Comments on: Rumors of Mitt’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

By: Tom Campanella

Tom Campanella — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:40:13 +0000

I am trying to make sense of these latest battleground polls, but simply can’t seem to find any rhyme or reason to them… why do these pollsters seem to think that we will see record Democrat turnouts over Republicans this November? Haven’t we seen, instead, that Republicans are generally more enthusiastic this time around? And more to the point, how is it that Romney is winning independents in these polls (though barely), and is still down by 8-12 pts in Florida, Ohio and the like? It seems to me that the sampling in these polls have been misleading, to say the least. Am I wrong?

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:43:58 +0000

Adam – Keep in mind that the forecast models – at least the ones that I discuss in terms of modeling the “fundamentals” – do not change once the forecast is issued. As we get closer to the election, the poll-based forecasts will be increasingly accurate, so that by the eve of the election they will be far more reliable than the political science fundamentals-driven forecast models. But, of course, poll-based predictions are inherently uninteresting (at least to me) because they don’t say why one candidate won. That’s why political scientists spend time constructing these fundamental-based models in the first place – to see whether they truly do understand why people vote the way they do. If all you want is the bottom line, go visit Sam Wang’s site – he did pretty well in predicting the outcome using state-level polls in 2008. All a long way of saying that from an explanatory perspective, I’m not very interested in who the polls say is “ahead” right now – I’m only interested in seeing how close the final results are to what the forecast models predicted on Labor Day. Let the pundits and journalists debate who is “ahead” now…. If we have it right, in the end the various polls should converge to what the models predict. If they don’t – we have it wrong, and it will be interesting to see why!

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:25:02 +0000

“Taken as a whole, as I’ll discuss in a future post, the forecast models see this race as a toss-up”

Good stuff.

The final hold-out was Gallup which has Obama +6.

At what point do you admit Obama is ahead?

By: Shelly Sloan

Shelly Sloan — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:30:50 +0000

What surprises me here is that there is no discussion of the technical deficiencies of many (most) polling techniques. The weighting process looks backward, not forward. By way of short example, if the pollster only gets a limited amount of people from one party or the other, the results are re-weighted to conform to the last presidential election turnout numbers to get a result that will be (in my humble opinion) quite different than what the votes in November 2016 will show. Why?

In 2008, there was an unprecedented turnout for Obama; does anyone really think that it will happen again?

And, it is my contention that the turnout for McCain was lukewarm; Republicans did not realize how dangerous to their thinking Obama would turn out to be. Republicans consistently vote more reliably than Democrats, but in this election, I contend that they are super motivated to see Obama go back to Chicago and start planning his library.

On the other hand, many, many of the 2008 Obama supporters are disillusioned and while them may not vote for Romney, it is more likely they just may not vote at all.

One more point; someone said money isn’t going to be important; I disagree. Obama has been burning at a rate twice that of Romney in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, which may somewhat explain the small lead he has in those three key states. Romney has been husbanding his money, and so has Rove and other SuperPac gurus. I believe that when the Romney forces money is unleashed, things will change. That is probably timed to coincide with the debates which will occur October 3, 11 (VP), 16 and 22. Arguably, that’s when most peoples’ interest begins to peak, and the persuadable group is most attentive.

Romney didn’t get wealthy and successful by mistake or luck; he analyzed problems and came up with winning solutions. Why would anyone think he dumbed down now?

Get your bets down now while the odds are best. I think Romney/Ryan will will win decisively on November 6, ala Ronald Reagan v. Jimmy Carter.

Oh, I left out the similarity of the Mideast on fire to the hostage crisis of 1980; the weaknesses of Carter and Obama are just now being drawn. Again, this does not bode well for the president and his foreign policy. But I will leave that discussion for another post by Professor Dickinson.

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:05:21 +0000

Jeff,

I think a lot of Obama supporters made that argument at the time that Obama made those comments. Alas, that’s not how it was played in much of the press. Similarly, a lot (but certainly not all) of Romney supporters are arguing that Romney should not only stand by the 47% comment, he should use it to differentiate his governing philosophy from the President’s. Nonetheless, I don’t think the media is playing it that way.

My broader point, however, is that despite the media coverage, these “gaffes” generally don’t have a significant longterm impact on candidates’ standing in the polls.