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'Cellphone Effect' Could Skew Polling Predictions
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.'"
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.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Some background is in order here; this is not a typical piece for Silver. He did a companion to it a couple days ago, giving the reasons the GOP could overperform. These are just "what if" stories, designed to flesh out the message he's been driving for some time now, which is that this election has unusually high uncertainty. He isn't engaging in hackery and claiming everything will be fine for Democrats...
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
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).
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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 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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
A write-in for the presidency doesn't count because you are voting for a slate of electors (who have pledged to vote in a certain way). For Congress, I believe whether they count or not depends on state law.
SSC
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)
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.
The fiscal years and presidential terms overlap. As such, that means that a president can spend massive amounts his last few months and blame it on the next president. War expenses and government bailouts by Bush were a majority of the 12.5% in 2009. The first full year of Obama was lower than the last year's budget passed under Bush.
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.
Learn to love Alaska