After examining all presidential polls since 1972, Nate Silver explains:
“Data suggest that polling in presidential elections has no history of partisan bias, at least not on a consistent basis. There have been years, like 1980 and 1994, when the polls did underestimate the standing of Republicans. But there have been others, like 2000 and 2006, when they underestimated the standing of Democrats…In all but three years, the partisan bias in the polls was small, with the polling average coming within 1.5 percentage points of the actual result. (I use the term “bias” in a statistical sense, meaning simply that the results tended to miss toward one direction.)”
So Nate Silver had to take time out of his weekend because some right winger babies cannot handle reality? Seriously, if every radical right wing conservative disappeared tomorrow, can you imagine how much better our society would be, instantly?
WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr previews Wednesday’s debate, and has a couple of good tips for President Obama:
“Obama will have to avoid intimations of arrogance or overconfidence. Al Gore marred an otherwise strong night with his rather dismissive sighs during a 2000 debate with George W. Bush…Obama’s aspiration is for a showdown in which he calmly, perhaps even amiably, maintains focus on the subjects that have consistently given Romney such trouble. Every mention of the number 47 will be a victory for Obama.”
I worry that Obama will be too long winded, too detailed and soft spoken in his conversational style.
Is it possible that Republican voter suppression will backfire in a big way? The Economist’s ‘Lexingon Notebook’ notes that Republican efforts to suppress black and low-income votes has energized the Democratic base like “rocket fuel”, to quote the chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, Jim Burn. In short, the voter-ID law could end up being a net positive for the Democrats.
If, as seems possible, Mitt Romney is not elected U.S. president on Nov. 6, he will not be the first presidential candidate to run on the issue of competence and then lose because he ran an incompetent campaign. He will not even be the first governor of Massachusetts to do so.
In 1988, Michael Dukakis, who was ahead in the polls just after the Democratic convention, declared in his acceptance speech: “This election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence.” Then he proceeded to blow his large lead and lose to George H.W. Bush, who turned out to be a tougher old bird than anyone suspected.
It would be hard to think of two politicians more different than Dukakis and Romney. […]
Even if Romney wins the election, because of some unpredicted development between now and Nov. 6, the judgment on his campaign is fixed: It has been terrible. Despite his success in business, he’s a lousy politician. And if he loses the election, that will be a comment not just on his campaign strategy but also on his whole way of thinking.