'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.'"
So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Caller ID, too (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a landline, actually, but it has caller ID. I don't answer calls from unknown or out-of-area callers, which includes pollsters.
I wonder which demographics correlate with people who use Caller ID to screen calls. (Cue debate.)
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:0, Interesting)
Except the vast majority of 3rd part candidates are lunatics too radical to get a major party nomination. Rational people simply don't run for political office anymore since the act of running for political office is in and of itself irrational.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't stand either the Dems or the Reps and I can't understand how folks can toe their respective party lines. I'll vote for one of those corrupt major parties if there's no third party candidate (here in GA the Libertarians got a following) to vote against the incumbent.
Dems - taken over by statists and leftists.
Reps - taken over by the lunatic Evangelical Christian nuts and the folks who can be easily bought with low taxes - balanced budgets be damned!
Both run by big money.
Dear US slashdotters. (Score:2, Interesting)
Please do the right thing. Go f***ing vote. And please vote well (i. e. not for the religious wingnuts, right-wing war mongerers, and Fox-News watchers).
Thank you.
Re:Polls are irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
I know, for instance, which administration I would rather be homosexual under. Corporate money(albeit slightly different types between the parties) is a constant; but the relative influence of religiosity is a pretty significant variable. Democrats tend to be snivelling cowards(cough, getting rid of don't ask, don't tell, cough); but most of the genuine theocrats hang out on the right, either Republican or "Constitution" party.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Interesting)
In many cases, I agree. In 2000 I voted green even though I didn't agree with half their agenda, I've been disenfranchised by moving around for several years since then. But I just voted strait democrat in this election because the republicans in my area decided to go with comic book villain style candidates.
Rick Scott (R, FL gov) = Lex Luthor
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:2, Interesting)
if in your mind "voting creates the illusion of consent", then you have told us all something powerful about your own failed psychology, and nothing at all about actual reality
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter who you elect - voting simply creates the illusion of consent.
Not exactly true.
There are key differences in Democrat and Republicans.
That said, I disagree with both of them, but I vote against the party which I see the greatest threat to my personal liberty and well being.
Which I view as of now as the Republicans as they seem to be willing to trade my personal rights and freedoms off to either security issues, morality through legislation, and or various other issues that affect me personally.
Its not that the Democrats do similar things, but they do less of them.
I originally, voted against the democrats in 2000 simply because of the DMCA, anti-violent video game laws, and anti-smoking legislation only to find out that the republicans created the Patriot act and various laws that were started to make it feel like we were heading towards a Police state.
So given the choice of living in a Nanny State vs a Police state, I'd rather put up with a Nanny state... (catch my drift)
Of course if you really want change, you should start raising awareness of STV [wikipedia.org] and Proportional Representation [wikipedia.org]
You see... As one of the first major nationalized democracies which instituted the First past the post system [wikipedia.org] which was seen as the best way to handle the situation as no one had tried this before in such a way. Although people like Jefferson did point out the mathematical problems with the system, no one bothered to change it.
Now when European monarchies were overthrown and replaced by democracies over the 19th and 20th centuries a great deal of the instituted proportional democracies (most notably the Wiemar republic) simply because it is more mathematically fair and prevents the dominance of 2 major political parties we face in our first past the post system.
Arguably the UK has the same issue as they've also had a first past the post system in voting system that has lasted longer than the US system and are actually talking about trying out STV or a watered down version of prop rep.
Re:I've just got my package from amazon today (Score:3, Interesting)
They know what they have always known:
People will pay money for poll results that favor them.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:3, Interesting)
I really don't understand Americans. You guys are the craddle of modern democracy, you invented the damned thing, fucked it over, killed each other, and then emerged with something a big country could be governed by.... for a while. Yes, you guys are right in that perhaps the model doesnt fit in into todays balance of power: money is power today, not votes. And there is no turning back that particular clock (BTW, you guys also invented that one).
However, you still need to choose between people that will have "some" (even if not much) say over what Gov. does with your taxes and what Gov. does to attempt to regulate social activity. And you yourself brings me the following options:
"Dems - taken over by statists and leftists.
Reps - taken over by the lunatic Evangelical Christian nuts and the folks who can be easily bought with low taxes - balanced budgets be damned!"
I mean, come on, to me, thats a FUCKING NO BRAINER. American leftists, even the extreme (like say, Michael Moore), are dinky dickless dipshits compared to true communists with a government financed party like they have in spain or france. Those guys over there really get out and burn shit, they dont go crying to mama in a two hour long documentary and get filthy rich at it: they believe in communism like your teabaggers believe in 'mericuh.
No matter how bad you perceive the american left to be, when compared with a republican party perfectly portrayable as a fucking bag of nutjobs that will govern with faith and faith alone (Sarah Palin and her newer teabag-clone), its OBVIOUS your country is in DEEP peril.
GET THE FUCK OUT AND VOTE AGAINST REPUG. NOW.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes actually...
The Green Party [wikipedia.org] in Germany comes to mind.
The Pirate party is really close to getting seats in the Swedish Parliament.
Also... Israel had a 3rd party called Kadima [wikipedia.org] which not only was founded in 2005, but was able to get a majority coalition in the Israeli parliament shortly thereafter.
Proportional representation clearly is the best way to get 3rd party candidates and political turnover over any other system that has been tried.
Re:Demographic weighting is missing...a demographi (Score:3, Interesting)
His problem (and mine) is that the summary basically says "After you adjust for not polling enough democrats, you need to adjust for not polling enough democrats."
Exit Polls (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me of the great exit poll kerfuffle [washingtonpost.com] when John Kerry was seen to be leading in exit polls to a greater extent than the actual poll results bore out.
Re:Vote or Die (Score:4, Interesting)
You could in theory vote democrat until the republicans become so marginalized they are forced to become "republican-lite".
Personally, I'd vote Republican in a snap if they weren't so pushy about legislating morality.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Interesting)
My country allows you to mark "blank" on the ballot, in theory, if "blank" wins (thing that never happens due to your same thinking), the election repeats and none of the candidates that were in that election can go to that round.
Question about Robopoll effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the days of ELIZA and people wondering whether computers really could be used to augment, if not replace, human therapists, I recall people describing their surprise at how readily people would confide in such software; perhaps people's inclination to post everything on Facebook is related. But:the existence of a difference between what people tell automated polls and human pollers doesn't, by itself, tell you which of those responses reflects what the people polled really think. For all I know, that ELIZA effect still holds, and people will tell the machine something that they wouldn't tell a human. A robocall won't turn on you and say "You favor tax cuts?! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!" (at least not yet!) or give you a dirty look or inflection that indicates disapproval.
more reasons to vote (Score:3, Interesting)
Local is pretty important. The small suburb I live in was briefly taken over by social conservatives when most everyone except their base stayed home. Probably the corruption of the incumbents, involving a land deal and favorable zoning changes to bring the worlds tallest building (!) to town. The deal collapsed, but not before the mayor made a bundle off the land where the building was to go. After they got the boot, the social conservatives proceeded to screw up big time. Went on a holy crusade against liquor stores. Didn't care about past agreements, the law, our tax base, or anything, just started coming up with bull to run all the liquor stores out of town. The liquor stores sued the city and all the councilpersons who voted against them on the cooked ordinances designed to make it impossible for them to do business. And they won. You can imagine what other brilliant schemes those idiots hatched. Cost us a bundle. Next election was a huge landslide against the social conservatives.
The other reason is that winning isn't everything. If we are ever to have more choices, we have to vote for 3rd parties. Doesn't matter if they don't win, just get them on the radar. We need more parties so we aren't stuck with dilemmas like the above one between corrupt or loony. I noticed this year's ballot had 4 straight ticket choices: R, D, Libertarian, and Green. Green? That's courtesy of the Republicans, trying a dirty trick to suck votes away from Democrats. They're playing with fire. What if the Greens actually collect a significant portion of the vote? Or even-- win?? I'll be laughing at the Republicans for shooting themselves in the foot. Democrats aren't above that crap either. I hear many of them have helped Tea Party candidates win Republican primaries.
Re:why you have to vote (Score:3, Interesting)
meaning those who chose not to vote had a real effect: they helped bush win
Nope. Bush won by just one, repeat just one, vote. 5 to 4.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:5, Interesting)
While the high-profile election seats may be that way, local elections actually generally have people that will effect your daily life.
More importantly high-profile candidates almost always come from these positions first. If you shut them down before they become "somebody" you've prevented that future bad candidate from being a possibility.
The reason we have such a huge problem with representatives is because politicians are practically ignored at the time when they are most easily influenced.
For example, Obama started out as a state senator (some funny business there, of course, but that's Chicago politics), became a US Senator for the state of Illinois 8 years later, and is now the president. He could have very easily been shut down at the state level by a competent opponent and a few thousand votes.
Don't tell me your vote doesn't matter. It doesn't have great influence when you think it should, but it certainly has a huge impact when you aren't really paying attention.
You legitimize it by being here (Score:2, Interesting)
When you vote, you legitimize the process.
If you believe the process is inherently illegitimate, then you can't vote in good conscience. All you are doing is taking the red pill by voting.
You made the choice they wanted you to make and bought into the system which has been corrupted badly (probably irredeemably) over the last 40 years.
Candidates who are not bought and paid for are made to look like idiots by corporate controlled media (radio, tv, print and even web).
If you live in the USA, you legitimize the process, whether you vote or not. You're counted in the Census; your warm body is used to allocate representatives and electoral college seats to whoever your (voting) neighbors choose.
By not voting, you're effectively saying, "Whatever my neighbors vote for has my full support!"
Don't want to legitimize the process? Move out of the country and renounce your citizenship.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:3, Interesting)
First, this country was founded on the principle of limited government which somewhat means that the government should do the least amount necessary to fix or control a problem only after it's determined to be a problem. This is why deregulation is important to some. However, deregulation should not be confused with no regulation or no enforcement of regulation that we have seen in the somewhat recent past. Over burdensome regulation leads to problems with entering markets and competing in good faith and often opens loopholes that can be exploited by the large and well connected companies/people giving them a significant advantage over the competition.
Second, protecting the property of the haves from the have nots is sort of the entire idea behind property in the first place. You can't say something is yours if anyone can come along and take it. To think that protecting your property is a bad thing is somewhat of a disturbing idea. Without protect people's property, I could make a career out of just taking from others. Eventually, others would do the same and then instead of creating wealth, we as a society would only be reusing wealth and diminishing it's value until it's worthless.
Don't confuse like minded people in support of the same ideas as being part of the same subset. Otherwise, you would have to link the democrats to the military industrial complex seeing how they get large donations from defense contractors, Eugenics, and communism too. (well, unless your reality is biased and you only being willing to connect what you want to see for your own purpose, then it just becomes a self a fallacy rooted in selection bias).
The libertarian movement and the Tea Party movement might have been a gleem in someone's eyes, but they are not under the control of them and they do not take orders from anyone. The strength of both movements is the roots in reality and constitutional justice that ring more true then the BS being blathered forth by the two parties. The federal government simply wasn't supposed to be as big and as encompassing as it is. The constitution in several places limits the government to what is explicitly allowed in the constitution baring any explicit prohibitions and reserves the rest to the states and the people. People who read and understand plain English, who don't attempt to read into the constitution what they were told by someone with an agenda, can see that pretty clearly. It's like the separation of church and state the McDonnel picked threw out during a debate in MD, her opponent swore it was in the first amendment but it's no where to be found by actually reading it. The reality is that it's a concept create by Jefferson after the Constitution was ratified, and used to explain to a church in Virginia how it's supposed to protect the church from the government by limiting laws congress can make that favors one particular religion or punishes any or all of them. This gained popularity when it was used as evidence in the interpretation of the frist amendment in one case considered by the supreme court. Yet somehow, the people in the know, got away with claiming that there is actually a sentence like separate of church and state in the first amendment and instead of it being applied as the case law dictates, it means no church involvement with government at all. That is ridiculous.
But yes, in or
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why some form of range voting is ideal.
I favor negative voting as it also preserves one person 1 vote. Basically you can vote for someone as normal, or against someone and that negates one of their for votes. A candidates final count is the difference of their for and against votes.
Other forms of range voting offer more subtle gradation at a slightly increased level of complication.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:4, Interesting)
The major parties hate third parties and have every incentive to make third parties look bad. From draining votes from their candidates to possibly undermining their control of the legislative process, they are a threat to Democratic or Republican control & influence.
The media likes to portray them as part of the lunatic fringe because controversy pumps up ratings and sales. The media also has a vested interest in the two party system, in terms of influence, contacts and its defacto role as arbitrator/kingmaker.
Take Christine O'Donnell for example. I don't personally think she's a great candidate, but the criticism of her is severe considering that the head of the House banking committee, Barney Frank, had a young lover running a male prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment and claimed he didn't know. OK, Christine's a doof, but that's worse than Frank? Or worse than any of the other sex/bribery scandals R or Ds have been in?
What I think is missed in both the smug, "Daily Show"-type dismissal of the Tea Party & third party movement this cycle and the attacks from both parties is that *despite* the negative publicity and outright hostility shown to these candidates (and their own foot-in-mouth syndrome), people are so annoyed at the traditional parties they are willing to vote for them anyway.
The media is too busy either joining the denouncements or smugly dismissing them to see this.
Re:I'm sitting this one out (Score:2, Interesting)
Without government regulation, there is nothing stopping corporations and other powerful players from using extra-market forces to skew the market in their favor.
Stop buying from them. Out of control corporations are only a problem when people buy products from these corporations despite knowing that the corporation is a problem. The days of the company store are long gone, no one is forced to spend their money at only one company. Have a problem with Wal-Mart? Document what it is they are doing wrong, and start a viral campaign. Even Wal-mart would go out of business if people stopped shopping there.
Government is not evil.
True, but it is organized force. At the end of the day the government takes your money by force and spends it. This is not theory, there are people in prison right now because the IRS didn't like how they kept their books. Not criminals mind you, people who made an honest mistake. John Carmack wrote [armadilloaerospace.com] about someone he knows personally who is in that situation.
I like John Carmack's analogy: what do you care about strongly enough to feel morally justified making me pay for it by pointing a gun at me? In my opinion, much less than the government is doing now.