- With one week to go, Americans are being inundated by
polls. At least 112 have been published for the presidential contest in
the last week alone.
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- While it's tempting to look at the jumble of results
and declare polling hopelessly useless, fact is, polls have a great deal
to tell us about the state of the race. And not in the way people generally
assume:
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- It's not the head to head
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- Polls are always reported as though there's a winner,
and there's a loser. So a poll showing Bush leading 45-42 is headlined
"Bush leads by three", when the reality is that Bush is actually
losing.
-
- In US elections, any elected official garnering less
than 50% of the vote in polls is considered vulnerable. As Democratic
pollster
Mark Blumenthal notes:
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- "Voters typically know incumbents well and have
strong opinions about their performance. Challengers are less familiar
and invariably fall short on straightforward comparisons of experience
and (in the presidential arena) command of foreign policy. Some voters
find themselves conflicted - dissatisfied with the incumbent yet also wary
of the challenger - and may carry that uncertainty through the final days
of the campaign and sometimes right into the voting booth. Among the
perpetually
conflicted, the attitudes about the incumbent are usually more predictive
of these conflicted voters' final decision than their lingering doubts
about the challenger. Thus, in the campaign's last hours, we tend to see
'undecided' voters 'break' for the challenger."
-
- Testing this theory, blogger Chris Bowers examined
presidential
poll results since 1976, and calculated that undecided voters broke for
the challenger 86% of the time.
-
- It's a dynamic that clearly weighs on the Bush campaign.
Speaking to conservative bloggers at the Republican national convention,
Bush's pollster Matthew Dowd said the 50% rule didn't apply to the
president:
-
- "Based on the polling data they've aggregated on
undecideds in battleground states, the Bush team has compiled the following
profile on undecideds: they are overwhelmingly white, tend to be older,
go to church often and describe themselves as moderate to conservative.
Dowd says they can't find any self-described liberals who remain
undecided."
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- As a result, he predicted that Bush would either split
or outright win the vote of the undecided bloc. While not outside of the
realm of possibilities, there is nothing indicating that Bush could buck
the historical trends embodied in the 50% rule. That they're forced to
spin it away hints at their concerns.
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- There is no national election
-
- While the press is obsessed with horse race national
numbers, the fact is that we Americans don't elect our president directly.
Rather, we have 51 state elections, including Washington DC. That means
that for voters in 35 to 40 states, their votes really don't matter and
neither do their responses to pollsters' questions. It is only voters in
the small group of "swing states" that essentially elect the
US president: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and
Wisconsin
(give or take a state).
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- Different pollsters use different methodologies
-
- No two polls are built alike. Some weigh their results
by demographics (race and geography), others weigh by expected turnout
and party identification, and yet others don't weigh at all. Some polls
attempt to filter out unlikely voters asking questions they think will
flag those least motivated to vote. Some polls are partisan and will game
their assumptions in order to give their side a boost in the
results.
-
- This is critical when trying to sift through seemingly
contradictory polling. Polling is nothing more than educated guessing.
Some get it right, some get it wrong, and half the time luck is probably
involved. That's why it's best to look at polls in the aggregate - easy
to do given the sheer number of them - rather than obsess over any one
particular poll.
-
- The state of the race
-
- With that brief polling primer, anyone can take a look
at the numbers and get a sense for the state of the race. And a strict
by-the-numbers calculation shows that Bush is in serious trouble.
-
- In Ohio, Bush numbers range from 43-49%, failing to break
50% in any of the 12 Ohio polls in October. Indeed, there are signs that
Bush has essentially abandoned the state, working to build his electoral
majority by winning three out of four in Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, and
New Mexico. But October polling in those states also show an incumbent
in serious trouble.
-
- In 14 Florida polls, Bush hasn't broken 50% since a
SurveyUSA
poll conducted between October 1 and October 3. A subsequent SurveyUSA
poll now gives Kerry a 50-49 lead in the state. In Iowa, a single poll
has him at 51% while six others range between 46% and 49%. Wisconsin is
giving Democrats heartburn, but Bush breaks 50% in only one of the nine
polls this month. Two independent polls put him as far back as 43%. New
Mexico has Bush in the 43-49% range, anaemic numbers in a state Gore won
by less than 1,000 votes.
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- Much can happen in one week, and Republicans are doing
their part to prevent a fair election. Perhaps the Bush campaign is right
and the 50% rule won't apply to them this year. But the Bushies haven't
been right about much of anything the past four years, while Democrats
are vigorously challenging voter suppression efforts around the country.
As of this writing, this is Kerry's election to lose.
-
- - Markos Moulitsas runs the dailykos.com US political
blog, and Our Congress, a blog tracking the hottest congressional
races
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/
- uselections2004/markosmoulitsas/
- story/0,15139,1336232,00.html
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