So, today I bring you a few tidbits to calm your soul. I've been nervous myself, and have had to walk my way out of it. That's not to say this isn't a close race, or that we're out of the woods. That won't be the case until Nov. 5. So we must fortify ourselves..
First of all, let's examine who's been smart and who's been wrong. Smart? The Obama Campaign. They beat the Clinton establishment, and did so in a mostly graceful and positive. That positivity and vision is what drew all those new and disaffected people into the fold...remember that. And who's been wrong? The media/pundits. So when you get worried, realize that the mainstream media has been wrong, wrong, wrong...and when they haven't been wrong, they've been clueless. So if you must listen (as I must) to what they say, remember to take it with a grain of salt.
Here's what Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, has to say: they focus on demographic and registration data in the 18 battleground states, not the national polls. "The top-line [polling data] doesn't tell you anything."
Second, remember that campaigns are largely won on the ground. Donald Green, a political scientist, is an expert in voting behavior--his recent study shows that message can matter little, and that:
door-to-door canvassing produced an eight to ten percent increase in voter turnout. Leaflets and direct mail, on the other hand, yielded only one-half to one percent increases in most cases.
So Obama's people are smart, because they've invested a great deal of our donations in a spectacularly broad and deep ground organization. Here's more info on battleground spending, and on the disparity in the number of field offices between Obama and McCain. This also means that we have to register new voters, phonecall to identify potential volunteers, and help Get Out the Vote (GOTV)...if you want company doing any of these, let me know!
Third, the polls are based on outdated models of voter turnout. This is not 2000 and it's not 2004. The Dems have a significant advantage in how many people identify as Dems (party ID) particularly among young people, and in the number of new and switched registrations. Look at this, read it slow, and let it sink in:
the number of registered Democrats in party registration states has grown by nearly 700,000 since President George W. Bush was reelected in November 2004, while the total of registered Republicans has declined by almost 1 million.
Here is an example of a Pennsylvania poll that reads differently, once you "look inside" the crosstab data.
Fourth, most polls are not reliable. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com has ranked the pollsters on the basis of their past accuracy--you can see that Gallup is WAY down on the list. Don't get too worked up over one poll or another, especially not the national polls--this is an electoral vote campaign, not a popular vote campaign. So don't let the polls psych you out.
Fifth: This is the beginning of the campaign, not the end. In the composite poll-of-polls, Obama has a slight lead that has held consistently over the past few months, and the real race will begin after the conventions--that's when we can start looking at the state by state polls, and seeing where we stand.
Sixth: There is no "Bradley Effect." Race certainly is playing a role in this election, but the primaries showed that the polls overwhelmingly underestimated Obama's win percentage, rather than overestimating it.
Finally: No one ever said this was going to be easy. Here's a little perspective from Eugene Robinson (one of the few relatively sensible talking heads):
People here complain that the polls are too close for comfort, forgetting that there is rarely anything comfortable about a presidential contest. When was the last time a nonincumbent Democrat cruised easily to the White House? Clinton, remember, won only a 43 percent plurality of the popular vote in 1992. You have to go all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Why would anyone think for a moment that Obama could win this without a fight?...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment