I hope all of you understand why the Republicans suddenly came up with a pseudoscientific theory that all the public polling firms are skewed toward Obama and that Romney is going to win convincingly. They didn’t launch this theory during the summer. They launched it about a week before the first voters started going to the polls in places like Iowa. They launched it just before most states cut off new voter registrations.
Here’s the deal. Nate Silver, the country’s preeminent statistical interpreter of polls, says that Mitt Romney would have a 1.9% chance of winning if the election were held today. In truth, a small part of the election is being held today. Voters are already voting. If the people on the right began to absorb the hopelessness of Romney’s cause, they would have no motivation to register to vote. They would have no motivation to register other people to vote. It’s just a psychological fact that people are less likely to go vote for a sure loser. People will begin to digest the fact that Obama is getting a second term, and their activism and enthusiasm will wither on the vine.
It’s also a psychological fact that people are way more motivated to vote for president than they are for Senate and House races. When people find better things to do on election day than vote for Mitt Romney, they also fail to vote for all the other Republicans on the ballot.
Both sides know this. It’s why the Democrats are throwing these polling numbers so aggressively in the Republicans’ faces. We’re trying to demoralize them. And the reason the right is feeding their base these lies about the polls is because they are trying to prevent their base from being demoralized. But this isn’t an example of “both sides do it.” The Democrats are telling the truth. The president has an eleven-point lead in the swing states, and has reached an untouchable 52% in those contests. Mitt Romney is getting his ass kicked. This isn’t hype or hyperbole. The Republicans, however, are just lying to their base.
Lying to their base has become an essential tool in their voter turnout strategy. Unlike in the debates, where the game is to lower expectations for your candidate so that they can exceed them, the goal with the polls is to increase expectations so that field workers will keep their morale up and apathy and resignation won’t set in.
The poll skewing theory really isn’t even about the presidential race, which is, barring a miracle, already lost. It’s about preventing Romney’s campaign from collapsing so badly that he has severely negative coattails in House and Senate races.
If the truth gets out, that’s exactly what will happen. Therefore, it’s time to wage another all-out war against the truth.
I’m not an expert on this at all, so maybe my bright idea is just not plausible at all. If so, I would welcome reassurance that I am seeing creepies under the bed that aren’t there.
If the republicans can throw around very close poll numbers (within the margin of error) often and loudly enough that people become familiar with them and accept them as being somewhat valid, then it will be easier to fix the voting machines to provide some very close wins for Romney. Based on close polls, the results could be accepted as plausible.
I really think that Dems should dispense with the “voting machines are fixed” rhetoric, especially when there’s no direct evidence that it’s true.
By spreading this idea, you’re discouraging Dems from turning out (“My vote won’t count anyway. Why bother?”). You’re doing the enemy’s dirty work for them.
I agree wholeheartedly. This theory is tiresome, annoying, and has almost nothing to support it.
Not necessarily.
I was sent a paper written by an accepted expert in voting irregularities (and scientology) that purports to show evidence of vote flipping in 2008 primary and the 2012 primaries and general election.
Personally, I think its bullshit. I was asked to study it because it touches upon my area of expertise in computers (micro patterns in large data sets). My primary reason for considering it BS is the attitude of the authors. Secondarily, I’ve come up with three non-causal, linked bias situations to describe the observed actions. It is written for an educated general audience.
If you want a copy of this, email me. I’ll send it and you can make your own judgement. It does require some familiarity with statistics, but not that much.
Thanks everyone, I will go back to worrying more about how to make sure everyone who is eligible to cast a vote is able to. Also choose more carefully where my reading habits are taking me. Back to reality.
It’s fine to see creepies under the bed because they could be there, but probably not. May as well get out the flashlight and have a good look under there for your own peace of mind though.
Any system can be rigged if the people running the system have an agenda. Fortunately, in most cities and counties, the people actually charged with carrying out elections are career civil servants who take their jobs seriously and really do want to run a fair election, regardless of its outcome. Even if the elected official overseeing them has a partisan agenda, they don’t usually get away with any shenanigans because these people would blow the whistle on them and they know it.
It’s also up to voters to be on the lookout at their polling locations and reporting any irregularities to one of the election integrity groups. There will be plenty of oversight from these groups and if you have special skills to offer them on election day, you should volunteer if you can.
Voting machines are not the only way to rig elections. Read Frank Kent’s The Great Game of Politics, which came out in the 1920s to see how to rig ballot boxes and mechanical voting machines the way the big city machines used to do it.
I didn’t say anything about voting machines. I was speaking to the larger “system” of counting votes, by any means. Where you have problems are with the people and the processes that they follow, not machines (if they even use any.) People can manipulate any system if they set their mind to it and there’s inadequate oversight.
Exactly Frank Kent’s point about the so-called “more accurate” mechanical voting machines of his era.
Exactly…it’s more cover for election fraud: perception is everything
Insofar as they think they can fool the fat-cats, it’s about fooling them, too.
“The president has an eleven-point lead in the swing states, and has reached an untouchable 52% in those contests. Mitt Romney is getting his ass kicked. This isn’t hype or hyperbole. “
Maybe it would hurt both sides to be truthful?
Consider being a Dem voter in Massachusetts or Ohio, which might be blowouts for Obama. Why bother to vote? Both states have important senate races, but I’ve yet to see the campaign stress the house and senate races.
I think it would also be hard to recruit and motivate volunteers if you are so far ahead victory seems assured.
“Across most of the presidential battleground states, particularly in the Midwest, President Obama’s lead rests on a surprisingly strong performance among blue-collar white women who usually tilt toward the GOP.” from HERE.
“Democrats say blue-collar women have been the principal, and most receptive, target for their extended ad barrage portraying Romney as a plutocrat who is blind, if not indifferent, to the struggles of average families.” same place.
Remember a couple of months ago (July, I think) when Romney didn’t go to Ralfalca’s showing? And the disparaging things he said about it being “Ann’s interest”?
I said then, that the insensitivity shown by Mitt toward his wife’s interest (obsession) would bear bitter fruit. It did. How can you trust someone who’d sell out their wife for a temporary political advantage?
This is not a new, or exclusively Republican, game. I vividly remember the full-page ads in the NYT and elsewhere – with TV ads to match – from the McGovern campaign on the eve of the 1972 election. The headline: “How could the polls have been so wrong?,” purporting to examine, from future historians’ view, how nobody saw McGovern’s remarkable victory coming.
The polls were fairly accurate in that one, too.
Agreed. You only need to remember folks on the Daily Kos in 2004 repeatedly saying that the polls were systematically under-counting Dems, particularly students and cell-phone-only folks, and that Kerry was actually leading.
You see the same thing in the primaries. When one of the candidates starts attacking the polls, you know it’s only a matter of time before that candidate drops out.
The losing party always claims the polls are wrong. That’s how you can identify who’s losing with great certainty.
tell the truth, BooMan