Tag Archives: opinion polls

Day 41: Ignore The Polls

23 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Remember all those presidential polls in 2016 showing Hillary winning or enjoying a slight but reassuring lead?  Remember the sickening shock of Election Night when, instead, Trump won?  Remember how afterward pollsters and news organizations declared “Mea culpa,” because their polls had failed to register crucial facts about what the candidates and the electorate were thinking and doing?  Hillary trusted the polls.  As a consequence, she became complacent and ran a poor ground game in states that she took for granted and lost.

Since then, the best polling sites have supposedly upped their game (and hedged their bets) by using more sophisticated and nuanced models.  Nonetheless, relying on polls remains dangerous because they are based on information that is always a little bit old.  It’s a little bit thin.  It’s always a bit scattered. It tends to be crude.   Meanwhile, the 2020 race will hinge on up-to-the-minute efforts by the nominees and their parties in specific localities.  This is how Trump won last time: by building on microlevel advantages in several key states, and leveraging those advantages into state-level wins.

Now Trump and his backers are at it again.  In Wisconsin, Republicans are mounting a concerted door-t0-door campaign to get out the vote, where, later this month, the state supreme court will hear arguments on whether to purge some 180,ooo voters from registration rolls.  Trump backers have pleaded with judges to limit ballot collection boxes and disqualify mail-in ballots lacking a secrecy envelope in Pennsylvania.  Finally, in the crucial matter of voter registration, the New York Times is reporting that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, “overall registration is up by 6 points through August compared to the 2016 cycle, but net Democratic registrations are down by 38 percent. That’s about 150,000 fewer additional Democrats than were added in 2016.”  Surprising numbers of whites without college degrees are registering, a demographic that went heavily for Mr Trump in 2016.  Such are the unobtrusive developments that will make all the difference in this election–developments that even the best polling, which focuses mainly on opinion, cannot capture.  The fate of the US will hinge on last-minute, local actions occurring in real time.

So, if you care about the future of the United States, please ignore the polls.  Act on your fears and redouble your efforts to get out the vote for Joe.

RELATED:
Thomas B. Edsall, “Five Things Biden and His Allies Should Be Worried About” (NYT)
Barton Gellman, “The Election That Could Break America,” (The Atlantic)

Image: from this source.

Election Scenarios; The Spotlight on Silver

31 Oct 2012 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 6 Comments

Interactive electoral graphic (Screen grab from the NYT; click to visit NYT)

With Election Day 2012 finally in sight, national attention is riveted on the possible electoral outcomes of the presidential vote.  A useful interactive on the New York Times website makes it easier to envision the implications of losses and victories in various swing states.  Click on the image to go to the site, then use the “next” button to take advantage of its interactive features.

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Voters pinning their hopes on Mitt Romney’s purported momentum may find that a visit to Nate Silver‘s blog, FiveThirtyEight, puts them in a sour mood.  Silver, a youngish statistician whose 2008 predictions were highly accurate, has consistently assigned President Obama favorable odds of victory.  Even as isolated polls show his challenger pulling even with Obama in several key states, the margin by which Silver’s quantitative model favors Obama has been increasing.  (Silver assigned Obama a 77% chance of winning with 299 electoral votes, as of my site visit earlier in the day.)

Not surprisingly, Silver has come under attack from the right and finds himself the center of eleventh-hour controversy.  The key charges, defenses, and countercharges are contained in the various links below.  The weirdest charge is that of Dean Chambers, who insinuates that Silver is too effeminate to be a competent predictor of the presidential odds.  Also discernible is an anti-intellectual discomfort with hard numbers.

Dylan Byers, Nate Silver: One-Term Celebrity?, Politico.
Brett LoGlurato, People are flipping out over Politico’s attack on Nate Silver, Business Insider.
Ezra Klein, The Nate Silver Backlash, The Washington Post.
Robert Schlesinger, Mitt Romney’s Electoral Problem and the War on Nate Silver,  US News and World Report.
Charles P Pierce, The Enemies of Nate Silver, Esquire.

Are You a Rare Political Bird?

30 Aug 2012 By in The Parties Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

"The Postmoderns" (graphic by John C. Osborn, courtesy of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2011)

I like on-line quizzes, so I liked the brief quiz put together by the Pew Research Center that measures how my political views relate to those of the political parties, their candidates, and the people around me.

The quiz (a simplified version of a more extensive survey) is only 12 questions.  On the results page, you can click on various buttons to see the results broken down according to your views on social v. economic issues, and where you fit in relation to others of your own age, sex, race, and religion.

To take the quiz yourself, click here.

The quiz is a sampling of the Pew’s larger effort to develop a “typology” of Americans’ political views that might describe us more accurately.  It’s a worthy effort, and one that all of us weary of red-blue labeling can applaud.

Image: “The Post-Moderns” by John C. Osborn
(Courtesy of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press), 2011.
The poster is one in a series showing the nation’s different political “types.”
To see the other graphics in this series, click here.

To read more about the results of the Pew Center’s study, click here.