If the GOP were to pick up nine seats and neither Ben Nelson nor Joe Lieberman could be lured across the aisle, that would tie the Senate at 50-50. That last happened after the 2000 election (before Jim Jeffords of Vermont crossed the aisle in the other direction a few months later and gave the Democrats a 51-49 majority). In 2001, that meant that Vice President Dick Cheney was the deciding vote on how the Senate would be organized. Now it would be Joe Biden. It would also mean that Biden would have to stick pretty close to home while the Senate was in session to be available to break any ties. Whether that would be a net plus or minus for the Republic, I know not.
But how likely is it that Lieberman or Nelson would switch? I agree with James Taranto that it’s not likely.
And then there’s Alaska. It’s now a Republican seat, but the current holder, Lisa Murkowski, lost the primary and decided, in a fit of chutzpah, to run a write-in campaign. Some polls show her ahead, but do they have any predictive value? I doubt it. I think a lot of people who told the pollsters they were voting for her will, on arriving at the polling booth, decide a write-in vote is just too much trouble and vote for Joe Miller. Even if she wins, I imagine that she would caucus with the Republicans, despite the fact that she was roundly denounced by her Republican colleagues for not accepting the results of the primary and thus putting the seat in jeopardy by splitting the vote. If that were to happen, and the Democrat were to win thanks to Murkowski’s ego, thereby depriving the Republicans of the majority, I don’t think that Murkowski will be invited to many future Republican picnics.
because Obama is so deeply embedded ideologically into the notion that it is the role of government to redistribute income
We’ve been redistributing income for a long time/Welfare/atdc/medicaid/food stamps/ etc etc,so is McCain saying to discontinue these socialistic programs??? I don’t think so.
Number three: Barney Frank’s reliance on “rich people” who can be soaked “down the line” to mitigate wild deficits.
RE: “spread the wealth around”
In fact, maybe it is you who are so cocooned in your ideology that you do not understand that Obama’s words won’t hurt him. We’ve always had a progressive tax system.
According to Rasmussen, Forty-four percent (44%) of voters agree with Obama’s statement while 42% disagree.
If that’s one of your big issues, you’re cooked.
Palin has a new, very funny routine in her stump speech, where she lists the “5 crises” that Biden may have been speaking about, numbering them. After listing and briefly explaining them, she gets to something along the lines of “and the fifth crisis that they might be worrying about: Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”
As for Ras numbers, I’d have to see the exact question, since responses on the abstract issue will have a lot to do with how it’s phrased and with whom it’s identified. For example:
It’s a June poll that has been widely quoted. Today it was mentioned at The Campaign Spot.
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTg3ZGFhYzFkOTNhZDg0NGZjMzM1MmQwODQ1ZjMxMDI=
All you happy little democrats, chomping at the bit to tax and spend to your little hearts content; you go right ahead, and watch how popular it is in the 2010 congressional elections. If you think the American citizenry supports the spending, the taxing, and the resulting slow or no economic growth and higher inflation that will result, well let’s just all sit back and see. Somehow, I don’t think so, and once the “thrill” of our “transformative” president wears off and the congressional democrats assert their primacy, watch how the American people turn on their beloved leader and his political party.
The Palin v Biden crisis routine, I now see, was quoted in full at NRO, too. Just for the record, the end of the set-up and punchline:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDZlMWQ3YzkyZWRkZGNhM2ZjZTY4YjgzYjNhMjJlNjE=
PS – Palin is getting better, and better, and better. At this point I think she’s easily the best of the four candidates on the stump. Trolls and traitors need to update their talking points.
June 08 Gallup found:
When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today’s consumer, Americans overwhelmingly — by 84% to 13% — prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans.
…..
Americans’ lack of support for redistributing wealth to fix the economy spans political parties: Republicans (by 90% to 9%) prefer that the government focus on improving the economy, as do independents (by 85% to 13%) and Democrats (by 77% to 19%). This sentiment also extends across income groups: upper-income Americans prefer that the government focus on improving the economy and jobs by 88% to 10%, concurring with middle-income (83% to 16%) and lower-income (78% to 17%) Americans.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108445/Americans-Oppose-Income-Redistribution-Fix-Economy.aspx
Sounds more like Obama may be the one that is cooked.
CK MacLeod
The flaw in your poll is that the options are presented as either/or choices. An increase of a 3 or so points to the top tax rate is hardly an emphasis on redistributing wealth, particularly when measured against all the stimulus programs and fiscal policies that will be aimed at improving economic growth.
Here’s a fun fact: Obama is attracting more conservative votes than any Democrat since 1980, when Carter had evangelicals behind him.
“In today’s Post-ABC tracking poll, Obama is winning 22 percent of conservatives. That’s his best showing yet among these voters, and if the percent holds on Election Day, it would be higher than conservative support for any Democratic nominee since 1980. Obama also wins 12 percent support among Republicans in the tracking poll — exactly double Kerry’s 2004 Election Day haul.”
I guess a lot of Republicans don’t take seriously your “wealth distribution” argument.
“Americans’ lack of support for redistributing wealth to fix the economy spans political parties:”
Same problem with this verbiage. To the limited extent that Obama is for redistributing wealth, it is not to fix the economy. It is to help the middle class and promote fairness.
This is hardly a radical realigment. He’s simply going back to the top tax rate under Clinton.
You’re citing Carter’s support from conservatives in the 1980 election as a favorable analogy? Are you serious? Remind me: who won that election, and by how much?
Ari – if you honestly believe that the electorate is as skewed as badly as in that WaPo/ABC poll you keep on quoting, then you really don’t need to waste your time at conservative sites. I won’t argue with you about the details of Obama’s tax promises until you give me some evidence that any of Obama’s promises – to any meaningful specificity, and even without reference to the Democratic Congress that will actually be writing tax policy (Rangel, Reid, Pelosi, et al) – are worth taking seriously.
You need more to put more lipstick on your plumber:
Today’s Gallup has Obama stretching his lead to 51% v 44% using your “traditional” likely voter model. The more realistic “expanded” likely voter model has Obama up by 10 — 52 v. 42.
battlaground +1 you choose your poll and Ill choose my poll
btw Battleground more accurate since 2000 than Gallup
CK MacLeod,
Got it. You are a mind reader. Obama is lying about his intentions until proved otherwise. Therefore it means nothing to argue about his stated policy.
And polls don’t mean anything. Except the one you just tried to use to bolster an argument.
All very rational.
How are the latest state polls looking?
No mind reading necessary, Ari. We have plenty of evidence that Obama’s promises aren’t worth the signed paper they’re printed on, the bandwidth wasted on his campaign web sites, or the airtime they’ve filled up. Do we even need to go down the list? I bet you could put it together yourself. That’s why it’s safe for someone arguing my side – if not for the voters – to toss Rangel (Ways & Means), Pelosi, Reid, Franks and the whole corral under the famously crowded bus ahead of time!
Polls mean what polls mean – which is sometimes, most of the time, a lot less than people want them to mean. If you’re going to build an argument around one, you should be willing to look at the details. Otherwise, you’re just firing spitballs and wasting your time and mine.
michael,
since you are obviously a poll authority, you know that Battlegroud has had significant problems this year, reweighting only recently in an attempt to correct them. You must also know that Battleground doesn’t sample over the weekend, as the other trackers do, which distorts their early week nos. Here are today’s polls, all in favor of Obama.
Gallup 52 v 42
ARG 49 v 45
Hotline 47 v 41
Rasmussen 50 v 46
GWU 48 v 47
R2000 50 v 42
Zogby 50 v 42
That averages to Obama 49, McCain 44, or +6 for Obama. (the RCP avg. is 5.9)
If you sleep better clinging to your outlier, feel free.
“Obama is lying about his intentions until proved otherwise. Therefore it means nothing to argue about his stated policy.”
Senator Government has repeatedly voted against tax relief for the middle class. It’s perfectly rational to stack his rhetoric against this record. As Greasy Joe would say, past is prologue.
CK — there is little to be gained from engaging with the trolls. They never have a coherent argument, they just issue taunts and bumper-sticker nonsense.
If McCain wins in spite of the inherently biased polls, poster Ari will no doubt rethink his position that voter fraud is a fantasy.
One more time: phone polls are constrained by the existence of actual area codes, which are not distributed evenly across either the geographic landscape or the demographic one. There are more subscribers in heavily urban area codes than in area codes that serve less densely populated areas. If you never took statistics, this means that random sampling from area codes will produce more respondents from the densest urban area codes than from others.
We know from county-by-county voting patterns for the last 30+ years that it matters which counties you sample. Political sentiment is not distributed evenly across them. Moreover, the total population of the red counties still outnumbers the total population of the blue counties. But random phone polling corrects for neither of these demonstrable factors, even though pollsters do correct for a host of other putative demographic factors. Polling oversamples dense-urban phone subscribers as if their responses are representative of the entire nation.
No poll consciously seeks to sample Americans as they actually are on election day: a slight majority living in red counties. Instead, polls sample Americans as they are grouped by area code. The pollsters and the media are, by and large, happy with the polling outcome, and have no motive to change the methodology.
No one can lie forever without getting caught. Truth is catching up to Obama. We have had a glimpse at his true elitist, illuminati, Marxist colors. Take a good, hard look. This is who he is.
Hey Ari. .You are right — its Obama in a landslide. No need for you and your fellow live-at-home-in-the-basement-twenty-somethings to bother to vote. So instead of going out to vote on Wednesday – -stay home and get sloshed while watching reruns of Family Guy and rest assured that when you wake up Thursday the One will be President.
JED – your points are sound ones, and just one explanation for problems with polls. As you note, some pollsters attempt to massage their samples by adjusting weighting, but, even if they get them right – if Rasmussen, say, accurately guesstimates the relative election day proportions of Ds, Rs, and Is, he still won’t have corrected for other potential systemic errors. If, for any number of reasons, your R sample is a more left-leaning (more likely unemployed, more likely urban, more likely non-white, more likely single, more likely young, etc.), then your R sample will still be a skewed sample. The very fact that your initial sample is overly Democrat and needs to be adjusted in line with your turnout model should be a clue that your entire sample is skewed left: Your Is and Rs are also affected, and modifying your recipe only partly addresses the problem. By the time pollsters got around to adjusting for this problem, they might as well confess that they’re stabbing around in the dark like the rest of us. It’s one reason why the most scientific pollsters, in lucid moments, will explain that their tracking polls shouldn’t be used for predictions, but rather to trace trends, if any.
I point to Rasmussen because at least his method – based entirely on robocalls – is less likely to pollute his results with systemic “please the nice young interviewer” error. Other pollsters, however, are critical of Rasmussen because they believe that robocalls introduce a higher likelihood of systemic selection error. What if, they ask, I believe with good reason, willingness to cooperate with a computer also skews by political inclination?
As for not feeding the trolls, I agree with you entirely, but trolls isn’t the same as leftist, in my view. We have a few regular visitors to this site who obviously qualify as trolls, but we have a few others who simply disagree, but otherwise demonstrate good faith and open minds, or at least some reasonable facsimile. If they avoid namecalling and insults and show an ability actually to argue a point rather than merely recite talking points like Axelrodian astroboys, then I don’t think we need to avoid engaging them. If they’d had an internet when I was 20, I tend to think I would have been one of them – maybe even more self-certain than a few of our regular lefty guests – I would have appreciated the opportunity to interact with my political opponents. I might have learned something and have been accelerated on my path to glorious conservative enlightenment! And sometimes even the ideologically handicapped have interesting things to say…
btw and fyi, JED, if you EVER for some reason feel the need to get the latest poll results washed through a conservative filter, the posts and discussion at http://hedgehogreport.com/ are excellent. Personally, I try to keep it to small doses. (This campaign has already hit my productivity very hard – where’s my FEMA check?) There’s also an argument on polling that’s been getting a lot of attention from “Zombie.” He makes some very useful arguments and introduces some useful background info parallel to what we’ve been discussing here: http://www.zombietime.com/lefts_big_blunder/