Decision ‘08

Some Good News From Tennessee

Though the latest CNN poll shows Allen down by 4 and Menendez up by 7, it also shows Corker up by 8 (all among likely voters)….

6 Responses to “Some Good News From Tennessee”

1 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 12:07 pm
consider this:

a telephone poll, asks for the response of one person in the household. Consider the two cases, a married family v. a single adult resident, one would seem to favor the gop, the other the dems.

There is no method that I have seen that accounts for the consideration of providing ‘two’ response from a household. I think this is where the 3-5 pts that the gop needs are found, and predict it will pan out in the election.
2 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 12:31 pm
I’m going out on another limb…if this branch will hold…

voter turnout will be…

less than 36% of eligible. I’m not seeing any sign of independents defecting to democrats, but smatterings of where the gop is losing independents.

In 04, kerry and bush split the independents, according to cnn’s exit polling, suggesting that Bush won based on party support. Things were going about the same in Iraq in 04-in reagrds to media portrayal-as they are now.

There is no issue that the dems are campaigning on, other than being the alternative to the gop. In 04, the gop base beat the democratic base, and this is the same conflict that is being trotted out. The gop base may be unhappy about spending, the war, and immigration, but the thing that makes us loyal to our parties, especially lately, is not supportive, so much as fear of the other sides incompetence.

In 04, it was 37% for each, willing to identify themselves as supportive of either party. Much of the sampling that has been done has been to scramble to address the perceived breakdown of the gop, suppressing/hiding 5% gop support, which will pan out in these elections.

The gotv thing is almost, and I mean almost, completely overplayed. Getting one person to the polls is not going to do it. Getting groups-and the only type of group that is ‘workable’, is religious who are the backbone of the gop gotv. The gop will do better than predicted, and the pundits will marvel at rove and his gotv machine, but this is complete bs.

The problem comes in poor sampling and representation of voting demographics. The 68 polls that rove reads every day? They answer the questions he asks, and he is the one to know what is important. The media is still working from a 1950’s template, unaware how the demographics are continuuing to segment and compartmentalize.

only 75% of the voters from 04 will vote.
not a peep from the media about who the 25% that will stay at home are…rove looks at this group as much as he looks at those who are voting.
3 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 1:07 pm
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

some of the cnn demographics from 04…

let’s look at income…

less than 50k a year (45%) 44% bush, 56% kerry.

more than 50k a year (55%) 56% bush, 43% kerry.

Interesting, as I see those with a higher income more inclined to vote, and also use a cellphone plan. The 25% who won’t vote from 04? The poorer.

also worth noting the split in independents-26% of the voters-take them out of the equation and you get 74%-which is about what turnout runs, relative to an off year.

Exclude the independents and you get a gop advantage of 3 million votes…their advantage in 2002, was about 2 million.

Bush in 04 got approximately-46.7 mil votes from his base, Kerry got 43.65 mil.

so turn to the polls that are running a smaller gop sample size-

this is the biggest problem-the gop is not being undersampled, but the gop base is failing to identify themselves as gop voters…to pollsters.

rove knows otherwise.
4 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 1:17 pm
in simplest terms, using the above numbers-

from 04, gop base held a 6.5% better level of support from its base than democrats, despite the report of both bases being equivalent of 37%-each-of the voting public.

I have speculated that the gop holds an advantage that is not appearing in the polls, by as much as 5%. By past hx, I now expand that number to as much as 6.5%, based upon the only actual test in the past two years.

Every poll begins with an assumption, what is the correct sampling and representation. Then the poll is done and still has a 3-5 pt moe. The 3-5 pt moe is based not upon reality, but what the results would be based on concrete assumptions.

NJ is the only stae that really stands out as being oversampled in regards to the gop, the rest are reporting polls, based on completely absurd presumptions, notoriously favoring dems.
5 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 1:36 pm
the cnn poll? meaningless, without discussing party identification.

charlie cook?

http://www.cookpolitical.com/races/report_pdfs/2006_poll_tl_oct23.pdf

look at his second question-which party do you favor to take control-

37% gop, 49% dems.

The number is about right for the gop, but 49% for the dems, is simply an oversampling.

current momentum?

CNN generic-10/20-22 40-57.
CNN generic-10/27-29 42-53.

in one week the dems lost 4% of their support, while the gop gained 2%. At that pace the generic will look like 44-49 in another week…

Hewitt was right, the dem high water mark was in the first week of october, it is all downhill from there.
6 mtl Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 1:46 pm
one other point about getting an accurate sampling…

caller id.

If you get a call from an unrecognized number, you let the phone screen the call. Phone sampling is going the way of the birds, as poorer families, with a lower liklihood of caller id functions, will be more likely to answer the phone, just as higher income families will continue to be underreported/not responding.