Driving the Narrative
I’ve been harping on the lousy polls for weeks, but Mike Flynn sums it up nicely:
In 2008, the electorate that elected Barack Obama was 39% Democrat, 32% GOP and 29% Independent. This is what we call a D+7 electorate. Obama defeated McCain by 7 points, the same margin. In 2004, the electorate was 37% Democrat, 37% Republican, and 26% Independent, in other words D/R +0. Bush defeated John Kerry by 3 points nationally.
Yet, virtually every big media poll is based on a model where Democrats equal or increase their share of the electorate over 2008. Beyond simple common sense, there are many reasons this won’t happen. The Dem vote in 08 was the largest in decades. It came after fatigue of 8 years of GOP control, two unpopular wars, a charming Democrat candidate who was the Chauncy Gardner of politics, a vessel who could hold everyone’s personal dreams and hopes for a politician. It was a perfect storm for Democrats.
None of the factors driving Democrat turnout in 08 exist today. Recent polls from AP, Politico and the daily tracking polls from Rasmussen and Gallup, all of whom assume relatively lower Democrat turnout in November show the race essentially tied. Only those polls showing an electorate with equal or greater numbers of Democrats show Obama with any sizable lead.
Yet, its these polls that are driving the political narrative. [Emphasis added]
Here’s how it works. MSM-affiliated polling organization presents biased poll to MSM. MSM then reports the numbers with all of its experienced gravity. Voters watch MSM, assume gravity means polls are correct. And most years, as Flynn notes, they are.
It’s like voting “present” in the Illinois state Senate. Most of your constituents won’t know (or much care) what that means, but it lets a state Senator avoid unpopular votes while offending no one and maintain the illusion of being hard at work. And since few people understand it (or much care about it), that makes it difficult for your opponent to making the “voting present” argument stick. In fact, the closest anyone has come to doing so was Clint Eastwood and his empty chair at the RNC — and the MSM absolutely belly flopped on top of Eastwood to make people forget him, ignore him, or dismiss him.
Which brings us back to the polls. Cross tabs? D+7? Voter self-ID? Few people understand these things, and even fewer care. Most people look at the headline number — Obama up eleventy in Texas! — and resign themselves to FORE MOAR YEARZ.
Don’t be those people.
Aren’t they going to have the opposite effect, though? If they’d poll properly and show Romney ahead 5+%, wouldn’t that fire up the public-employee-union Obama voters, and lull the small-business-owner Romney voters into a false sense of security? (Hey, now I can go watch the kids’ soccer games instead of standing in line to vote…)
In fact, wasn’t that the Florida-exit-polling effect a few years back? Announce the peninsula as one side having it in the bag, and it suppressed the vote in the panhandle in the next time zone…
I haven’t seen (m)any polls recently where Obama had a pack-it-up-and-go-home lead. These D+9 polls are still ties, or 1% apart.
Nobody turns off the game when it’s 17-14 in the 4th quarter, no matter which team has the football. A small-but-surmountable lead/deficit energizes the fans.
I predict it’s just the MSM trying to keep its audience. Whoever’s in the lead, it’s worth following the game if it’s close. More eyes on their advertising if everyone’s waiting for that 1-2% swing into their column… If either side is 7% ahead today, who needs to read the news tomorrow? It’ll take a few days to change that much…
That depends…it has to do with the trend of the polls. The idea is that if Obama is shown as 4-5% points up consistently from the beginning of time until election day, republican voters will be dis-encouraged to go vote because there is no chance in winning. If, however, the race was close for a duration of time and then support for one side spiked, that would get the support base moving to reduce the effects of this spike. But to get the people fired up, something has to change.
It just occurred to me that maybe the reason the polls slant so heavily Dem, is that so many on the Right are refusing to answer the polling calls? Maybe all they can reach are Dems? Maybe we on the Right are the problem with the polls? The pollsters still gotta go do their jobs as best they can in the circumstances. They gotta eat, too. Maybe WE are skewing the polls by not answering the phone? Maybe it is not them purposely skewing the polls? Maybe it’s us?
Romney seems more confidant that the polls would warrant, perhaps that’s because both campaigns pay their internal pollsters to tell them the truth.
Follow the money. When Obama was seen a loser in the summer, he had troubles raising money. Now he’s “at least even” with Romney, his money woe diminishes.
The Propagandists skew the polls to help stuff the Empty Armchair.