Posted on 06/25/2002 6:21:12 AM PDT by IMRight
Show me the precinct(hint, it doesn't exist).
Not this time, but that isn't through any fault of the Tarrence Group or Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates. It appears that at this stage, things are just as they appear.
People like Bush, people trust Bush. The Congressional Republicans would do well, in terms of elections, to follow his lead as much as possible. The fundemental makeup of the country hasn't changed, so neither side has a big advantage.
The thing that troubles me is the comments they made about how recent elections have shown that unions and minorities have turned out in droves, much more so than white conservative Christians. It hasn't been that the latter have been staying home, it is that the former have been mobilized with great success. Republicans have to find a way to either break the monolithic support blacks give Democrats, or find a way to get the same sort of turnout as Democrats, or both.
The turnout issue isn't as cut and dried as it seems. It isn't just a matter of energizing a "base". It is the 'get out the vote' efforts made to register and bring people to the polls on election day. This isn't an even battle, by the way. Since Democrats are generally going after the urban vote, the people they need to bring to the polls are generally concentrated in areas where they can go door to door, provide buses, and so forth. The Republicans most consistent voters tend to live in less densely populated areas, meaning just the logistics of finding them and bringing them to the polls is much more difficult. It is probably a better chance to try to woo a portion of the minority vote and a portion of the union vote than it is to try to match the 'get out the vote' machine of the Democrats.
Republicans would also do well to encourage more people to volunteer to work on election day overseeing voting precincts. Minimizing fraud will be important.
I am not all that worried though. I actually think that the entire landscape will have changed by November, with how things look now being pretty irrelevant. I believe the odds that there will be another terrorist attack before then, or that there will be a breakthrough in the anthrax investigation, or that we will be at war in the middle east, are higher than even Bush's approval ratings. Any or all of those would make how things look right now moot.
I am a free trader. But because of the union factor, the steel tarriffs didn't really irk me too bad, especially since the international steel market isn't exactly fair (with former communist nations still having excess capacity partly as the result of state funding).
I still think all of that will be more germane for 2004 than 2002. It is my assumption that 2002's election will take place in a markedly different environment than we have right now.
One was Zogby. The other was the combined efforts of the Tarrence Group and Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates (aka the Battleground poll).
In 2000, Zogby ended up having Gore up by two, which was right on. Battleground had Bush by 5. Believe it or not, both were right on, even though this is counter-intuitive. When one considers the effects of the natural fuzziness of samples (reflected in MOE or margin of error), two perfectly conducted polls can and would differ by this much, especially if each is making a guess as to how to apportion the undecided vote.
I wrote this about 10 months ago on the same subject. It has more detail:
Contrary to common perception, Zogby was not particularly more accurate than other pollsters last November. Quite the contrary, actually.Let me share with you a letter I wrote to Fred Barnes and Mort Kondrake after hearing them basically say the same thing that you just did:
The reason I am writing is because I believe that you both missed the ball, however, during the discussion of Zogby's polling. As a hobby, I analyze polls and polling data. Although nobody pays me to do my work, I am confident enough of my experience and abilities in this realm that I consider myself more of an expert on the field than most experts who appear on TV.FRegardsSpecifically, my attention was drawn to this exchange:
HUME: Well, he was -- he did very well in '96. He did not do so well in 2000.I have to agree with Mr. Hume on this one. Mr. Zogby gets a lot of credit for his work on the 2000 election due to his accuracy on the national popular vote numbers. Unfortunately for Mr. Zogby, a more detailed analysis of his polling during the 2000 election cycle shows that his work was extremely erratic, and not deserving of the accolades he gets; certainly, he does not merit compliments on his work from knowledgeable folks such as yourself.KONDRACKE: Oh, yes. Oh, he did...
BARNES: No, no. He's the guy -- he is the guy who caught the Gore surge at the end.
KONDRACKE: He did the...
HUME: And Fox News caught it, too, because we had them dead even on the last time out.
BARNES: Well, he caught it before anybody else. He had it in the beginning the week, before, better than anybody -- look, Fox -- I don't mean to disparage Fox. The Fox poll wound up very well, but Zogby was on that case first.
Let me provide some details. If his polling methodology was superior to his competitors, this would have translated to success at the state levels (especially since to get a good national picture, one would have to have a good geographical balance in the sample). Mr. Zogby was all over the place on the state battles.
- Mr. Zogby totally had New York, his area of most expertise and experience, wrong. The following was reported on election day:
"Lazio has been closing the gap since last Thursday," Utica, NY pollster John Zogby told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. Zogby's Monday tracking poll shows Mrs. Clinton with a two point lead. But the polster said she's losing ground steadily in the final hours before the voting begins Tuesday morning.Mrs. Clinton absolutely crushed Mr. Lazio.
- In the largest state, California, Mr. Zogby's poll released Monday, November 6, 2000 showed Mr. Gore with all of a one point edge over Mr. Bush. As Mr. Goeas of the Tarrance Group pointed out, that is particularly nonsensical in light of the fact that Mr. Zogby had Gore up by a few points nationally at that time. This was not just an "outlier" (a poll that is just plain off, which is to be expected statistically about 1 in 20 times). Mr. Zogby had Gore up by only 3 in California on November 3.
Mr. Gore won California by 12 percent.
- In the final Zogby national poll, which is the one which supposedly "nailed" the election, we see the following demographic breakdowns:
"Gore continues to lead in the East (53% - 37%) while Bush is ahead in the Central/Great Lakes (Bush 50%, Gore 46%). Gore and Bush are in a virtual tie in the South (Gore 48% - Bush 47%), while there also continues to be a virtual tie in the West (Bush 47% - Gore 46%)."Mr. Gore did not carry a single southern state, and in most he did not even come close. And while Mr. Gore did win four western states (California, Washington, Oregon, and New Mexico) so as to make it likely that he did cause the west to be a push overall, since Mr. Zogby was overstating Mr. Bush's support by about 11% in California, this means that he was understating Mr. Bush's support by a comparable amount in the rest of the west in order to get to that virtual tie.
- On 11/3, Mr. Zogby had Ohio showing a lead for Mr. Gore. On 11/5, Mr. Zogby had Ohio showing a 10 point lead for Mr. Bush. That is a tremendous swing, one that defies credulity, especially when one considers that nationally, Mr. Zogby was showing the trend moving away from Mr. Bush and towards Mr. Gore. Mr. Bush won Ohio by 4 points.
Not a single other poll showed any major change in voter sentiment in Ohio during this timeframe.
- On October 31, 2000, Mr. Zogby had Mr. Gore leading Florida by 11 points. Mr. Gore campaigned non-stop in the last few days in Florida while Mr. Bush did not. The race in Florida, as we all know all too well, was a dead heat.
Not a single other poll showed the swings in Florida voter sentiments that Mr. Zogby was showing.
- From 10/29 to 10/31, Mr. Zogby showed Mr. Bush increasing his lead in the national level, from 3 points to five points. But what was he showing on the state level? Here is a chart to demonstrate:
In other words, while his national poll was showing movement towards Mr. Bush, nearly every one of his battleground state polls were showing movement towards Mr. Gore. His own polls were inconsistent with each other.State 10/29 10/31 Change Florida Gore +5 Gore +11 Gore +6 Tennessee Bush +11 Bush +5 Gore +6 Pennsylvania Bush +7 Gore +3 Gore +10 Michigan Tied Gore +1 Gore +1 Missouri Gore +2 Bush +1 Bush +3 Ohio Bush +3 Bush +5 Bush +2 Wisconsin Gore +6 Gore +8 Gore +2 Illinois Gore +7 Gore +7 No Change
- Mr. Zogby gets credit for being the first to show the late movement towards Mr. Gore. In reality, Mr. Zogby's polls showed a big change from Mr. Bush leading on 11/5 to Mr. Gore leading on 11/6. Since his poll was a rolling sample, to get such a marked change in one day, either a very good day for Mr. Bush had to fall off the rotating sample, or a very good day for Mr. Gore had to be added. Since Mr. Zogby's numbers had been pretty steady for the week preceding, we can infer that the former was not the case. In order for a four day tracking poll to make a 4 point swing in one day when the day falling out of the sample was not an outlier, the day coming into the sample must have been tremendous for Mr. Gore, on the order of a 10 point leap for that day's sample. Unlike the Gallup poll, in which the one day sample sizes were so small that days where the numbers would jump that much were statistically feasible, Mr. Zogby was sampling over 400 people per day, which makes such swings difficult to explain by statistical chance.
Did Mr. Zogby get the correct gap between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore on the national level? Yes. But a review of his polling during the days leading up to the election shows that he was wrong, and in some cases tremendously so, as often as he was correct, and that his own polls were inconsistent with each other from day to day and even on the same day.
Then after the election, the Rats were citing and quoting him as being right on.The Battleground poll did show late movement towards Gore. The problem (if it can be called that) is that Battleground didn't and doesn't poll on Fridays or Saturdays, so their four-day poll sample had Wed-Thur-Sun-Mon. Their last poll release, which included that last Sunday and Monday, showed a good amount of movement towards Gore, but it was watered down by the Wed-Thur numbers. This is a risk with rolling samples (exasperbated by taking two days off)- late movement can be masked.That meant that legitimate pollsters like the Battleground group were either dummies or something happened that none of the groups picked up in their last polls.
On the other hand, Zogby didn't show late movement towards Gore. His poll showed the movement earlier. His last few polls were steady.
Exit polls showed that there was late movement though. So in a counter-intuitive way, Battleground actually picked up on something real that Zogby didn't.
My full comments about Zogby's 2000 performance are above by a comment or two.
I know Zogby doesn't walk on water the way some say, and I know that Battleground is about as good a group as you can get. I don't think that either should be ignored; it is better to look at polls as pictures taken from slightly different angles.
By their very nature, polls are not precise. When you think about it, the large sample polls have margins of error of +/-3 points per candidate, and most polls have margins of error slightly higher. This means that two polls, done with the same methods even, could differ by 6 or more points without there being any reason other than random chance (and actually, by random chance, 1 in 20 would differ by even more than that, without anything being "wrong" per se).
I find that Zogby's state polls and his demographic breakdowns on his final poll during the 2000 election undercut the assertion that he nailed the election, though.
Side note on Kondracke: the weekend before the GOP landslide, I saw him on the McLaughlin Group, and he called a 40 to 50 seat swing and Republican control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Not sure what polls he was using, because I didn't see anyone else make that call, nor any other commentator.
I would be happier if more people volunteered with their local Republican committees to help out on election day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.