News of the Day for 10/30 (Horserace Blog--As Mentioned on Rush's Show)

1. Here is a good sign for BC04. Elenaror Clift of Newsweek has a new column out in which she predicts a Kerry win. Most of the piece is anti-Bush blather. But then we come down to the real meat and potatoes. Unfortunately, it's only a single serving. This is the best and only reason she has for this prediction:

With more than two thirds of the undecided voters saying the country is on the wrong track, Kerry should win. Bush got 47.9 percent of the vote in 2000, and that’s where he is stuck today. A record voter turnout is expected, and that signals change, not four more years.

Anytime you see a candidate's partisans start talking up "unprecedented" turnot, you know that the candidate is in bad shape. Why? Because it never, ever, ever pans out. The last candidate to talk up unprecidetned turnout was Howard Dean in IA. And we all know how well that went for him.

And as for Bush peaking at 47.9% -- Gallup, Fox, ABC News and Battleground all have him at or above 50%. It is only the mysterious TIPP poll, the mysterious ICR poll, and the useless Zogby tracking poll that show him below 50%.

As for right track/wrong track, this is one of those bits of the CW that just will not die, despite how many times people repeat that Clinton had negative rt/wt numbers in 1996.

One thing that has become frustrating to me is that the realclearpolitics.com state averages have become increasingly useless. They have become slaves to Zogby's wild swings over the past few days. In the last six days -- Zogby has "found":

* An whopping seven point swing in Minnesota overnight. Can you imagine what kind of sample Zogby must have used one night if, on a three day rolling average, he went from Bush 46-45 in Minnesota (with 6% undecided) to Kerry 49-43 in Minnesota (still with 6% undecided)? Ohio also had a four point swing overnight.

I paraphrase Pete Venkman: "Zogby has gone bye-bye, Egon. What've you got left?"

Anyway, a proper average of the reputable national tracking polls in the last week shows Bush averaging 49.9%, Kerry with 46.5% with a margin of error of +/-1.1%. It also shows that we can be 99.999999% confident that Bush has a lead. (Note that when I say reputable polls, I mean I have excised ICR, TIPP and Zogby -- all three either have unpublished methods or poor methods. I did not exclude, however, The LA Times poll, which samples slightly heavily in favor of Democrats. The nice effect this has is that it balances different sampling techniques -- LA Times is pro-Democratic in its samples, Battleground is not, Gallup and Fox do not weight its samples, etc. As long as we get rid of that atrocious Zogby poll, the reconciliation works well -- can you tell how angry I am with Zogby? I was outraged to learn of his blatant disregard for industry methodological and ethical standards.)

You were saying, Eleanor? Note, my dear Eleanor, that my reconciliation does not include that rotten, good-for-nothing poll which your magazine has the chutzpah to put out every week -- this poll, by the by, shows Bush 51-45 in the two-way.

2. You must all have been as happy as I to see Mason-Dixon finally bringing some sanity to all these OH polls. They are a good outfit. I failed to mention them in my post about polling firms. But they are good. Bush +3 in OH. Can't complain 'bout that!

The poll has an interesting breakdown by geographic region -- showing where candidates are gaining/losing strength. Unfortunately, their geographic breakdowns differ from mine, so I cannot analyze the nitty gritty of the poll.

3. Kerry is sounding more and more like our good buddy Bob Dole. So notes The Washington Times:

John Kerry told American voters yesterday to "wake up" and realize they have a choice for a different direction in a president and commander in chief when they go to the polls on Tuesday.

He asked voters to view the election through the eyes of a young woman "[who] will pick up her ballot and think about her future," worried about finding a job and juggling work and family while falling behind. And see through the eyes of a wife whose husband is in Iraq: "She'll wonder how much longer he'll have to stay in Iraq, and when she'll see him again. And she will wonder whether we can afford four more years of a president who's unwilling to admit the mistakes he has made, and says he would do everything all over again exactly the same. "On Tuesday, you have the choice to give her hope. You have the choice to give America a fresh start in Iraq," Mr. Kerry said.

The political theorist in me is dying to tear this goofy argument to shreds, i.e. does this not fly in the face of the very theoretical foundation of democracy? Or -- if this is what we should do -- why not have just women with children and women with soldiers in Iraq vote? But I'll remind myself that I am taking a break from my political theory activities for the month.

Instead, let me just use this as a quick segue into something that has been on my mind lately. The one thing that the Kedwards campaign has done is make themselves out to be a winning team. This is why, for instance, the pundits &c are still talking about a race "too close to call," despite the fact that only the renegade Zogby has Kerry up. Kedwards has been masterful in keeping their campaign from imploding this last week (note that they have received a lot of help from Zogby). Ryan Lizza provides us with what might be our answer: Mike McCurry.

Now, let me just say that I saw Mike McCurry once give a speech when I was in high school. He is really, really, really likeable. I even liked him -- and this was back in my libertarianesque days when I thought that taxing income was tantamount to peonage. He's funny, he's charming, he's smart. I think he has helped Kedwards by charming the pants off the press -- which, for the Kedwards campaign, is a definite first:

McCurry has quickly become a beloved figure to Kerry's traveling press. The secret to McCurry's success with journalists is that his operating premise is that he is one of them. Yes, he works for John Kerry, but McCurry lets reporters know that he thinks more like a reporter than a flak. A small but revealing example: Not long ago, during a press conference call, someone asked a question about some internal campaign issue, and McCurry said he didn't have the answer. Then he made some suggestions about how one could call around to campaign officials and dig out the information. It would be unthinkable for a Bush staffer to offer strategic advice about how to pry news out of the administration.

That is just good, smart politics. It is something that, as Lizza has noted, the Bushies seem incapable of doing.

Bush has undergone quite a transformation with the press in the last four years. He was very, very sociable with them in the 2000 campaign. This helped him get good copy (er...better copy than he would otherwise have received). Since he has been in DC, he has been aloof in relation to the press. What's more, he runs a very, very tight White House -- thus, the leaks have all but dried up. The press really does not like that. Many people believe that it is because of Bush's political beliefs/opinions that the Washington press corps hates his administration. That tells only part of the tale. The other part of the tale has to do with the way his administration treats the press. After the glory years of Clinton, where there were more leaks than people had buckets, this is like the Saharra. Not a drop to drink. That pisses the press off, and they make BC04 feel their fury.

Unfortunately for Kerry, press management is only the tip of the iceberg in a presidential campaign. It controls what people see. But, like an iceberg, elections are really driven by what is not seen. By, for instance, GOTV. And Kedwards is relying on crack dealers for that.

This is why, despite the good press he has received, Kedwards is talking like it is all over. If America needs to "wake up," that means she is poised to reelect the President.

3. Apparently, BC04 believes having Ahnold campaign for them is helpful. They must have some data that indicates this. This can only mean that my gut on this one is completely wrong. Read through this write-up on Ahnold in The Washington Times. The guy is a one-trick pony: nothing but bad puns and self-referential metaphors. Ugh. Here is the best...uh...worst...of the bunch:

"I'm here to tell you you are the powerlifters for progress," he said. "If you flex your muscles November 2, I guarantee you, President Bush will be back," the former actor declared, borrowing a line from one of his films. "I am asking for your vote."

On the other hand, the attention the visit received could only have helped. Good indication: it was the big photo on the front cover of The LA Times. So again, what do I know?

4. I noted yesterday that I did not want any mail on the UBL tape...and darnnit if I didn't get a ton of mail about it. I must say that this is one of the most fundamental reasons that I love Americans. I don't just love America. I love Americans. We do exactly the opposite of what we are asked/requested to do because, damnit, that's our right. Man I love that. Feisty, defiant, assured. So, keep 'em coming!

In all seriousness, bin Laden appears to be the anticpated October surprise (that's an ironic phrase, eh?). I still eschew any commentary on this. I honestly have nothing to say. I prefer looking at politics from the bottom-up instead of the top-down. This UBL story is definitely a top-down kind of angle. It is not because it is out of my league to do so, as one particularly feisty reader implied, it is, rather, because I think top-down politics is extremely unpredictable. You never know whether things will actually have an effect; and, if they have an effect, whom it will benefit. Honestly, my gut tells me that this UBL tape helps Bush. But that presumes that it helps anybody, and I cannot evaluate that presumption. I just don't know. The news cycle is like some bizarre organic, even sentient, creature with a life of its own. I just don't know how to predict its actions, let alone the public response to those actions.

So here I am being feisty and defiant in my profession of ignorance. Isn't this a great country? Robert Evans answers, "You bet your ass it is!"

President Bush holds rallies in Grand Rapids, MI, Ashwaubenon, WI, Minneapolis (with Vikings head coach Mike Tice), and Orlando at 9:15 am ET, 12:35 am ET, 3:15 pm ET, and 8:00 pm ET, respectively.

Sen. Kerry rallies Appleton, WI, Des Moines, and Warren, OH at 11:00 am ET, 3:15 pm ET, and 8:45 pm ET, respectively, before flying to Dayton to overnight.

Bush carried Kent County, MI handily in 2000. This might indicate to us what BC04 is picking up in MI. It might be that Kedwards, whose strong places are Wayne, Genesse and Washtenaw Counties show a lagging enthusiasm among the Democrats. If Bush can pump up turnout in the western and northern sections of the state, he might be able to steal it. The gay marriage amendment on the ballot is probably what is keeping MI in play by picking up enthusiasm in those areas. By all accounts, Bush under-performed in most of Michigan. This includes the the north (including the panhandle) as well as some counties in the western portion of the state. The Detroit suburbs were not very friendly to him, either. Thus, the shallacking he received in urban Wayne County was enough to guarantee a loss. If Bush can right the situation in the rural sections of the state, it might be enough to counter-act the Democratic power that is Wayne County.

Note also the weekend-before-the-election trip to MN. That state is gonna be the big surprise of 11-2, I think.

6. Several people have written me worried about the Iowa Electronic Market. Apparently, it has dropped dramatically in the last few days. I would refer you to the third item in this post. My guess is that somebody with $ has decided to buy up Kedwards shares to drive their price up to create pro-Kerry stories in the papers.

7. My hometown paper reports that Bush will be appearing in my hometown on Monday. That would be the incomparable Pittsburgh, PA. Not only is he heading there for one of his campaign closers, he is heading to The Post-Gazette Pavillion. This is where rock stars go when they want more than 10,000 Pittsburghers to show up. This is a very good sign about the potential of PA going for Bush. If the numbers were soft in PA, they wouldn't send their big gun there for the finale, let alone to The Post-Gazette Pavillion. Maybe PA will be the big surprise on Tuesday. If it is, Bush must get the cultural conservatives in Western PA behind him. We Pittsburghers generally love to hunt and we generally hate abortion. There is potential there for Bush.

Bush will also be traveling to Philly, Waukesha, WI (a Milwaukee suburb...a very, very, very good sign), and Sioux City, IA on Monday. Tomorrow he heads to Gainesville, Orlando and Cincinatti.

Kerry, meanwhile, heads to Dayton, OH (one of the Gore counties from 2000); Manchester, NH; and Tampa FL. Monday he heads to solidly blue urban centers: Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit. Yikes! If that is not a sign of soft polling in key blue counties, I don't know what is! To finish up your campaign in counties that your predacessor won by 24%, 13% and (whoa!) 40% respectively? Yikes! I am not sure even McCurry can sweet his way through this one (that's a lie...I know the press will buy whatever he sells).

Sixty percent of those polled say they oppose the proposal, known as Amendment 36, while 32 percent support it, according to a Rocky Mountain News/News4 survey released yesterday.

I take that as a good sign for Bush. I figured that Bush's support would be a proxy for the opposition to the amendment, and vice-versa. Not a perfect proxy (obviously more people in CO oppose the Amendment than favor Bush), but the two are positively correlated. Given this result and given the fact that Kedwards has pulled its ads, I think CO is all over. Note that it will not be one of the states we are watching on 11-2.

9. Let me give you some advice about polling. We will see many polls this weekend. Here is what I will be doing.

Polls to watch this weekend: Gallup Time Pew Strategic Vision Quinnipiac Mason-Dixon Battleground

Polls to avoid this weekend: Zogby ICR TIPP Rasmussen Survey USA Democracy Corps ARG Newsweek Any poll you have never heard of

Note that if you are still inclined to believe Zogby, check out this line from a WaPo article, which reader David has pointed out to me:

[T]he Zogby poll published in the Rapid City Journal ... showed Republican Thune leading Daschle, 48.5 percent to 45.5 percent, just within the margin of error. At first, however, the poll had shown an even larger Thune lead, which seemed so improbable that the pollsters adjusted their voter turnout estimates and arrived at the narrower gap.

Any scientist who changes his method a posteriori should not be called a scientist. He should be called a hack.

10. Several readers have asked me to chart the effects of cell phone usage. Are they mucking up polls?

Well...academics are concerned about cell phones, but I am not sure the concern is transferable to political pollsters. The reason for this is that to say that cell phones are mucking up your horserace poll presumes that those who are unavailable due to cell phones possess a politically relevant characteristic in a statistically significant greater or lesser degree. For instance, if Ralph Nader pulls in 1% among adults nationwide (MOE +/- 3%) and he pulls in 7% with cell-phone only users, then the existence of these people is hurting the sample.

Is this the case? Well, the rub is that nobody knows. To know whether one group possesses some quality different from another in a statistically significant way, you must first poll them, whoch the government does not allow you to do.

Thus, every time you see somebody talking about this issue, they are simply hypothesizing. There is no direct data to indicate a difference between cell phone users and the general public. There might be indirect data, e.g. they tend to be young, which means they tend to x, y and z politically relevant characteristics, etc. But this line of reasoning, while it relies on some evidence, is nevertheless very hypothetical in its character. You are presuming that you have not forgotten about another characteristic which cuts the other way. You are presuming that the characteristic in question is statistically significant. You are presuming, generally, that you have thought everything out in advance. The reason that science is not Cartesian or (forgive me) Leibnizian today is because we know such a priori postulating usually results in big-time mistakes when applied to the real world.

So, I would say on the whole cell phone issue what every good social scientist would say. I do not know. We must find some way to measure it.

As for "new voters," whether they will make a difference on 11-02 or skew the polls before 11-02. Let me just say this: "new voters" have been the perennial hope of every losing or stupid candidate since the dawn of democracy. I hear that one of the reasons Plato was so down on democracy in The Republic was because all those "new voters" in Athens did not come out to support his guy Socrates during "The trial of Fourth Century BC". We all know what happened with that one!

Hey...maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this will be the first election in American history where new voters are going to swamp to the polls, defy all the expectation-makers, and bring to us a new world order. Maybe Eleanor Clift is right.

Or maybe...just maybe...this election will be like every other we have had in our history, where we generally see only a modest uptick in turnout (i.e. 1-3% nationwide) relative to the last election due to this election's closeness.

11. Update: Fox released its new poll about 45 minutes ago. Note that the poll uses the last day sample of the previous poll. This indicates that Fox is going to start doing a rolling average. As is typical of media organizations who do not know any better, they have junked the previous day's poll. This is quite stupid. If you average the two results out, taking in all the data collected in the four days thus far, Bush is ahead 49.2% to 45% with a margin of error of less than 3%. Apparently, Bush did not poll well in Friday's Fox sample. The Washington Post's polling director was on Fox just now and he said Kerry did very well on Friday, too. Look for that poll's margins to fall. Try not to let this upset you. They only sample about 200-300 people in any given day. Kerry had a blip last weekend in the WaPo tracking poll, too. It was just a blip. I would note that the evidence from last electiondoes not indicate that WaPo was pro-Gore on the weekends. This year, though, they are 3 for 3 pro-Kerry on the weekends, if the WaPo does the same now. Remember, too, that Bush/Cheney '04 has spent tens of millions to effectively make sure that the WaPo is undersampling Republicans.

State and National Poll Update (Updated 9 PM CST, 10/30)
NOTE: I have adjusted this data to account for the whole slew of Mason-Dixon polls which reader JB was kind enough to bring to my attention.

I decided that since there were so many screwy polls arriving at our electronic doorstep between now and Tuesday, I owe it to you to sort through them. Below are the unweighted averages of all the polls which I consider to be reputable.

Now, since I am exising polls whose methodology I do not like, I think it only appropriate to let you know which polls I am using. One of these polls is Strategic Vision, which does work for Republican politicans. Realclearpolitics will not use their polls to filter their averages. However, they have a good track record and are generally in line with other state polls. Thus, I see no problem using them. I will include equally reputable Democratic polls, should any come to my attention (note that I do not think Democracy Corps is sufficiently reputable).

One technical note, which might surprise you: I have decided to incorporate the Newsweek poll on an ad hoc basis. The reason for this is that Newsweek is, bar none, the best at publishing its internals. They publish everything. So, I have decided to include their polls, pending a review. This one looks pretty kosher, though I think they slightly under-sampled Democrats and over-sampled Independents -- I have included LA Times and ABC News, both of which over-sample Democrats. So everything balances out.

I never had a good a priori reason for excising Newsweek. As my reasons against Newsweek have always been a posteriori, i.e. they just come up with screwy results that nobody is replicating, I have decided that they can be included pending review. Since Newsweek is really, really, really good about releasing its data, and the data seems up-to-snuff this week, this warrants their inclusion. My position on the poll also warmed after I discovered that NBC/WSJ use the same polling outfit, Princeton Associates, for their polls. NBC/WSJ is a fairly decent poll -- so the Newsweek methodology cannot be all that screwed up (inherently at least).

In retrospect, I believe I have been a little too hyperbolic when it comes to Newsweek. My apologies to Eleanor Clift (on this matter, anyway).

Ohio
Bush: 47.93%
Kerry: 46.89%
MOE: 1.4%
(Respondents: 3,511; Polls Used: LA Times, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Mason-Dixon, Strategic Vision)
Based on these results, we can be 80.51% confident that Bush presently has a lead.

Florida
Bush: 49.13%
Kerry: 45.58%
MOE: 1.4%
(Respondents: 4,683; Polls Used: Insider Advantage, Strategic Vision, LA Times, Gallup, Quinnipiac, NY Times, Mason-Dixon)
Based on these results, we can be 99.88% confident that Bush presently has a lead.

Iowa
Bush: 49.24%
Kerry: 45.98%
MOE: 1.9%
(Respondents: 2,675; Polls Used: Mason-Dixon, Research 2000, Strategic Vision, Gallup)
Based on these results, we can be 99.34% confident that Bush presently has a lead.

Wisconsin
Bush: 47.77%
Kerry: 46.36%
MOE: 1.2%
(Respondents: 1,971; Polls Used: Mason-Dixon, Strategic Vision, Badger Poll)
Based on these results, we can be 81.33% confident that Bush presently has a lead.

Minnesota
Bush: 45.1%
Kerry: 46.5%
MOE: 2.1%
(Respondents: 2,189; Polls Used: Mason-Dixon, Strategic Vision, Humphrey Institute, St. Cloud State University)
Based on these results, we can be 68.79% confident that Kerry presently has a lead.

Pennsylvania
Bush: 47.08%
Kerry: 48.52%
MOE: 1.4%
(Respondents: 4,251; Polls Used: West Chester University Gallup Quinnipiac, LA Times, Temple University)
Based on these results, we can be 92.07% confident that Kerry presently has a lead.

Nationwide
Bush: 49.57%
Kerry: 46.28%
MOE: +/- 0.9%
(Respondents: 8,954; Polls Used: ABC News, Fox News, LA Times, Gallup, Newsweek, Battleground)
Based on these results, we can be 99.9997% confident that Bush presently has a lead.
Present Probability that Bush will win the Electoral College: 96.36% (This is the probability that Bush wins FL and IA and WI or OH. Thus, we can be 96.36% confident that Bush would receive a minimum of either 271 EVs or 281 EVs).

Evaluation: Bush looks to be in very strong shape in IA and FL. At this point, his numbers are inching closer and closer to 50%. His numbers in Ohio are coming back to their levels from mid-October. I believe this is due mostly to bad polls replacing good polls and then being replaced in turn by good polls. He still likely retains a lead in WI, but the Mason-Dixon numbers are somewhat unsettling (though they are mitigated by the MN numbers, which in this post are skewed by an outlying survey from St. Cloud State).

Bush also seems to be inching upward in PA, due to a string of polls calling the race a tie (Quinippiac even has him up), which might result in a big pro-Bush surprise on Election Night. Gallup should release another PA poll sometime before 11-02. That should be the one to look for.

Right now the EV math is looking awfully tough for Kerry. He is definitely behind in FL, IA and, though I do not cover it here, NM. This gives Bush a minimum of 266 EVs. Plus, Bush is likely leading in OH and WI -- and I think Kerry will be unable to hold MN when all is said and done. The word on the ground is that BC04's organization in MN is a sight to behold. The big question on my mind right now is not whether Bush gets to 269, but whether he breaks 300 (which he would do if he carries FL, IA, NM, WI, OH and MN -- that would be 306).

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