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Pre-Election
Articles, cont.
- Gallup,
October 29, 2010, One
in 4 Say Congress Accomplished More Than Usual This
Year; Fewer than half of Democrats agree. Despite
the 111th Congress' passage of a lengthy list of
legislation, including a massive healthcare bill,
37% of Americans say it has accomplished less this
year than in the past few years, and a smaller 23%
say it has accomplished more. This question is particularly
relevant this year because the current Democratically
controlled Congress has passed a series of high-profile
legislative bills, including the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act, the Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act, and others. Nevertheless,
the large majority of Americans do not perceive that
what Congress has accomplished is more than it has
done in previous years. These results may partly
reflect the antipathy Americans have toward Congress
in general, and may also reflect the weak approval
for the content of these bills.
...Although current assessments of Congress' accomplishments
are not positive in an absolute sense, they are more positive
than responses to the same question in October 1994.
...The fact that well under half of Democrats say Congress
has accomplished more than usual may be related to the
finding that Democrats to this point have shown lower levels
of enthusiasm or involvement in the election than have
Republicans.
- NY Times,
October 27, 2010, Obama
Coalition Is Fraying, Poll Finds. Critical parts
of the coalition that delivered President Obama to
the White House in 2008 and gave Democrats control
of Congress in 2006 are switching their allegiance
to the Republicans in the final phase of the midterm
Congressional elections, according to the latest
New York Times/CBS News poll. Republicans have wiped
out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election
cycles among women, Roman Catholics, less affluent
Americans and independents. All of those groups broke
for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for Congressional Democrats
when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans
four years ago, according to exit polls.
- PBS, October
28, 2010, Patchwork
Nation: Mapping Voter Anger, Foreclosure Rates By
District. If much of the electorate is driven
by anger, much of that anger is driven by foreclosures.
As Patchwork Nation has measured the number of tea
party "meetups" in the last four months,
one type of congressional district has stood out
- those that have witnessed great population growth
in the last decade. Looking at foreclosures since
January, it is precisely those districts that have
faced the toughest times. There are 38 foreclosures
for every 1,000 homes in those places. And remember,
those figures are just the beginning. They equal
lost home values that prevent moving for some, and
lost nest eggs that mean delayed retirement for others.
In short, many in these districts are angry because
there is a lot to be angry about. And these 56 districts,
which are pretty evenly split between Democrats and
Republicans, are likely to make an anti-incumbent
shift toward the GOP next Tuesday.
- PBS, October
28, 2010, Poll
Numbers Show Voters Turning Away From Democrats. [Good
description of electoral volatility & protest
voting.] J. ANN SELZER, Selzer & Company,
Inc.: Well, there's no strong endorsement for the
Republicans. They have made a lot of noise -- the
candidates have -- about how they're going to cut
the budget. Maybe that's in deference to the Tea
Party movement. But, in our poll, voters are not
at all saying that that's the lead thing that needs
to happen. And it's just bare majorities that would
endorse really any of the initiatives that the Republicans
have put forward. So, there's no mandate that would
come with a Republican change in control of the House.
...ANDREW KOHUT, director, Pew Research Center: What
Ann was just talking about is one of the most bizarre
things I have ever seen in a midterm election. This
is a wave election, that is, there's a Republican
trend. We have done four national polls in four months,
and they all have Republican leads. Yet, the image
of the Republican Party isn't any better than the
image of the Democratic Party, and the confidence
in both of the parties is pretty low. So, this Republican
wave is predicated upon, we're angry at the people
who are in charge, and it's the Democrats who are
in charge. But there's no sense that this is a movement
toward the Republican Party. And why? Because this
is being -- this change is being driven by the
views of independent voters, who favor the -- the
Republicans by a 49-to-30 percent margin. Two years
ago, they favored the Democrats, and -- and elected
Obama, and, two years before that, the Democrats
in '06. And the independents have voted against the
party in power for what looks like three successive
elections, because they don't feel the powers that
be are getting it right.
[Background: Gallup's
Party popularity:]
- NYT, October
18, 2010, Democrats’ Grip
on the South Continues to Slip. The Southern
white Democrat, long on the endangered list, is at
risk of being pushed one step closer to extinction.
From Virginia to Florida and South Carolina to Texas,
nearly two dozen Democratic seats are susceptible
to a potential Republican surge in Congressional
races on Election Day, leaving the party facing a
situation where its only safe presence in the South
is in urban and predominantly black districts. The
swing has been under way since the passage of the
Civil Rights Act in 1964, when President Lyndon B.
Johnson predicted that his fellow Democrats would
face a backlash of white voters that would cost the
party the South. It continued with Ronald Reagan’s
election and reached a tipping point in the Republican
sweep of 1994, with more than one-third of the victories
coming from previously Democratic seats in the South.
...Should a large number of Democratic candidates
lose, it would mark a significant step in one of
the most fundamental, if slow-moving, political realignments
in American politics.
- Gallup,
October 18, 2010, Republicans,
Democrats Shift on Whether Gov't Is a Threat.
Republicans more likely to view government as threat
now, Democrats more likely in 2006. Overall, 46%
of Americans believe the federal government "poses
an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of
ordinary citizens," little changed from the
prior reading in 2006. However, during that time,
Republicans' and Democrats' views of the government
as a threat have shifted dramatically.
- The New
Republic, Thomas B. Edsall, October 20, 2010, Limited
War, How the age of austerity will remake American
politics. The Tea Party has expertly articulated a widespread
grievance: that the government is redistributing money
from hardworking Americans to the idle and undeserving.
Of course, this is hardly a new charge. But it takes
place in a new context—an age of growing austerity,
where this complaint will acquire an ever-sharper edge
and battles over the scarce resources of the state
will erupt in spectacular skirmishes.
...This year’s elections offer a preview of how
Republicans intend to use the vulnerability of these
programs to attack Democrats. That is, there’s
some indication that they will return to the
racially tinged backlash politics of the ’70s and ’80s.
Newt Gingrich, who has re-emerged as a particularly
active rhetorician for the Tea Party, has supplied
a large number of phrases redolent of that era. He
has described the Democrats as the “party of
food stamps.” That’s a slightly softer
version of the line trumpeted by Glenn Beck that explicitly
decries Obama for acting out a “deep-seated hatred
for white people or the white culture.”
...Republicans understand that one axis of the
resource war will be generational. All of their vows to defend
Medicare are coupled with attacks on Obama’s
health care reform. They implicitly portray Democrats
as waging an age war—creating a massive new government
program that transfers dollars to the young at the
expense of the elderly. Republicans have cleverly stoked
the fear that Obama is rewarding all his exuberant,
youthful, idealistic supporters by redistributing resources
that are badly needed by the old.
...But the voters over 65 that Republicans are pursuing
are largely a subset of their most important
voting bloc: whites. Republicans have staked the entirety
of their electoral future on them. And just as they
have exploited seniors’ anxiety about scarcity,
they have done the same with the white population as
a whole. In fact, whites may be the most anxious group
this political season. (Only 59 percent of whites believe “Americans
will always continue to be prosperous and make economic
progress”—while 81 percent of blacks and
75 percent of Hispanics continue to profess faith in
the future.) This anxiety is the reason that Republicans
have spent so much time talking about the menace of
immigration—even though many of them once viewed
Hispanic voters as a potential pillar of their future
coalition.
...The rise of illegal immigration as an issue this
cycle doesn’t correspond to material facts. The
number of aliens pouring across the border is not increasing.
On the contrary, the recession and improved enforcement
have drastically reduced it. What is increasing is
anxiety about resource competition. And that’s
exactly why immigrants cause so much agitation: They
are perceived by many voters as one giant, undeserving
resource suck. In June, Gallup asked, “Which
comes closer to your point of view, illegal immigrants
in the long run become productive citizens and pay
their fair share of taxes, or illegal immigrants cost
taxpayers too much by using government services like
public education and medical services?” Among
all voters, 62 percent perceived immigrants as a resource
drain. Among Republicans, the number concurring with
that dim assessment rose to 78 percent. You’ll
often hear Republican immigration proposals—rewriting
the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship,
for instance—dismissed as political suicide.
I would argue that it shows the GOP’s astute
understanding of the new zeitgeist.
...All of which is to say that the age of scarcity
poses it own risks to Republicans. They are relying
on a group in long-term demographic decline (whites)
and pursuing policies on behalf of a group that hardly
seems deserving of limited resources (the affluent)—and
are attempting to woo another group (the elderly) with
demagoguery that betrays their core principles about
limited government.
- NYTimes,
October 16, 2010, Black
Turnout Will Be Crucial for Democrats. A flood
of black voters in North Carolina’s Eighth
Congressional District two years ago helped Barack
Obama become the first Democratic presidential candidate
to carry this state since Jimmy Carter and lifted
the party’s Congressional challenger, Larry
Kissell, to victory. Without Mr. Obama atop the ticket
this year, Mr. Kissell and a number of other vulnerable
Democrats, mostly in the rural South, face the challenge
of reviving the spirit of 2008 for black voters without
alienating right-leaning white majorities in their
districts.
- NY Times,
October 13, 2010, Midterms
Are a Test for Obama’s Ground Game. There’s
a reason that President Obama decided to broadcast
his meeting with college students on the Internet
on Tuesday night, taking sympathetic questions by
way of Facebook and Skype and Twitter. (About the
only hip thing the president didn’t try was
to break out the Guitar Hero and start playing “Revolution.”)
The midterm campaign has now entered its final phase,
and Mr. Obama is focusing his attention on the younger
voters and volunteers he inspired in 2008. For Mr.
Obama, re-engaging Organizing for America, or O.F.A.,
his vaunted network of phone-bankers and door-knockers
from the presidential campaign, is a crucial mission
in these closing weeks — and not just because
it is probably the Democrats’ best chance of
staving off electoral catastrophe. It is also because
a volunteer organization is a little bit like a vintage
roadster: you may not need to use it for stretches
of time, but it’s important to rev the engine
now and then. Mr. Obama’s online organization,
originally known as Obama for America, raised up
a virtual army of volunteers in 2008, most of whom
had not previously been involved in party politics.
After Mr. Obama took office, his aides decided to
merge the organization into the party, essentially
by taking over the Democratic National Committee’s
field operation. The thought was that Mr. Obama’s
personal appeal could be translated into support
for his legislative agenda as well as for the party’s
other candidates. But there is little evidence
so far to suggest that the new volunteers and voters
who coalesce around a candidacy in the Internet age
can be made to care very much about off-year elections
- Gallup,
October 13, 2010, Americans
Choose Middle Over Extremes on Gov't Functions.
Views lean toward "more responsibility" rather
than less for 7 of 11 functions tested. Americans
are more likely to choose middle-ground responses
rather than extremes when asked about the degree
of responsibility the federal government should take
for a number of social and economic functions it
could in theory perform. For only two functions --
protecting Americans from foreign threats and protecting
consumers from unsafe products -- does a majority
say the government should be totally responsible.
... Today's political environment is highly partisan, making
it less than surprising to find sharp partisan differences
in views on the responsibility that the federal government
should have for the 11 functions tested in this research.
- Gallup,
October 13, 2010, Majorities
in U.S. View Gov't as Too Intrusive and Powerful.
Independents largely side with Republicans in denouncing
big government. Record- or near-record-high percentages
of Americans are critical of the size and scope of
government, as measured by four Gallup trend questions
updated in September. This sentiment stretches to
59% of Americans now believing the federal government
has too much power, up eight percentage points from
a year ago.
- Gallup,
October 12, 2010, Americans'
Views Vary on How Active Government Should Be.
Party and ideological groups also show range of opinions
about government. Americans are essentially equally
divided in their views of the role of the federal
government, with one-third tilting toward a preference
for a government that actively takes steps to improve
the lives of its citizens, one-third preferring a
limited government that performs mostly basic functions,
and the remainder in the middle.
- Gallup,
October 11, 2010, Republicans
Maintain Strength Among Likely Voters. Race generally
stable; independents remain key benefit for GOP.
Republicans continue to benefit in the race for control
of Congress not only from their higher representation
among likely voters, but also from significantly
higher identification with the GOP among independent
voters. Democrats have two general ways to close
the gap with the GOP in the remaining weeks before
the Nov. 2 election. First, Democrats
could seek to shift the voting intentions of the
electorate -- and more specifically, independents
-- in a more Democratic direction. Second, they
could work to increase enthusiasm and turnout among
Democratic voters. President Barack Obama is out
on the campaign trail -- and apparently will continue
to be there between now and Election Day -- exhorting
Democratically inclined voters to ratchet up their
interest in voting on Nov. 2. The success or failure
of these efforts will be a key determinant of the
ultimate election outcome.
- Washington
Post, Sunday, October 10, 2010; Beyond
the tea party: What Americans really think of government.
If there is an overarching theme of election 2010,
it is the question of how big the government should
be and how far it should reach into people's lives.
Americans have a more negative view of government
today than they did a decade ago, or even a few years
ago. Most say it focuses on the wrong things and
lack confidence that it can solve big domestic problems;
this general anti-Washington sentiment is helping
to fuel a potential Republican takeover of Congress
next month. But ask people what they expect the government
to do for themselves and their families, and a more
complicated picture emerges. A new study by The Washington
Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard
University shows that most Americans who say they
want more limited government also call Social Security
and Medicare "very important." They want
Washington to be involved in schools and to help
reduce poverty. Nearly half want the government to
maintain a role in regulating health care. The study
suggests that come January, politicians in both parties
will confront a challenging and sometimes contradictory
reality about what Americans really think about their
government. Although Republicans, and many Democrats,
have tried to demonize Washington, they must contend
with the fact that most major government programs
remain enormously popular, including some that politicians
have singled out for stiff criticism. The new survey
also shows that although Democrats and Republicans
have rarely seen eye to eye, the gap between the
two has widened significantly over a decade of partisan
polarization.
- Gallup,
October 8, 2010, Likely
Voters Demographically Typical, but Skew Conservative.
Majority of likely voters are conservative and identify
as or lean Republican. Gallup's first sketch of what
the electorate may look like on Nov. 2 indicates
that the enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans all
year -- as well as the "thought" gap evident
in a late August survey -- may well translate into
highly disproportionate turnout among Republicans
and conservatives on Election Day. That is a key
reason Gallup's latest polling finds Republican candidates
leading Democrats by 13- and 18-point margins, depending
on turnout, in two estimates of the vote. Another
is that political independents are aligning themselves
with the Republican Party to a degree unprecedented
in recent history. In contrast to these extraordinary
political patterns, the demographic composition of
likely voters looks fairly normal relative to the
profile of the electorate in 2006, as well as consistent
with the trends seen since 1994 toward an older,
more well-educated, and less substantially white,
electorate.
- Pew, October
7, 2010, Lagging
Youth Enthusiasm Could Hurt Democrats in 2010.
Millennials continue to be among the strongest backers
of Democratic candidates this fall, though their
support for the Democratic Party has slipped since
2008. But young voters have given far less thought
to the upcoming elections than have older voters,
and this gap is larger than in previous midterms.
...Yet younger voters remain far more supportive of Obama
than any other age group.
- Pew, October
7, 2010, Latinos
and the 2010 Elections: Strong Support for Democrats;
Weak Voter Motivation. In a year when support
for Democratic candidates has eroded, the party's
standing among one key voting group -- Latinos-appears
as strong as ever. ...However, Hispanic registered
voters appear to be less motivated than other voters
to go to the polls.
- NYTimes,
October 5, 2010, Obama
Strains to Get Liberals Back Into Fold. With
four weeks until Congressional elections that will
shape the remainder of his term, President Obama
is increasingly focused on generating enthusiasm
within the base that helped put him in the White
House two years ago, from college students to African-Americans.
- NYTimes,
October 5, 2010, Latino
Vote Turnout Likely to Lag, New Poll Finds. Arizona’s
immigration law has prompted denunciations, demonstrations,
boycotts and a federal lawsuit. But it may not bring
the protest vote that many Democrats had hoped would
stem a Republican onslaught in races across the country.
That is because although many voters are disillusioned
with the political process, Latino voters are particularly
dejected, and many may sit these elections out, according
to voters, Latino organizations, political consultants
and candidates. ...The results of the poll released
Tuesday, by the Pew Hispanic Center, suggest that
the raging debate over Arizona’s law and the
lack of Congressional action on immigration overhaul
may have turned off many Latinos. Latinos have usually
voted in lower percentages than non-Latinos, but
the current gap between their enthusiasm to vote
and that of the general population is wider than
in the last midterm election. ...Matt A. Barreto,
a political science professor at the University of
Washington who is a pollster for Latino Decisions,
a research group, said, “Latinos feel that
on many of their key issues, promises were made and
not delivered on” by the Obama administration
and Congressional Democrats.
- Gallup,
October 4, 2010, GOP
Well Positioned Among Likely Midterm Voters.
Voting preferences remain close among registered
voters. Gallup's generic ballot for Congress among
registered voters currently shows Republicans with
46% of the vote and Democrats with 43%, similar to
the 46% to 46% tie reported a week ago. However,
in Gallup's first estimates among likely voters,
based on polling from Sept. 23-Oct. 3, Republicans
have a double-digit advantage under two separate
turnout scenarios.
- Gallup,
October 1, 2010, In
Midterms, Dems Gain With Young Voters, Slip With
Hispanics. Barely half of Hispanics in September
planned to vote Democratic.
President Barack Obama's efforts this week to stir young
voters to turn out in November on behalf of his
party's candidates come as Gallup finds support among this
group -- so important to the Democrats' success in 2008
-- improving. Gallup's September polling suggests that
young voters remain in the Democrats' corner, and show
increased support at a time when seniors have shifted more
to the Republicans. The key question is whether young adults
will vote in big enough numbers to offset the impact of
the senior vote. The most recent indications on this from
Gallup polling are not promising for the Democrats.
Hispanics present
a different problem for the
president's party. While they
voted strongly for Obama in
2008 and were supposed to be
one of the building blocks
of Democratic victory in 2010,
Gallup's recent polling suggests
their support for Democratic
congressional candidates is
slipping. This is in line with
Hispanics' dwindling approval
of Obama as president, with
the initial decline seen in
May possibly linked to the
Democrats' failure to pass
comprehensive immigration reform.
- NY Times,
September 29, 2010, Delaware
Race Is Bellwether: All Politics Is National.
One of the great truisms of 20th-century politics,
attributed to the legendary House speaker Tip O’Neill,
is that all politics is local. If this year tells
us anything, though, it’s that O’Neill’s
adage may now be as much a part of history as he
is. As money and news media coverage cross state
borders more easily than ever, driven by fiery commentators
and online groups, we are bound to see politicians
who are popular vehicles more than they are actual
candidates, instruments of resentment whose grass-roots
support may emanate mostly from states they have
never visited. A Web appeal can now raise more
money from around the country overnight than any
number of arduous receptions at local hotels. Personalities
like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin may propel more like-minded
voters to the polls — at least in a primary — than
a local party apparatus can muster. Anti-establishment
vehicles like Christine O’Donnell aren’t
new in American politics, of course. What’s
different now is that the vehicle doesn’t seem
to need an insurgent party behind her, or even an
actual campaign, to upend the old order. Democrats
saw the first effects of this in 2006, when Ned Lamont,
a Connecticut cable executive with a personal fortune,
found himself adopted by bloggers and Hollywood celebrities
as a vehicle against Senator Joseph I. Lieberman
and the Iraq war. Ms. Palin emerged as a similar
kind of vehicle after the 2008 election, quitting
her job as governor of Alaska and using conservative
and social media to build her national following
without an office to campaign for.
- Pew, September
23, 2010, Independents
Oppose Party in Power ... Again. For the third
national election in a row, independent voters may
be poised to vote out the party in power. The Republican
Party holds a significant edge in preferences for
the upcoming congressional election among likely
voters, in large part because political independents
now favor Republican candidates by about as large
a margin as they backed Barack Obama in 2008 and
congressional Democratic candidates four years ago.
 
- Gallup,
September 21, 2010, On
the Role of Government, Parties' Ratings Look Like
1994. Americans more likely to see Republicans
than Democrats representing their views and values.
Bottom Line:Americans' views on how well the two
major parties reflect their views on the role of
government and their values more broadly make clear
that the Democrats' image has suffered since they
won back control of Congress in 2006. Republicans
have not made comparable perceptual gains in these
areas, but largely as a result of the Democrats'
losses, Republicans are now leading on both dimensions,
similar to their standing in 1994.
- Gallup.
September
20, 2010, Congress
Only Growing Less Popular With Americans. Fewer
than 20% now approve, similar to August reading.
Public approval of Congress remains in short supply
in September, with 18% of Americans now approving
of the job it is doing, similar to the 19% approving
in August. Congress' approval rating has not been
above 20% since May, and has not surpassed 30% since
September 2009.
- Brendan
Nyhan/Pollster, September 16, 2010, Will
the GOP Brand Make a Difference in November? Is
this really true? Will the poor state of the GOP
brand limit the party's gains in November? I made
this argument months ago, but the Republican party's
image hasn't prevented it from taking a substantial
lead in the generic ballot. The GOP's net favorability
ratings relative to Democrats are still worse than
any opposition party in the previous five midterm
elections (the closest comparison is 1998, when Republicans
were seeking to remove Bill Clinton from office).
At this point, every other major factor (the high
number of seats Democrats currently hold, the fact
that it's a midterm election, and the generic ballot)
points toward big GOP gains -- the predicted result
of most House forecasting models. Unfortunately for
Democrats, midterm elections are a referendum, not
a choice.
- New York
Times, September 15, 2010, G.O.P.
Is Using Obama’s ‘Otherness’ as
Campaign Tactic. With every new swipe at President
Obama’s exotic background or cultural influences,
a contingent of Republican leaders are signaling
that they believe the coming elections are more than
just a referendum on the administration’s economic
policies. Rather, to a degree that is striking, conservatives
are also trying to make the fall campaign about the
president himself and the kind of societal change
he actually represents.
- New York
Times, September 15, 2010, The
Morning After: Whose Party Is It? The Republican
establishment sought this morning to come to grips
with further evidence of a growing insurgent movement
inside their ranks, as Christine O’Donnell,
the newly-minted Delaware Senate nominee, offered
no apologies for dispatching one of the party’s
stars, Representative Michael N. Castle.
- New York
Times/Douglas E. Schoen, September 15, 2010, Can
the Tea Party Win in November? Democrats Shouldn't
Celebrate Yet. Republican primary voters yesterday
again sent a clear, unmistakable message to America
that they remain angry and frustrated with the way
the political process operates. The victories of
Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Carl Paladino
in New York over more visible, favored opponents
indicate that the trend, which has been evident all
year in states like Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky,
Nevada and Utah, shows no sign of abating. Already
Democrats are celebrating -- indicating that Republicans
have once again nominated a number of ethically challenged,
extreme candidates. But they should not begin popping
the corks on the champagne too quickly. One of the
main reasons why pollsters are seeing such an enthusiasm
gap between Democratic and Republican voters is that
the Tea Party movement has stimulated an exceptional
level of interest and excitement because of its commitment
to fiscal discipline and limited government.
- Gallup,
September 10, 2010, Nine
Years After 9/11, Few See Terrorism as Top U.S. Problem.
One percent see it as the top problem today, down
from 46% in 2001. Nine years after the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 1% of Americans mention
terrorism as the most important problem facing the
country, down from 46% just after the attacks.
- Gallup,
September 10, 2010, Americans
OK Allowing Tax Cuts for Wealthy to Expire. A
majority of Americans favor letting the tax cuts
enacted during the Bush administration expire for
the wealthy. While 37% support keeping the tax cuts
for all Americans, 44% want them extended only for
those making less than $250,000 and 15% think they
should expire for all taxpayers.
- NYTimes/FiveThirtyEight,
September 10, 2010, G.O.P.
Has 2-in-3 Chance of Taking House, Model Forecasts.
Republicans have a two-in-three chance of claiming
a majority of House seats in November, the FiveThirtyEight
forecasting model estimates. And their gains could
potentially rival or exceed those made in 1994, when
they took a net of 54 seats from the Democrats. On
the basis of indicators like these [generic Congressional
ballot, President Obama’s approval ratings],
it is easy to envision Republican gains of 50 to
60 seats, or perhaps more, as some academic models
that rely on these indicators do. But FiveThirtyEight’s
prediction model does not look solely at these national
indicators. Instead, it evaluates the outcome in
each of the 435 Congressional districts in which
voters will cast ballots this fall.
- Washington
Post, September 9, 2010, E.J. Dionne Jr., Obama
raises stakes and redefines debate for the midterm
election. Suddenly, there's a point to this election.
Obama is late to this game, but at least he's finally
playing it. The New Obama (or, rather, the resurrected
Old Obama) will be up against a media story line
whose self-sustaining quality was brought home by
the treatment of Gallup poll findings over the past
two months. The media largely ignored a mid-July
survey giving Democrats a six-point lead, then devoted
huge blocks of print and airtime to last week's Gallup
survey dramatizing conventional wisdom by showing
Republicans ahead by a whopping 10 points -- only
to have Gallup come out this week with a poll showing
Republicans and Democrats tied. All this raises the
question of whether the only polls that matter are
ones that reinforce preconceptions.
- Gallup,
September 7, 2010, Parties
Tied at 46% in Generic Ballot for Congress. Latest
weekly update shows more competitive contest. Republicans
and Democrats are tied at 46% among registered voters
in Gallup's weekly tracking of congressional voting
preferences, marking a shift after five consecutive
weeks in which the Republicans held the advantage. Republicans
Maintain 25-Point Lead on Enthusiasm. There
has been no change in the advantage Republicans hold
over Democrats on motivation to vote in the fall
elections. Republicans remain twice as likely as
Democrats to be "very enthusiastic" about
voting, tied with the previous week's measure as
the largest such advantage of the year.
- PBS, Sept.
7, 2010, Obama
to Unveil Business Tax Cut Plan Amid Souring Poll
Numbers. [David Chalian speaking to Jim Lehrer]
You and I have looked all year long at sort of this
volatility, almost anger, actually, that exists inside
the electorate. Take a look at these numbers, because
this is fascinating when you look at it through history.
Today, 78 percent of respondents say they are dissatisfied
or angry with government and how government works,
vs. 22 percent who are satisfied or enthusiastic.
Compare that, Jim, to November 1994. You remember,
Bill Clinton was president, Newt Gingrich, the Republican
revolution and the takeover of the House of Representatives. You
are seeing more dissatisfaction and anger in the
electorate now than you did when Republicans won
54 seats and took over the House. ...You have
four different options. Are you dissatisfied, satisfied,
angry, enthusiastic? It's sort of the spectrum. And
so they combine dissatisfaction and anger. And --
but let me tell you, when you separate it out, and
you look just at the anger, this is where you see
the intensity gap. This is actually what is giving
Republicans their fuel this campaign season, because
that anger portion is growing larger and larger.
And that's why, in Kwame's piece, when you saw likely
voters, how they plan to vote, 53 percent say a Republican;
40 percent say a Democrat. That 13 percent gap, Jim,
is the largest since 1981, when The Washington Post
and ABC News began that poll.
- Pollster/Mark
Blumenthal, September 6, 2010. Political
Scientists Forecast Big Losses For Democrats.
With the midterm elections now just nine weeks away,
a group of political scientists gathered for a conference
in Washington D.C. this weekend forecast significant
losses for the Democrats. Three of the five forecasts
predicted that Republicans will gain majority control
of the House of Representatives. The annual meeting
of the American Political Science Association (APSA),
which featured nearly 5,000 participants and close
to 900 panel and roundtable sessions, was about far
more than election forecasting. Those most interested
in the 2010 campaigns, however, gravitated to a Saturday
session in which five political scientists presented
the latest results from their forecasting models,
some of which have been in development for 30 years
or more.
- NYT, September
4, 2010, Democrats
Plan Political Triage to Retain House. As Democrats
brace for a November wave that threatens their control
of the House, party leaders are preparing a brutal
triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough
seats to keep a slim grip on the majority. In the
next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new
polls and other data that show whether vulnerable
incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party
is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying
to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to
be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.
- Gallup,
September 3, 2010, Blacks,
Young Voters Not Poised for High Turnout on Nov.
2. Republicans -- and conservative Republicans
in particular -- are already tuned in to midterms.
Minority and young voters made a significant mark
on the 2008 presidential election with their high
turnout; today, however, these groups appear to have
reverted to previous levels of interest in voting
in the context of midterm elections.
- Gallup.
September 3, 2010. Anti-Democratic
Sentiment Aids GOP Lead in 2010 Vote. Many Republican
voters say they are voting "against the Democrat." The
Republicans' lead in the congressional generic ballot
over the past month may be due as much to voters'
rejecting the Democrats as embracing the Republicans.
Among voters backing Republican candidates, 44% say
their preference is "more a vote against the
Democratic candidate," while 48% say it is "more
a vote for the Republican candidate."
- New York
Times, September 2, 2010, Fewer
Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats. The
college vote is up for grabs this year — to
an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years
ago, when a generation of young people seemed to
swoon over Barack Obama. Though many students are
liberals on social issues, the economic reality of
a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties:
far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves
as Democrats compared with 2008.
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Pre-Election
Articles, cont.
- Larry J.
Sabato, September 2nd, 2010, The
Crystal Ball's Labor Day Predictions. 2010 was
always going to be a Republican year, in the midterm
tradition. It has simply been a question of degree.
...But conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats
over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with
little chance of a substantial comeback by November
2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish,
and public confidence quite low. ...Obama’s
job approval ratings have drifted down well below
50% in most surveys. ...Given what we can see at
this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win
the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net.
...In the Senate, we now believe the GOP will do
a bit better than our long-time prediction of +7
seats. Republicans have an outside shot at winning
full control (+10), but are more likely to end up
with +8. ...Overall, though, a strong bet is that
2010 will generate a substantial pendulum swing from
the Democrats to the Republicans. It is not that
Republicans are popular—most polls show the
party even less liked than the Democrats. Many observers
find it amazing that the less-liked party is on the
verge of triumphing over the better-liked party.
Nevertheless, in the time-honored American way, voters
will be inclined to punish the party in-power by
checking and balancing it with more members from
the opposition party.
- NYT/Nate
Silver, August 31, 2010, How
Did Democrats Get Here? The reasons for the Democrats’ decline
are, as we say in the business, overdetermined. That
is, there are no lack of hypotheses to explain it:
lots of causes for this one effect. The economy?
Sure. Unpopular legislation like health care? Yep.
Some “bad luck” events like the Gulf
Oil spill? Mmm-hmm. The new energy breathed into
conservatives by the Tea Party movement? Uh-huh.
- 9/2/10,
Gallup, Republicans
Hold Wide Lead in Key Voter Turnout Measure.
Gallup finds 54% of Republicans, compared with 30%
of Democrats, already saying they have given "quite
a lot" or "some" thought to the upcoming
congressional elections. That 24-point gap on this
key indicator of voter turnout is much larger than
Gallup has found in the final days before past midterm
elections.
- 9/1/10,
Gallup, Republicans
Remain Disproportionately White and Religious.
American political parties remain sharply differentiated
by race and religion. Republicans are disproportionately
likely to be white and highly religious. Democrats
are more racially and ethnically diverse, with proportionately
fewer highly religious whites.
- 9/1/10,
Gallup, Americans
Give GOP Edge on Most Election Issues. Americans
say the Republicans in Congress would do a better
job than the Democrats of handling seven of nine
key election issues. This includes a 49% to 38% advantage
on the economy, which 62% of Americans rate as extremely
important to their vote.
- August
30, 2010, Gallup, GOP
Takes Unprecedented 10-Point Lead on Generic Ballot.
The Republican leads of 6, 7, and 10 points this
month are all higher than any previous midterm Republican
advantage in Gallup's history of tracking the generic
ballot, which dates to 1942. Prior to this year,
the highest such gap was five points, measured in
June 2002 and July 1994. Elections in both of these
years resulted in significant Republican gains in
House seats. ...Republicans are now twice as likely
as Democrats to be "very" enthusiastic
about voting, and now hold -- by one point -- the
largest such advantage of the year.
- Pew, August
10, 2010, Republicans
Faring Better with Men, Whites, Independents and
Seniors. Major shifts in sentiment among key
voting blocs account for the improved GOP standing
in 2010. The Republicans now enjoy advantages among
typically loyal voting blocs that wavered in 2006,
notably men and whites. The GOP is also now running
better than four years ago among three key swing
groups in recent elections – independents,
white Catholics and seniors. The Republicans also
continue to enjoy an engagement advantage over the
Democrats, which at least in part reflects the greater
disposition to vote among these voting blocs that
have swung their way. In contrast, groups such as
young people and African Americans, who continue
to support the Democrats by comparable margins as
in 2006, are relatively unenthused about voting.
- August
7, 2010, NYT, I’m
American. And You? By MATT BAI, Nativist politics
may well yield short-term advantages for the Republican
party. History suggests, however, that the long term
may be more problematic.
- August
9, 2010, Gallup, Avg.
Midterm Seat Loss 36 for Presidents Below 50% Approval,
Presidents above 50% lose average of 14 House seats
in midterm elections
- April 18,
2010, Pew,
Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor.
By almost every conceivable measure Americans are
less positive and more critical of government these
days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect
storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a
dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based
backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected
officials.
Historically, confidence in government corresponds with broader measures
of satisfaction with the state of the nation and economic stress. The
low points in government trust over the past half-century have occurred
during the nation’s economic struggles in the late 1970s, the
early 1990s, and over the past few years. And confidence in government
recovered in the late 1980s and late 1990s, when economic growth was
strong and satisfaction was high.
As with many other aspects of American politics, partisan divisions
in trust in government have grown larger in recent decades.
In general, when trust falls steeply incumbents are more likely to
lose – and the president’s party tends to lose the most.
- April 14,
2010, NYT, Poll
Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated.
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated
than the general public, and are no more or less
afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class,
according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
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Basic
Press Sites
- The
New York Times
- The
Washington Post
- The National
Journal online
- CNN
- USA
Today
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Other
Sites that Synthesize available polling
... and some of them try to predict the Electoral College Vote outcome
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Background Polling & Analysis
- Polling
Report - a collection of recent
surveys from all sources; updated daily (see
the current horse races here.)
- Gallup's
Daily Trends - Three-day rolling averages on
a variety of indicators of well-being: economic,
health, mood, etc. These images give insight on
what voters are experiencing now, and help explain
voter dissatisfaction with the current administration.
- The
images here are from 10/26/2008 and don't auto-update.
Thus, any statement about "voter dissatisfaction" is
only valid through that date & could still
change. ...Click on each image to go to the
current data on the Gallup website.
Personal
Finance
Economic
Conditions
Economic
Outlook
Consumer
Confidence
Standard
of Living
Well-Being
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Problems & Debates
about Polling Accuracy
- Gallup,
October 4, 2010, Understanding
Gallup's Likely Voter Models. Since 1950, Gallup has used likely voter
models to identify Americans who are most likely
to vote in a coming election. These models involve
asking poll respondents a series of questions about
their interest in the coming election, their past
voting behavior, and their current intention to vote
in the election.
- Pollster/Mark
Blumenthal, 10-5-10, 'Likely'
Voters: How Pollsters Define And Choose Them.
We have seen the "likely voter" polling
problem rear its head several times in recent weeks,
but few examples have been as vivid as three national
surveys released in the last 24 hours.
- FiveThirtyEight -
Nate Silver started his meta-analysis site in 2008.
The New York Times now presents it.
- October
14, 2010, Bypassed
Cellphones: Biased Polls? On Wednesday,
Pew Research issued a study suggesting that
the failure to include cellphones in a survey
sample — and most pollsters don’t
include them — may bias the results against
Democrats. Pew has addressed this subject a
number of times before, and in their view,
the problem seems to be worsening. Indeed,
this is about what you might expect, since
the fraction of voters who rely on cellphones
is steadily increasing: about 25 percent of
the adult population now has no landline phone
installed at all. Clearly, this is a major
problem in survey research — and one
that, sooner or later, every polling firm is
going to have to wrestle with. What isn’t
as clear is how much of a problem it is right
now. I have written about this in the past,
and I encourage you to review those articles.
But let me try and come at it from a couple
of fresh directions.
- October
4, 2010, The
Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part
IV: Are the Polls Getting Worse? There
is another type of argument, however, that
is potentially more troubling. It could be
that, irrespective of the character of this
political cycle, polling itself is in decline.
This is a widely held view among political
elites and many polling professionals — and
quite a few of the readers of this blog, I
might add.
- October
3, 2010, The
Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part
III: This Time, It’s Different? In
Part III, we take up one type of critique that
I encounter frequently — that 2010 is
an unusual political cycle, and that its idiosyncrasies
may render the polling less accurate. While
this is not an unreasonable hypothesis, we
found it does not have any grounding in the
evidence: the polls have done no worse in “unusual” political
cycles like 1992, nor in “wave” years
like 1994 and 2006, than in routine-seeming
ones like 1996 and 1998.
- September
30, 2010, The
Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part
II: What the Numbers Say. In Part II, I
demonstrated, by contrast, that a simple average
of polls has performed very well over the past
six election cycles in determining the winner
of the contest. For example, Senate and gubernatorial
candidates who have trailed by 6 to 9 points
in the polling average with a month to go until
the election have won their races only about
10 percent of the time in recent years.
- September
29, 2010, The
Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part
I: Why You Can’t Trust Your Gut.
In Part I, I explored why our intuition may
mislead us when it comes to forecasting the
outcomes of elections — for a variety
of reasons, we may tend to assume that there
is more uncertainty in the forecast than there
really is.
- ABC/Gary
Langer, The Numbers,
A Run at the Latest Data from ABC's Poobah of Polling,
Gary Langer
- ABC/Gary
Langer, August 30, 2010, This
I Believe. It’s
quickly mushroomed into the
summer’s hottest data
point: A boatload of Americans
believe Barack Obama’s
a Muslim. Except that, maybe,
they don’t. Consider
this instead: They’re
just willing to say it. This
not-so-subtle difference
is useful in understanding
public opinion and its measurement.
Yet the punditry and pronouncements
that have followed the Obama/Muslim
numbers mainly have missed
the point, falling instead
into the trap of literalism.
They say, so they believe.
Not necessarily so. People
in fact may voice an attitude
not as an affirmed belief – a
statement of perceived factual
reality – but rather
as what my colleagues and
I have taken to calling “expressed
belief” – a statement
intended to send a message,
not claim a known fact.
- See
the big section in our 2008 election page, here,
with topics like:
- Some
methodological statements from Gallup (their
methods are typical of industry standards)
- Debate
on factors that may distort polling's accuracy
- The "Bradley
Effect" - do survey respondents lie about
race?
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The "Ground
Game:" Turning out the Vote
Plus: Defense against Voter Fraud & Vote Suppression
- NYT, August
25, 2010, Shaping
Tea Party Passion Into Campaign Force, By KATE
ZERNIKE. On a Saturday in August when most of the
political class has escaped this city’s swelter,
50 Tea Party leaders have flown in from across the
country to jam into a conference room in an office
building on Pennsylvania Avenue, apparently unconcerned
that the fancy address does not guarantee air-conditioning
on weekends. They have come to learn how to take
over the country, voter by voter. ...This is a three-day “boot
camp” at FreedomWorks, the Washington advocacy
group that has done more than any other organization
to build the Tea Party movement. ...The goal is to
turn local Tea Party groups into a standing get-out-the-vote
operation in Congressional districts across the country.
- WP 8/23/10. Primary
turnout shows big GOP enthusiasm edge. By Aaron
Blake.Three-quarters of the way through the 2010
primary season, the so-called "enthusiasm
gap" appears to be playing out across the
country with turnout in GOP contests exceeding
previous highs and beating Democratic turnout by
unprecedented margins in many targeted states.
Background
on Karl Rove's successful "Ground Game"
that worked for George W. Bush ... until it didn't
The
Hamburger/Wallsten Explanation
of the Rove/Bush Strategy
- "One
Party Country: The Republican
Plan For Dominance in the 21st
Century" at Amazon
- A
September 28, 2006 article in
Harpers (here)
tries to answer these questions:
- The
G.O.P. still raises more money
than the Democrats, but the
Democrats are hardly short
of cash. How significant is
the G.O.P. advantage in terms
of sheer dollars? Are they
simply raising more money,
or are they also doing a better
job of spending it?
- How
successful has the G.O.P. been
in eating away at Democratic
support among core constituencies
like African Americans and
Hispanics?
- You
say that Republicans have surpassed
the Democrats in mobilizing
their voters on election day,
in part by using databases
such as Voter Vault, which
allows party activists to track
voters by personal hobbies,
professional interests, and
even by their favorite brand
of soda. How does that bank
of personal data translate
into an advantage on election
day? Are Democrats responding
with similar programs of their
own?
- Whatever
structural advantages the Republicans
have, hasn't the G.O.P. also
sought to gain an electoral
advantage by suppressing Democratic
turnout? How significant are
those efforts on the part of
the G.O.P., and are we likely
to see new and improved methods
down the road?
- Republicans
would no doubt argue that their
policies and ideology are simply
more popular with the public
than Democratic policies. Do
ideas still play a role in
electoral success or is it
all about money and organization?
- Diane
Rehm show, 27 July 2006, here
- Fresh
Air with Terry Gross, July 24,
2006, here
- BuzzFlash,
08/28/2006, here
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- NYT,
November 15, 2005. By Jim Rutenberg, Voter
Profiles for Bloomberg Went Beyond Ethnic
Labels. Throughout this year's mayoral
campaign, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's spending
records included something called "voter
list development." It looked ominous
to Democrats - especially as Mr. Bloomberg
poured millions into it. Lists like this
usually include voters' personal data - the
magazines they buy, the cars they drive,
their political affiliations. But as the
cost of compiling Mr. Bloomberg's list inched
up toward $10 million, not even aides to
President Bush, who perfected this sort of
voter identification last year, could figure
out where the money was going.
- Los
Angeles Times July 24, 2005. By Tom
Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Parties
Are Tracking Your Habits. Though both
Democrats and Republicans collect personal
information, the GOP's mastery of data
is changing the very nature of campaigning.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — At first glance,
Felicia Hill seems to fit the profile of
a loyal Democrat: She is African American,
married to a General Motors union worker
and voted for Dukakis, Clinton and Gore
in past presidential elections. But in
the weeks before election day 2004, the
suburban mother of two was deluged with
telephone calls, invitations and specially
targeted mailings urging her to support
President Bush. The intense Republican
courtship of Hill, 39, was no coincidence.
A deeper look at her lifestyle and politics
reveals a voter who might be persuaded
to switch sides. Among the clues: she is
a church member uneasy about abortion;
she lives in a growing suburb and she sent
her children to a private school. ...For
the first time, she sees the GOP as a place
where black women can be comfortable. "I
saw people I could relate to," she
said, describing conversations she had
with Republican professional women during
telephone outreach calls and at party events.
...Hill and millions of other would-be
Bush backers in closely contested states
were identified by a GOP database that
culled information ranging from the political
basics, like party registration, to the
personal, such as the cars they drive,
the drinks they buy, even the features
they order on their phone lines. The "micro-targeting" effort
was so effective that the party credited
it with helping to secure Bush's reelection.
- NYT,
December 6, 2004. By Katharine Q. Seelye, How
to Sell a Candidate to a Porsche-Driving,
Leno-Loving Nascar Fan. After the 2000
presidential campaign, strategists for President
Bush came to a startling realization: Democrats
watch more television than Republicans. So
by buying millions of dollars' worth of television
advertising time, Republicans were spending
their money on audiences that tended to vote
Democratic. What to do? With the luxury of
four years until the next election, the Bush
team examined voters' television-viewing
habits and cross-referenced them with surveys
of voters' political and lifestyle preferences.
This led to an unusual step for a presidential
campaign: it cut the proportion of money
that it put into broadcast television and
diverted more to niche cable channels and
radio, where it could more precisely reach
its target audience.
- NYT,
November 19, 2004. By Adam Nagourney, Bush
Campaign Manager Views the Electoral Divide.
After two years of polling, market testing
and up-close demographic scrutiny of American
voters, the manager of President Bush's re-election
campaign, Ken Mehlman, offered another way
Thursday to view the divide between the American
electorate. "If you drive a Volvo and
you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," Mr.
Mehlman told an assembly of the nation's
Republican governors here. "If you drive
a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're
voting for George Bush." ...Rather than
dispatching troops to knock on doors in neighborhoods
known to be heavily Republican, Mr. Mehlman
said, the Bush campaign studied consumer
habits in trying to predict whom people would
vote for in a presidential election. "We
did what Visa did," Mr. Mehlman said. "We
acquired a lot of consumer data. What magazine
do you subscribe to? Do you own a gun? How
often do the folks go to church? Where do
you send your kids to school? Are you married? "Based
on that, we were able to develop an exact
kind of consumer model that corporate America
does every day to predict how people vote
- not based on where they live but how they
live," he said. "That was critically
important to our success."
- Washington
Post, November 7, 2004. By Dan Balz
and Mike Allen, Four
More Years Attributed to Rove's Strategy.
Despite Moments of Doubt, Adviser's Planning
Paid Off. Admired, disparaged, respected
and feared, [Karl] Rove joins an elite
cadre of political strategists who can
claim two presidential victories. Bush's
adviser can now look toward the goal he
has pursued since he was an obscure direct-mail
specialist in Texas: the creation of a
durable Republican majority in Washington
and across the country.
- Washington
Post, November 4, 2004. By John F.
Harris, Victory
Bears Out Emphasis on Values. GOP Tactics
Aimed At Cultural Divide. ...The results
appeared to validate several of the pet
theories of [GOP campaign director Karl]
Rove, including his belief that politics
is as much science as art. Presidential
stops in swing states, and the route of
campaign bus trips, rarely included the
largest cities. That was because Rove
chose them scientifically, using three
criteria that he explained to reporters
in the waning days of the campaign.
Rove said his targets were areas where
Bush had underperformed in 2000, whether
Republican or Democratic, and where the
campaign's target for votes was higher
than the number that showed up. Second
were fast-growing exurban areas or Republican
places where there were a large number
of people who ought to register to vote
and do not -- what Rove calls "a large
gap between participation and potential." Third,
he said, he paid attention to areas "that
have a significant number of swing voters,
and swing wildly from election to election."
- NYT,
November 4, 2004. By Elisabeth Bumiller, Turnout
Effort and Kerry, Too, Were G.O.P.'s Keys
to Victory. In the closing hours of President
Bush's campaign for re-election, Karl Rove,
his chief political adviser, was obsessed
with turning out Republican votes. Late on
Monday night, Mr. Rove stood in the cold
at a rally in Albuquerque and pulled scraps
of paper from his pocket covered with numbers
that reassured him that his ground army was
in full assault.
- NYT,
July 18, 2004. By Jim Rutenberg, Campaigns
Use TV Preferences to Find Voters. When
deciding where to run his television advertisements,
President Bush is much more partial than
Senator John Kerry to crime shows like "Cops," "Law & Order" and "JAG." Mr.
Kerry leans more to lighter fare, like "Judge
Judy," "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "Late
Show with David Letterman." Those choices
do not reflect either man's taste in television,
but critical differences in the advertising
strategies of their campaigns, which are
spending more money for commercials than
any other campaigns in presidential history.
Crime shows appeal to the Bush campaign because
of its interest in reaching out to Republican
men who are attracted to such programming.
By contrast, the Kerry campaign is more interested
in concentrating on single women, who tend
to be drawn to shows with softer themes.
- NYT,
April 7, 2004. By Joyce Purnick, Data
Churners Try to Pinpoint Voters' Politics.
There's this great story making the Washington
political rounds about the Conservative Party
in Britain. It is that fund-raisers in London
found a strong correlation between Conservative
Party donors and people who buy garden bulbs
by mail. Far-fetched? Maybe not, because
people who plant spring bulbs tend to be
more suburban and rural than urban, more
wealthy than poor and, with time to garden,
older. Hence, a likely Conservative, right?
- NYT,
April 6, 2004. By Joyce Purnick, Foraging
For Votes: One-Doorbell-One-Vote Tactic Re-emerges
in Bush-Kerry Race. They call it the
ground war. And as anticipated, it is back
after a long hiatus, subtly changing politics
as we know it. Or trying to. After decades
of playing poor relation to television advertising,
grass-roots politics has become a campaign
star this year, as many political pros predicted
it would be in the aftermath of the Bush-Gore
face-off of 2000. And today it ranges from
old-fashioned shoe leather to Web technology
that can make a precinct captain of anyone
with a computer.
- Washington
Post, November 10, 2002. In
GOP Win, a Lesson in Money, Muscle, Planning.
[Karl] Rove, [Rep. Tom] DeLay and others
concluded that Republicans had lost the
turnout battle in recent elections by focusing
too much on paid advertising and too little
on the ground war that Democratic allies
such as the AFL-CIO do so well: getting
potential voters to the polls. Beginning
in early 2001, the party registered thousands
of new Republican voters, particularly
in fast-growing states. It invested heavily
in a program, dubbed the "72-hour project," that
would later help spur record turnout in
key regions. The Republican National Committee
spent millions of dollars honing a system
to identify voters, down to specific households,
and contact them repeatedly with phone
calls, mail and visits from party activists.
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Analyses
of Turnout
- United
States Elections Project - Michael P. McDonald
at George Mason University: includes information
and analysis of turnout.
- Voter
turnout rates presented here show that the much-lamented
decline in voter participation is an artifact
of poor measurement. Previously, turnout rates
were calculated by dividing the number of votes
by what is called the "voting-age population" which
consists of everyone age 18 and older residing
in the United States (the yellow line to the
right). This includes persons ineligible to vote,
mainly non-citizens and ineligible felons, and
excludes overseas eligible voters. When turnout
rates are calculated for those eligible to vote,
a new picture of turnout emerges, which exhibits
no decline since 1972 (the green line to the
right).
- NYT,
11/6/08 (scan from print edition), turnout chart from
Michael P. McDonald at
George Mason University
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2008
Exit Polls
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The
2010 Election 
