'Cellphone Effect' Could Skew Polling Predictions 836
Ponca City writes "A good deal of polling data suggest that Republicans may win the House of Representatives in today's mid-term elections. However, Nate Silver writes in the NY Times that there are several factors that could skew the election, allowing Democrats to outperform their polls and beat consensus expectations. Most prominent is the 'cellphone effect.' In 2003, just 3.2% of households were cell-only, while in the 2010 election one-quarter of American adults have ditched their landlines and rely exclusively on their mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don't call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied. Another factor that could skew results is the Robopoll effect, where there are significant differences between the results shown by automated surveys and those which use live human interviewers — the 'robopolls' being 3 or 4 points more favorable to Republicans over all. It may be that only adults who are extremely engaged by politics (who are more likely to be Republican, especially this year) bother to respond to robocalls. Still, when all is said and done, 'more likely than not, Republicans will indeed win the House, and will do so by a significant margin,' writes Silver. 'But just as Republicans could beat the consensus, Democrats could too, and nobody should be particularly shocked if they do.'"
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Informative)
You should vote, if only to vote for a write-in or third party candidate. This election is as much about the "Two Parties" screwing things for "Joe Sixpack" in favor of their corporate overlords. The problem is that we don't have much of a choice from the two major parties.
So, vote, but send a message. If third parties get more than 20% combined, there can be no call for "mandate" from either of the two parties.
Voting for the lessor of two evils is a logical fallacy. There are more than two evils running for most posts.
Lopsided summary... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lopsided summary... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:no, no bias here at all (Score:4, Informative)
Complete wishful bullshit.
Amazing how much rationalization is going into analyzing (and trying to explain away) polling data that suggests a Democratic bloodbath. What, too much "change" in the air now?
Fwiw and purely anecdotally, I've always seen results skew 4+ percent to the right of polls, because consevatives (even 'engaged' ones), are far more likely to share their view with a pollster, while liberals - especially the young - LOVE to tell everyone how liberal they are.
That's great. Exactly the opposite of my experience, but it probably depends on where you live. I live in a town with a pretty strong liberal majority, so nobody ever goes around spouting anything about it. It is the more conservative types who go around telling everyone within earshot how conservative they are (but you're right, it does tend to be the younger ones - I think because they are so excited about being all "rebellious" going against their liberal parents).
Come to think of it, it may actually be the independents that are the worst in this respect (but around here independents are usually conservative, so same difference).
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
I understand your sentiment but polling is free speech. Someone should be free to ask, and others should be free to answer, or not. If someone does ask a bunch of people a question, they should be free to share those results. If there is a chunk of the population that is too stupid to filter those results or understand what they may or may not mean - then the solution is education not the restriction of speech.
Re:Lopsided summary... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:collective insanity (Score:4, Informative)
American public: "Wow, those Republicans sure fucked everything up. Better vote Democrat this time."
T+4 years: "Wow, those Democrats sure fucked everything up. Better vote Republican!"
T+8 years: "Wow, those Republicans sure fucked everything up. Better vote Democrat this time."
Umm, people? We have other choices, you know. The extremes of *any* party are going to be nut-jobs, but we can probably do a lot better to let the D's and R's set a few rounds out.
But we won't, will we. Because voting is supposed to be about thinking with other people's brains and voting with the flock.
It sounds insane, but as long as you have this winner-take-all voting system then you're always going to have two dominant parties. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the broken system* then what you should be campaigning for is a Proportional Representation [wikipedia.org] voting system where you vote for as many candidates as you want in ranked choice. This would discourage a lot of the populist appealing to the extremes and bring politics closer to the center IMHO. You'd also see a lot more people registering as independents and better quality candidates defecting to the smaller parties and making them more credible, whereas right now anyone who's serious about getting elected has to pick their poison, R or D, and hold their nose and run on that ticket.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:2, Informative)
Thats wrong up here. I was at a disability conference and the state election board had a Diebold machine and I talked to them.
Diebolds can take a write-in just fine, they have a keypad that records the input which is recorded and a receipt is printed out so you can confirm the machine got the input right. If there is a problem you can have the error scratched out and redo or if able to write, correct the write in on the receipt and have that be the vote of record.
Thats in Alaska, so your mileage may vary.
Write-in is a big issue up here because we have a Republican that lost in the primary running as a write-in.
Re:New Polling Measure Hastens Process! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:3, Informative)
Athens was an oligarchy, you had to be racially and economically privilged to get a vote.
Re:Vote or Die (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who can say (Score:2, Informative)
I assume that you read the story and realized that these were "5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House," a companion piece to the one a couple days ago which talked about why the Republicans could overperform their polling numbers. He clearly states that the pieces are speculation on what could be the cause if democrats (or republicans in the other piece) do better than expected. If that wasn't enough of a clue, this paragraph (the last one) should have given you the hint:
Basically his point is that there is a lot of uncertainty around the polling numbers at this point, and that one should not be surprised if either democrats or republicans outperform expectations.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Vote or Die (Score:4, Informative)
So what you're looking for is a financially conservative party that doesn't give a crap about what you do for entertainment, as long as those involved are consenting adults.
Is that correct?
Aren't those people called "libertarians?" I hear that they actually do exist. You can vote for them, and if their isn't a libertarian on the ballot in your district, then you could run yourself.
You don't have to win the election to make a difference: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader have both demonstrated that third party candidates can have a huge impact in the result even when they don't win.
(BTW: "You" in this post doesn't refer to Beardo even though I'm replying to his post)
re: the logic of voting 3rd. party (Score:4, Informative)
You make several good points, but ultimately, I still find I disagree with you on some of it.
Although major party candidates of the "2 party system" may in fact use a 3rd. party candidate as "leverage" to get more votes (channeling support to them so votes for them siphon them away from their direct competitor), I'm not sure that should be viewed as a "problem"? If you happen to believe that neither a Republican or a Democrat that's running for a given position is right for the job, you're stuck with the following options:
1. Refuse to vote. (Useless, because by sitting it out, you're ranked among the apathetic. Everything goes on without your input.)
2. Go to the polls and vote for the "lesser of 2 evils" of the Republicans/Democrats in question. (That means your vote just counted the same as the next guy who was in FULL SUPPORT of the candidate you disliked, but only voted for because you hoped they were slightly better than the alternative.)
3. Vote for a 3rd. party candidate who is closer to your own beliefs than the others in the running.
4. Vote for a write-in candidate. (Practically-speaking, this option seems to accomplish nothing except in some oddball case where you knew the majority agreed to go with a write-in. Otherwise, it's pretty much a statistical impossibility your random write-in candidate is going to be selected over people actually named on the ballot as choice, who spent money actively campaigning.)
So optimally, I think your options really boils down to either 2 or 3 here, if you're wanting to accomplish anything at all? And the way I look at it? If nobody cast any votes for the 3rd. party guys or gals on the ballot, they'd eventually just go away completely. Sure, their chances of actually winning might be slim to none, but your vote for them helps legitimize what they're doing. For example, the Libertarian party has pretty much always managed to get somebody onto the ballot in every election I've ever voted in. They may only get 3% of the vote in the end -- but that's enough so they know some people out there are listening to what they're saying. In turn, they may influence some of the Democratic or Republican voters to demand more Libertarian-minded solutions from their candidates down the road.
Re:Vote or Die (Score:3, Informative)
Systems Analysis (Score:3, Informative)
Voting for someone who doesn't stand a chance of winning is equivalent to not voting in every practical measure.
The design of the political system means that nobody's vote means very much. All candidates who have any chance of winning were purchased prior to the election. And if they ever go back on their word to their financial backers, they are through in politics. Popularity isn't sufficient. It wasn't even sufficient when Teddy Roosevelt got disgusted and founded the Bull Moose party. (And lost.)
What a marginally acceptable candidate running means is merely that the person elected will have views even less acceptable to the majority of the populace. This is something that either Instant Runnoff Voting or Condorcet voting would fix. I think that Condorcet voting is the superior choice, but Instant Runnoff (IRV) is easier to explain.
If all elections went to either of those choices, then over time politics would become cleaner. You couldn't buy a candidate, because there would be too many of them. You'd need to buy a Legislator. That's still cheap, but it's less guaranteed to be successful, and it's more expensive. And it's more public. (Note that this wouldn't be a quick process, and things might get corrupted on a different front while the one front was being cleaned up. So don't believe promises of paradise from ANYONE.)
As it is, however, politics is an auction. And corporations have made things more corrupt than the political parties ever did in the days of "smoke filled rooms".
OTOH, because all candidates are bought ahead of time, the big money isn't interested in fixing the vote. Thus the electronic voting systems are trivially easy to corrupt BECAUSE those who want to do the corruption are low stakes players. If it became important which candidate was selected (to the large financial interests) then things would change, so that only those with lots of backing could corrupt the vote.
Am I too cynical? I don't think so, but then I wouldn't, would I. So I'll acknowledge the possibility that I'm wrong. The only way to tell would be to try the experiment. Even then it would take decades before the results were in.
Re:Vote or Die (Score:4, Informative)
Not that I'm claiming either of them was competent. I'm just making sure when listing either of their long list of flaws, that they are accurately represented. Well, unless you are one of those strict Constitutionalists that hypocritically asserts that Obama should have unconstitutionally ignored Bush's last budget, in which case I'm calling you a hypocritical ass.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:2, Informative)
No, this is a lie. Unemployment was never under 4% under GWB, Jan of '01 it was at 4.2% and got progressively worse, until '06-'07, when it improved some before entering into the current slide. It was never under 4% under GWB
You may be right. But this [teachmefinance.com] graph does show it dropping below 4% early in Bush's term. I got my source. If yours is better we'll take it. It was at under 4.5% in October 2006, about 2 months before D's took control of both houses (source [usatoday.com]). Now where is it? Where was in 2008? That six year slide you turned into an outright nose dive right after D's took control of congress.
Also, as I'm sure you remember a little incident that happened 9 months and 11 days into 2001 that absolutely wrecked consumer confidence and the economy with it.
Record tax receipts are just a function of a growing GDP and inflation, nothing more.
Yes, that's it. It's all smoke and mirrors. If you don't agree with the numbers, try to make them meaningless. spin-spin-spin-spin. Of course, like we've said, with the 4.1% unemployment (your number), it makes perfect sense that with more people working and paying taxes that the government will take in less money. That is what you are saying, right?
But I have to get back to your main idiocy in your post, which is somehow thinking that the unemployment rate instantly corresponds to who controls Congress and nothing else.
Nope. Lots of things can help/hurt the economy. But if you look over recent history... say 1992 through today, you see Clinton inheriting a recession and not being able to anything with it until 1995. Then the economy boomed, giving Clinton a surplus which got handed to Bush. Bush's economy did extremely well until 2007, then tanked.
Now, pay close attention to those numbers and see if you can tell me what happened in those years. It wasn't the president, because both Clinton and Bush had roughly 6 years of boom and 2 years of bust. Maybe it's congress. Hmmm. Let's see. In 1995 Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House when Republicans took it over. In 2007, Nancy Pelosi became SotH when D's took over the House. Those years also seem to be the exact same years the economy started to boom or bust. Coincidence? Evidently you think so.
If you're really simplistic enough to not understand that any economy is largely a product of recent (to that economy) history, not current activity, then you should probably read a book or two.
You're right. What the Hell do I know? I'm just backed up by historical fact and economic performance. While you are backed up with calling me names and telling me to read a book. You obviously have the upper hand here.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:3, Informative)
and a bit of dirty politics (yes, an oxymoron)
I think you mean "redundancy."