Posted on 10/31/2008 7:08:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
AUSTIN — Early voting is big in Texas this year.
Ten days into this year's 12-day early voting period, 2.7 million people in the state's 15 largest counties had cast their ballots, compared with 1.7 million who had voted at the same point four years ago.
....Democrats are turning out in bigger numbers than Republicans in Harris County, according to one analysis. Early voting historically has been dominated by Republicans.
Leland Beatty, a Democratic consultant, said 42 percent of early voters had voted in Democratic primaries and 20.6 percent in Republican primaries.
Republican pollster Mike Baselice said he thinks Democratic early voting numbers are high because so many participated in the primary between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. He said some of those voters will vote Republican in the general election.
"Nobody should be that excited about the turnout this far," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
My take on Austin is it is trying really hard to be like San Francisco. This makes no sense because most Texans like being original but, Austin takes it’s “weird” status to new heights on a regular basis.
I live in West Texas and I can promise you that there are tons of Obama signs in cards. However, we will go for McCain as a state. Houston, Austin, Dallas will go pretty strong for Obama and it will not be a landslide in Texas for either, but McCain will get TEXAS!
GO TEXAS TECH, BEAT U.T.
“I heard that Austin was full of Ron Paul signs before March 4 too”;
...I was in Austin in March and there were lots of Paul signs. I figured, anything to be different.
Ditto for my wife and I. But I don't get those Dem mailers, thank God.
That’s right. So the Operation Chaos folks will have D mailngs and D ballots but be Stealth Voters. I had forgotten that.
hmmmmm. Very interesting.
Austin is just WEIRD! Keep it Weird. We don’t like them anyway! ;) ;)
GO TEXAS TECH, beat U.T.
You have to consider the source - it IS the Houston Comical after all...
Does anyone know what accomadations are being made in the counties affected by the hurricane?
Those displaced could request and get a absentee ballot. In addition the early voting locations within the counties allow for them to vote at their convenience while in the county. There was a lot of devastation right along the coast but inward it was less after you get beyond the surge flooding.
I think the comment by the Republican pollster went right over the columnist's head. They don't like to think about how many Republicans voted as Democrats in the primary for Hillary to help with Operation Chaos.
For many years my dad would send $10 to the Democrats in Harris County. He would then count the mail he got for that year and thought he cost them about $25 - 30 every year from candidates wanting support.
We voted on day 2 and there was no line; however, we were early and the news even that night was that turnout in the first 2 days was something like 300% higher than the previous record.
Colonel, USAFR
I went to UT undergrad when Reagan ran the first time. I think I was the only one I knew who voted Republican, and that was in ‘76. It’s only gotten worse - a bunch of kids from our church went there two years ago and most of them have transferred to A&M because Austin and UT just don’t agree with their values.
Colonel, USAFR
There is a course on “Operation Chaos” at Berkeley. I kid you not.
Don’t be anxious about Texas, Mccain is ahead in Florida...http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2119264/posts
Texas ain’t going “O”
Hook ‘em Horns!! This will be a GREAT game!
Colonel, USAFR
I read about that course in the Daily Telegraph article about Rush.
For many years my dad would send $10 to the Democrats in Harris County. He would then count the mail he got for that year and thought he cost them about $25 - 30 every year from candidates wanting support.
"A famous quote attributed variously to a distinguished assortment of politicians and humorists goes like this, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics!" We're all a little suspicious of statistics, but most of us believe in them a little more than we'd like to admit.
I learned a little something about statistics during my brief tenure in two graduate schools and the big thing was that for a study to be valid you have to have an accurate sample. The closer you get to creating a sample of survey respondents that accurately reflects the same makeup as whatever group of folks you want to discover something about, the better your results.
One way to do that is to use another set of statistics to guide you in choosing your sample. Polls of registered voters, for instance, select participants that reflect the proportions of Democrats, Republicans and Independents who actually registered to vote. In other words if 49% of registered voters in South Carolina are Democrats, 38% are Republicans and 13% unaffiliated, then the pollster doing a survey of registered voters would pick a thousand or so voters and make sure he had 49% Dems, 38% Republicans and 13% Independents if he wanted his study to be accurate.
This year, that's a problem because a lot of Republicans registered as Democrats! If you go by voter registration, you're not going to get a true picture of the registered voters because a bunch of "Democrats" aren't really Democrats and have no intention of voting for Barry.
During the primaries, the infamous "Operation Chaos" skewed the registrations significantly in a lot of so-called battleground states. Rush Limbaugh's campaign to keep Hillary Clinton in the race by having Republicans cross over and vote in the Democratic primary, resulted in hundreds of thousands of Republicans registering to vote as Democrats. Since the primaries are over, most have never bothered to change their registration back. They don't need to to vote for McCain.
The only problem is that voter registration now shows an inordinately high number of registered Democrats on the books and pollsters use those numbers to determine how they sample their pre-election polls......."
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