of the debate. Chew on that, and I will come back to it in a later piece.

During this week to come, there will be even more frothy expectation of glorious poll results by those addicted to bumper stickers and headlines for their news. But unless the pollsters twiddle with the party-affiliation numbers again, they will not be likely to change much. First off, that’s the historical model. By the way, the National Council on Public Polls says you should pretty much ignore those “instant polls” which come out right after a debate. Why? Here’s why:

“Keep in mind that the instant post-debate poll: (1) measures only top-of-head reaction to the debates, (2) does not measure the debate's effect on candidate preference, and (3) applies only to those viewers who were contacted and participated. Remember that who won the debate may have little or no influence on candidate preference.”


Bet no one at Fox, CBS, CNN, or any of the other stations and networks bothered to note that, but as I said in an earlier post, the media is in the business of selling a story, not giving you facts.

There Is No Alternate Universe

People throw out a lot of strange ideas at times. Some of that is because people can believe some very silly things, and some of that I blame on television and comic books. But it really gets strange when we see fantasy and illusion play out in politics, in the guise of fact. CBS tried to smear President Bush with documents they admitted were fakes, the claimed inexperience of a Vice-Presidential candidate is loudly harangued, while the weaker resume of the other major party’s Presidential nominee is ignored, and biased opinion polls are touted as objective sources of news. Truly Alice-in-Wonderland stuff, except that this is the real world, and we dare not risk trusting the Mad Hatter.

Opinion polling is fun in many ways, useful in certain aspects, but in the end should not be trusted as a guide or counselor for course decisions any more than one might trust a Ouija board. The bias is often missed, even though it is obvious once you know where to look. I have shown before that every poll is biased to some degree, and I have repeatedly made clear what you should expect from a valid poll:

• public access to internal data
• a consistent, publicly reported methodology
• weighting according to Census norms or reasonable objective standard
• archive data available for comparison to current polls

Alas, there are areas where even the best of opinion polls cannot meet the standard of true objectivity. The most common stumbling block comes when a poll weights its political party affiliation. Polling groups understand that a truly random system of contacting poll respondents will produce results which are, to some degree, at odds with the true opinion of the public as a whole. To correct for this, respondents are asked certain questions to determine key demographic data, and their responses are categorized according to those demographic keys and the overall results weighted so that the response pool model is in line with demographic norms. The demographic standard used is almost always based on the most recent US Census data, for reasons that this data is considered the most unbiased and reliable demographic data available. So, Census data is used for gender, race, age, education, employment, and economic strata norm determination. This makes a lot of sense, and I applaud the pollsters for that standard and diligence in its application. The same polls who are so careful to avoid bias in most demographic norms, however, get completely squirrelly when it comes to party identification.

Political party identification is a stronger factor in candidate support than any other cited demographic category. It is no shock, after all, that democrats overwhelmingly support the democrats’ nominee, while republicans overwhelmingly support the republicans’ nominee. The problem comes in, when the poll weights the response pool to match a desired party identification standard. I noticed four years ago when I looked at the opinion polls, that the polling groups changed their party identification weights, some every week! When I contacted the polls about this practice, most just ignored me, but a few did respond. I found their explanations troublesome, however. Pew, Gallup, and Rasmussen, for example, choose their party weighting by examining the self-reported party affiliation of respondents from a prior period, usually a month (the ones who change each week generally use a rolling average of respondents from the period reviewed). Unfortunately, the reasoning behind such weighting is directly contrary to the whole purpose of weighting in the first place. To see what I mean, let’s apply that logic to other demographic groups.

South Texas was hit hard by Hurricane Ike, and it is very unlikely that any polling group had much success calling anyone down here in the past week; those who had phone service restored had a lot to do, and no time for answering polls. But even as phone and power service was restored, this was done according to critical needs (like hospitals) and a plan to get the most service restored to the most people as quickly as possible, which in practical terms means that urban areas and recent construction would get priority. This is because of the concentration of population, and the relative ease of repairing lines which would be less likely to have serious damage to the lines and transformers (older neighborhoods tend to have trees and other growth obstructing lines, so that in a major storm older neighborhoods are much more likely to have substantial damage to the transmission lines). Consequently, for the next month, an overwhelming majority of poll respondents in South and East Texas will be urban areas and new neighborhoods, which would heavily skew the demographics of the polling, if those respondents were considered “normal” for the area’s demographics. Or consider another example, where more mid-week polls are taken. People who work or who are taking care of children would be less likely to be available for polls, which would skew the apparent demographics towards the youngest and oldest voters, and those whose lifestyles matched the tactics used to reach respondents, like visiting malls or urban centers. Polling groups know these areas are heavily skewed in their demographic types, with heavy oversampling of certain groups, and so the weighting is adjusted to match Census norms, precisely because anything else would invalidate the poll results.

Those are just two obvious examples of why using poll results for one period to establish the demographic weights for another period would be clearly invalid; it’s simply circular reasoning and any errors (and there are always errors to some degree) would be greatly magnified rather than corrected. What’s worse, the only validity for any poll whatsoever is movement within a poll handled by consistent and transparent methods – if you shift party identification weights, you invalidate all conclusions. Anyone who has annoyed their lab professor understands that controls exist for a reason, and fiddling with the weights between polls is simply unscientific.

Some of the pollsters I have spoken with, argue that they shift their weights because no useful and objective source exists for party identification weighting. That, however, is not true. The exit polling from prior elections is a very valid source. It comes not from “adults”, “registered voters”, or even “likely voters”, but from people who actually voted. And what’s more, we can look at the last few elections to see if there is any substantive change. I looked at national elections for the past ten years, and discovered an interesting pattern:

In 2006, 38% of the voters were democrats, 36% were republicans, and 26% were independents;
In 2004, 37% were democrats, 37% were republicans, and 26% were independents;
In 2002, 39% were democrats, 38% were republicans, and 23% were independents;
In 2000, 39% were democrats, 35% were republicans, and 27% were independents; and
In 1998, 39% were democrats, 33% were republicans, and 28% were independents.

That sure looks like a consistent pattern to me. On average for the past ten years, democrats have averaged 38.4%, republicans 35.8%, and independents 26.0%. If we kick out top and bottom outliers, it becomes 38.7% democrats, 36.0% republicans, and 26.3% independents. Those numbers have a solid empirical history and a thoroughly objective source behind them, yet the polling groups do not use them. You might well wonder why.

Polling groups exist for one of three purposes. They either serve the needs of a client (private polling companies), they do academic research (which serves the faculty running the polls), or they are done for public release (including those by colleges like Marist and Quinnipiac). Each group has a very specific, and different, reason for existing. You may want to consider that both Barack Obama and John McCain have hired private polling firms, and consider why they each spend that money, as indeed every major political candidate does. And if political allegiance is so flighty, then why do so few of us know anyone who has supported one party, then another, in the same election? To read the reports from the polling groups, there are a lot of folks who loved Obama, then McCain, then Obama again, or vice versa, yet I have not met even one such person. Instead, I have seen democrats who stay democrats, I have seen republicans who remain republicans, and I have seen folks making up their mind as the campaign progresses. There are times where you might see a new jump in support, as previously undecided voters choose someone to support, but that happens for a reason – the “bounce” that supposedly comes just because a party has a convention, well, that’s pretty bogus if you think it through. The democrats may have been more excited about Obama after the democratic convention, but I do not believe for a minute that it made many new democrats. I am quite sure that the GOP convention excited republicans, but again I have to say I do not recall hearing about a bunch of new republicans after the convention. So, when the polls increase democrats’ weighting after the one convention and increase the republicans’ weighting after the other, it’s frankly dishonest because neither party saw much change in affiliation. What’s more, does anyone really think that there were fewer republicans after the DNC, or fewer democrats after the RNC?

Please.

Party affiliation is not some ephemeral quality, which winks in or out of existence because of a speech by one candidate, the headlines of a single day, or the personal desire of a polling group to have a hot story for the newspapers and TV stations. Party affiliation is something developed over a period of time, and while it does change over time, it does so gradually, taking into account the evidence of history as well as events of the moment. There were tens of millions of republicans after Bob Dole’s loss in 1996, just as there were tens of millions of democrats after Walter Mondale’s thrashing by Reagan in 1984. Support for a candidate is a thing apart from party identification. When it does change, it is spurred by a significant event of meaning with regard to the values and ideals of the party This is not merely a belief, but the evidence of American electoral history and the employment of common sense.

The Weight Room

I wondered about the way the polls came out in the past week. Maybe I’m just a suspicious type, but from what I could tell, a lot of voters had made up their minds before the conventions, and while I think Sarah Palin is going to make a big difference in the election, I did not expect a lot of voters to come over right away; I figure they want to find out more, first. The reason I say this, is that I found it strange to see poll numbers change so quickly. At least part of the answer, I found, was that the results were spun by fooling around with the weighting.

I visited Real Clear Politics, where I noted the new polls. Looking through them, I found two which provided the details on their party affiliation weighting; ABC News/Washington Post, and CBS News. Here’s how they cast the last two poll results:

ABC News/Washington Post
Sept. 7 (RV)____________Aug. 21 (RV)
McCain : 46%____________43%
Obama : 47%_____________49%
Republicans: 28%________26%
Democrats: 36%__________36%
Independents: 32%_______33%

I ignored “likely voter” results, because CBS News only tracked registered voters, and I wanted as much apples-to-apples as possible.

Demographics from washingtonpost.com (registration required)


CBS News
Sept. 7 (RV)____________Aug. 19 (RV)
McCain: 46%_____________42%
Obama: 44%______________45%
Republicans: 30.6%______28.8%
Democrats: 36.8%________36.3%
Independents: 32.5%_____35.0%


Both polls increased the weight of Republicans in the new poll. Should it surprise anyone then, that McCain’s numbers improved?

Let’s play a little game to show how this works. Working back the numbers, it appears that the following matrices of support can be shown using the data provided:

ABC News/Washington Post
August 21 (26% Rep, 36% Dem, 33% Ind)
Republicans: 7% Obama, 88% McCain
Democrats: 87% Obama, 8% McCain
Independents: 49% Obama, 51% McCain
TALLY – 49.31% Obama, 42.59% McCain

September 7 (28% Rep, 36% Dem, 32% Ind)
Republicans: 5% Obama, 92% McCain
Democrats: 87% Obama, 8% McCain
Independents: 46% Obama, 53% McCain
TALLY – 47.44% Obama, 45.60% McCain


CBS News
August 19 (28.8% Rep, 36.3% Dem, 35.0% Ind)
Republicans: 3% Obama, 87% McCain
Democrats: 84% Obama, 4% McCain
Independents: 40% Obama, 45% McCain
TALLY – 45.356% Obama, 42.258% McCain

September 7(30.6% Rep, 36.8% Dem, 32.5% Ind)
Republicans: 3% Obama, 93% McCain
Democrats: 84% Obama, 4% McCain
Independents: 38% Obama, 49% McCain
TALLY – 44.180% Obama, 45.855% McCain

I would point out that I am not making those numbers up – they come from actual poll internals I have been reading, and for this exercise you can see that if you plug them into the weights, you get the results published, more or less. Now, let’s take the average weighting of the four weights used, and apply it consistently, and then let’s see what happens to the published results:

[averaged weighting 28.35% Rep, 36.0275% Dem, 33.125% Ind]

ABC News/Washington Post
August 21, 49-43 Obama becomes 50-45 Obama
September 7, 47-46 Obama becomes 48-47 Obama

CBS News
August 19, 45-42 Obama becomes 44-41 Obama
September 7, 46-44 McCain becomes 44-44 tie.

This is not to say that these ‘revised’ numbers reflect a more accurate picture of voter support, but it does show that changing the party affiliation weighting can have a significant effect on the published results, especially in the headline which is all that most people read.

The problem with the weighting used in these and other polls, is that there is no science behind the weighting assigned to party identification. ABC/WaPo and CBS are just using whatever affiliation weighting they want to use, on no basis other than they chose to plug in that number. That’s fine for fooling around with the settings on a video game when you just want to have some fun, but it is hardly credible for a - purportedly - professional group to do this sort of thing. This kind of squirrelling around with internal controls on a poll is one reason, I think, why polls are so fragmented. I mean, Gallup does its own polls but also teamed up with USA Today. CBS News hires an agency for its own polls, but cooperates with the New York Times for a different poll. Disagreement on key demographic questions would explain that behavior, I think. I had a nice private discussion with one of Gallup’s executives back in 2004, and he agreed that the party identification problem is one of the big three for polling groups, largely because there is no consensus on what weighting should be used. Call me silly, but the best metric I have found to use, is the actual voter preferences from national elections.

In 2006, the National Exit Poll showed that 38% of voters considered themselves Democrats, 36% considered themselves Republicans, and 26% considered themselves Independent or supporting another party.

In 2004, the National Exit Poll showed that 37% of voters considered themselves Democrats, 37% considered themselves Republicans, and 26% considered themselves Independent or supporting another party.

In 2002, the National Exit Poll showed that 39% of voters considered themselves Democrats, 38% considered themselves Republicans, and 23% considered themselves Independent or supporting another party.

In 2000, the National Exit Poll showed that 39% of voters considered themselves Democrats, 35% considered themselves Republicans, and 27% considered themselves Independent or supporting another party.

In 1998, the National Exit Poll showed that 39% of voters considered themselves Democrats, 33% considered themselves Republicans, and 28% considered themselves Independent or supporting another party.

Those numbers look rather consistent to me, suggesting we could take an average of the last ten years of elections and get a practical idea of what to expect. Here’s how that shaped up:

Democrats: From 37 to 39 percent, average over the last ten years is 38.4%
Republicans: From 35 to 38 percent, average over the last ten years is 35.8%
Independents: From 23 to 28 percent, average over the last ten years is 26.0%


These numbers come from actual election exit polls from verified voters, and they demonstrate consistency over a decade of choice. They demonstrate that change does occur, but in small amounts and over time. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans should fear becoming a weak party anytime soon, nor should they fool themselves into thinking that their opponents are about to become irrelevant.

I cannot resist, however, applying these standardized party affiliations from known elections to the ABC/WaPo and CBS polls. Here’s how that worked out:

ABC News/Washington Post
August 21: 49-43 Obama original report. Historical weights indicate 49-48 Obama.
September 7: 47-46 Obama original report. Historical weights indicate 50-47 McCain .

CBS News
August 19: 45-42 Obama original report. Historical weights indicate 44-44 tie.
September 7: 46-44 McCain original report. Historical weights indicate 48-43 McCain.

I’m not saying you should count on those numbers, but I do think there’s better evidence for them.

Let Not Your Heart be Troubled – Or Fooled By Polls

I saw an article by The Anchoress (who apparently did not read my discussion of the Quinnipiac poll) regarding the apparent dominance by Democrats in polling. Her theory is that because voting by Democrats was so heavy in the Spring, this means that Democrats will dominate voting in the fall.

Mmmmmmmmmm ... no, that's not really a good description of the situation. Polls are not quite the magic ball they are hyped to be.

For example, take a look back in 2004. Kerry got a lot of excitement among Democrats because he had strong primary support, and a lot of pundits were saying this meant trouble for the fall. Then 62 million voters decided they preferred President Bush for another term, defying the media’s proclaimed scenario. And while I will grant that 2008 is different from 2004, human nature is notoriously hard to change. For this election, that means the following points will continue to matter:

[] Barack Obama, like John Kerry, built a lot of his support through young voters in the primaries. However, even young voters who vote in primaries are relatively unlikely to vote in the general election. Candidates have been trying to change that condition for decades without significant success.

[] John McCain’s core constituency appears to be senior voters, pro-military voters, and moderate Republicans. The first two of these groups have established a strong representation in votes.

[] Hillary Clinton’s 18 million supporters are not completely enthused by Obama’s campaign. While most of them will support Obama, fewer will actively work for his election (as in recruiting new voters and pursuing grass roots operations), and there have already been reports of Hillary supporters working to get McCain elected.

[] Voters’ opinions and mood can change quickly, but their core beliefs are slow to change, and will change only when confronted with strong evidence. The essential differences between Barack Obama and John McCain will resonate in the election results.

[] Every presidential election, there are states which appear early on to be ripe for a candidate to ‘steal’ from the other side’s roster, but in actual fact few states change philosophies, and the general election is seldom a great surprise to anyone familiar with History.

[] The essential strategic difference in mood between Senators Obama and McCain, is that Obama started with strong positive support and almost no negative reaction, but his attractiveness has steadily declined as the election season progressed, while in McCain’s case he began with strong opposition and little support, but his competence and consistency have strengthened his campaign as he progresses. The result of these trends will depend on the speed of their progress relative to the election date, and whether these trends are halted prior to the election.

[] Opinion polls are the product of polling groups, which are often reported as news, but that representation distinctly is not correct. An opinion poll is the result of a collection of interviews using a standardized set of questions and methodology. That poll is weighted to match a desired demographic profile, and any error in demographic assumptions, in party identification, or methodology as relevant to the real population pool will be reflected in erroneous conclusions. It is a salient fact that most opinion polls which attempt to reflect the specific voter results more than one day ahead of the election will be off by more than the statistical standard deviation, and therefore no opinion poll should ever be taken as a predictive indicator of voter intentions.

All in all, it’s June and that makes it the noise of spin, nothing more.