Mail Bag
Will Collier read the same story we all did, about Romney holding a whopping 14-point lead with middle class voters. And that lead to the following email exchange, starting with Will:
You see this yet?
I don’t have the nerve to post this (since it’s possible I’m kidding myself), but if that’s close to accurate, dude is WAY ahead, and we are just being flat lied to by almost every pollster/media outfit paying pollsters.
Another thing: R^2 are leading among Indies in virtually every poll, and usually by wide margins. If that’s the case, how could they NOT be ahead overall?
Yeah, about seven times a day I think I must be kidding myself, to think Romney has a shot at this thing, but then I remember what I wrote back to Will:
D samples are ridiculously high. As in, most outfits are sampling Ds at a higher rate than they turned out to vote in 2008.
As if 2010 never happened, as if the Tea Party never happened, as if somehow the last three years had made the Democrats more popular than they were when Obama was still hopenchangey Black Jesus.
It’s absurd, and the MSM and the polling outfits are going to lose whatever is left of their credibility, in the attempt to hand SCoaMF a second term.
Will:
I don’t know if you remember it or not, but in 80, all the way up to election day, the mantra was, “It’s very, very close.”
Back then I wondered if they just didn’t believe what they were seeing. The media class didn’t take Reagan seriously, and I always suspected they couldn’t bring themselves to accept (much less report) their actual poll results.
Today, I don’t wonder that. This time they’re just mashing down on the scale with everything they’ve got.
Of course they are. Now, I don’t actually believe for one moment that Mitt Romney is the guy to pare DC down to its constitutionally-correct size of maybe — maybe — one-third of what it is today. In that kind of world, one where Washington isn’t picking winners and losers, and isn’t robbing Peter’s grandkids to pay for Paul’s grandparents, what’s it worth being a George Stephanopoulos or an Ezra Klein?
Not much. George would be a goofy weatherman in Seattle, and Ezra would be a hanger-on to some gerrymandered liberal Democrat congressman from a bankrupt blue state. Same holds even for the good ones, like Jake Tapper. Take the money away from Washington, and they lose the limos and the perks and the high salaries and all the rest. They’d lose their status, heaven forbid.
DC was a sleepy little town before the vile progs got a hold of it, and someday it will be again. It must be again, or it will strangle the rest of the nation out of existence. We’re too deep into that boa grip already.
The MSM and their pet pollsters are in full Blazing Saddles mode: “We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately!”
And the entire chorus is harrumphing happily along. But behind each happy harrumph is a touch of panic because they know they’re losing their hold over the American people — and with it, they’ll lose everything else, too.
Note: campaigns dont buy Local TV ad time when there is a blowout in progress.
“Neck and Neck” helps pay the bills daddy-o.
Heh. I love math geeks.
By claiming the race is neck-and-neck, the undecideds have a reason to at least LISTEN to both sides before deciding.
When one side is an early blowout, the undecideds can do what they do best – forget about making a decision since they no longer have any responsiblity in the matter.
Hence, it is in the losing Democrats’ best interest to ignore polling showing the Republicans winning until the last moment.
“R^2 are leading among Indies in virtually every poll, and usually by wide margins. If that’s the case, how could they NOT be ahead overall?”
Well, if there were a lot more Democrats than Republicans -
– oops. Never mind.
OK, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but what about Scott Rasmussen? His polls still show R & O roughly tied. Is he lying for Obama too?
I agree that the only way the cross-tabs make any sense is if Romney is actually ahead by two lengths, but I’m not willing to call pantsonfire on the pollsters. I can think of two possibilities here:
1) Phone polls are useless in an age of caller ID and cell phones. Plenty of ink has been spilled on this already.
2) The 2010 election wasn’t the model for 2012. Two years ago was an off-election, mostly for Congress and governors–traditionally a low-turnout election. As such, party ID from 2010 was a display of Republican willingness to turn out, not necessarily an unwillingness on the part of Democrats (at least when the Presidency is involved). The cross-tabs are all messed up because they’re trying to measure the unmeasurable–whether all those new 2008 voters will show up in November.
National polls are useless because we don’t elect presidents on a national vote (and thank the Founders for that!). Obama might get 70% of the vote in New York and California but that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll only get those states electoral votes. Big wins in big states don’t influence the electral vote counts but do influence the national poll numbers. The only reasonable poll would be to check people in all 50 states and add up the electoral vote totals. That’s a lot of work and money, though, so the media harps on the national poll numbers as if they had any significance.
Because Rasmussen too is assuming 08 turnout. No, seriously. Go look at it. they just weigh republicans A LITTLE MORE.
As for 12 not using 10 as a model, sorry, I call BS. Yeah 10 was an off year, but I know where the energy and the ANGER is this year.
On second thought, you’re right. 10 isn’t the model for 12. In 10 we weren’t NEARLY this p*ssed off.
Just watch.
That’s fine, but are you willing to say that Rasmussen is lying for Obama? I’m not. Sure, CNN/NYT/WAPO might have their fingers on the scale, but Gallup?
In 2010, Democrats failed to show up for a bunch of Congressmen, while Republicans turned out, mostly. Overall turnout was down from 2008. What will the turnout be in 2012? Does ANYBODY have a good handle on that? Sure Republicans will turn out like you say, but who else will show up this time?
These types of cheap, newsy polls make a lot of assumptions in order to keep the cost down and get around their cheap methods of conducting interviews. The honest pollsters don’t know who will show up and how they are related to the interviewees, so they guesstimate using previous history. And previous history is no guide this year.
It means you can’t trust the polls, but it doesn’t mean (all) the pollsters are lying.
Rasmussen is the only pollster showing a real battle — which is exactly what we have on our hands here.
Meanwhile, read a little something from SP&R’s blog:
You might want to read the whole thing.
OK, I’m willing to believe a statistical tie. Reading your post, it sounded like you were talking about a blowout. But a blowout requires both a depressed D turnout and a reduced margin of fraud–which could happen, but there’s no way to know right now if that’s in the cards.
Don’t. Get. Cocky.
“…pare DC down to its constitutionally-correct size of maybe — maybe — one-third of what it is today.”
Wow. I just got a rush.
I have no problem believing that the media would lie about the polls in order to mitigate Republican landslide.
“The media class didn’t take Reagan seriously…”
I never met a person who voted for Reagan.
Sergeant Press Schultz.
Apologies if I’ve written this here before, but remember that telephone polls only sample that portion of the demographic which has nothing better to do than talk to nosy strangers on the telephone.
“Refusal rates” for pollster phone calls, twenty years ago, ran about 60%. That is, of every 100 people who answered the phone, about 40 would actually take the pollster’s call.
Today, the refusal rate is 91%.