Less Than One Week To Go – More Midterm Fog Of War
Hello Hackaroos,
Well, this is it. Less than one week to go and then we’ll have an answer to the one poll that really counts, Election Day. So in this issue we’ll talk polling and single out a few interesting races to watch here in the final stretch.
Let’s begin…
WHAT’S IN A POLL WITH ONE WEEK TO GO?
GIBBS: So, LOTS and LOTS of polls coming out in these final few days. And, if history is any guide, there will be even more to come. One is the latest batch from the New York Times with Senate race polls out that’s getting a lot of attention and providing at least a temporary balm for Democrats. One caveat here is a number of these polls were several days old at their release time. Also, two-thirds of the Pennsylvania poll was done either before or during the much discussed Fetterman-Oz debate. Like we said last week in talking about the fog of war is if you want to find something that makes you feel heartened, there's definitely something for you out there in the polling-sphere. If you want to find something to make you feel apoplectic, there's, indeed, also something there for you too! Let me just repeat this rule about a few things about polling: first, polling is not a prediction about what will happen on election night, but rather a snapshot in time. Unfortunately, that time is always to some degree in the rearview mirror. Second, there are A LOT of polls out there done in the very cheap and polling is something I’d put in the category of “you get what you pay for.” Now, that doesn’t mean a very expensive poll will always be right, but it’s really hard to do good polling on the cheap. Lastly, getting random samples is REALLY hard these days. It’s genuinely hard to get people to answer their phones from a number they don’t recognize. And, these days, people are making different assumptions about what the electorate will look like. In 2012, the night before the Presidential election, a small group of us told then President Obama we were confident he’d be re-elected the next night. In some colorful language, he conveyed back to us that we had better be right! The story I’ve always heard is that the Romney staff told their candidate the same thing, based on their polling. In the end, we were right because the modeled electorate looked more like what we were polling and less like the one the Romney campaign believed was going to show up. Truthfully, campaigns poll more to make spending and message decisions rather than the head-to-head matchup.
MURPHY: Yes, it used to be if you wanted to drive yourself insane, you could just stare at a spiral wheel for a few hours and go batty. But now, we have constant polls to do the same thing. So, as Election Day approaches, a few thoughts on our national political junkie polling obsession. Political pros use polling to learn what the voters are most interested in, what they know and don’t know, and how to introduce the most effective new information into the voter’s consciousness to hopefully affect the outcome of an election. Political junkies use polls to, well, feel better. The presumption at work deep in their minds is the same powerful psychological seduction that can lead you to great misfortune in everything from the stock market to the craps table… I can tell the future. Political junkies obsess on polling because they want to know the future. They want to know what will happen. Image Joe Loyal Dem reads a headline, “New poll shows Warnock 7 points ahead of Walker in Georgia Senate race”… whew! Thank God. He’s going to win. I’m happy. But two days later a new poll reports “Walker now leads by 5 points in Georgia.” Holy crap. We’re doomed. I’m moving to Portugal. It works the same way on the other side. Partisans of all stripes want to know what’s going to happen, so they can relax (or panic.). The problem is that modern polling is not so great a prediction of outcomes (especially weeks before the election.). While polling is based on strong statistical science, it also includes a few very important (and hopefully educated – that depends on the quality of the pollster) guesses. Guess one: who is going to vote? Who do we poll? Guess two: will this election include significant new voters we have not seen before and should we try to find them in our sample. How many of them? Beyond the tough guesses a pollster has to make, there is also a set of true technical challenges: how do you get a true random sample when a lot of voters are very hard to reach on the phone or online? Want to see a quality pollster twitch? Ask them what it’s like to get a busy working Mom to stop their frantic life for 20 minutes to answer a bunch of poll questions about… politics, a subject many people are exhausted by. It’s not easy. Even seniors, who used to be the easiest group to get on the phone for a landline interview are now so besieged with telemarketing (and scam) phone calls that they are a challenge. Younger voters are largely receptive to text for online polling, while many seniors are not tech savvy. All these challenges mean good polling is expensive and one thing newspaper publishers hate in these lean days for traditional media is expensive. They mostly favor the lowest bid, which is not good news for quality fieldwork (the interviewing part of polling). Enter the universe of Poll-versities; colleges usually unheard of that have gotten into the polling business for fun and fame. It’s a model that can – in theory – work, but also can be wobbly since the brothers from Animal House are doing the phone interviewing. (86% of respondents in one Faber University poll reported that the “Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.). Lastly, I’ve always thought the media have a journalistic ethical problem when they do polling. Media polls are one of the few situations where the media organ both makes news (the Action News 7 poll!) and then reports it. While I endorse quality media polling to report on what voters care most about and what they think about current issues, getting into the horserace reporting business is a dicey matter. One, as mentioned, polls are best at reporting who would win a campaign if the election was held a week ago, not a month or two or three in the future. All this said, the modern polling mania is here to stay. People want to think they know what the future will be, and if Astrology is here to stay, so Is breathless media polling of dubious quality. (Footnote: to be fair some media outlets spend money and use quality polling vendors. I won’t name names here – that’s a quagmire – but I can praise my home team here: NBC News polling is top notch. Fox, surprisingly, isn’t bad either.)
Source: The New York Times
GIBBS: At this point, I’d just say ignore the polling. And yeah it’s not really an election until someone says…”the only poll that counts is on Election Day!
MURPHY: Wait a minute Gibbs! I just said that in the Intro! And we used that as the title to today’s Hacks podcast too! Even we can stoop to a cliché once in a while!
GIBBS: Five dollar fine Murphy. Now, what these Times polls tell me is the Senate is still anyone’s to win control of in 2022. Lots of close races, lots of margin of error races and we aren’t likely to know on Nov. 9th who has won them all.
MURPHY: I’m going to stick with my guns. I’ve been arguing that the “this time is different” bar ought to be very high and for that reason I think this will be a bad midterm for the party in power, in other words situation normal. Plus, the political punishment that comes with inflation is hard to avoid. So I think the Senate races are reverting to historical mean and the R’s will prevail in the close contests like PA, WI, GA, NV and even potentially AZ. I even think we may even see a whopper upset with a Patty Murray or Michael Bennett losing. And a few whackadoodle R’s coming uncomfortably close (Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Bolduc within five points in NH, etc.). I hope I’m wrong on these. While the Roe issue has power, I don’t think it beats inflation. Being a Jurassic Consultant, I remember situations where a 2 or 3 point lead in late polling evaporates on Election Day for vulnerable incumbents or the open seat candidate from the party voters are mad at. So we will see.
@hacksontapnewsletter
TIDBITS:
GIBBS: One less than great sign for Dems is the Cook Political Report keeps moving races away from Dems and toward the GOP, doing so with 10 races today. Included in that batch is Rep. Katie Porter, who has raised and spent a ton of money and now finds herself in a tossup with a week to go. Buckle up!
Source: The Cook Political Report
MURPHY: Utah remains fascinating with a new poll out this weekend (from a real pollster working for the pro-McMullin superPAC I’m helping) showing a one point race. Meanwhile some other polls from pollsters I’ve never heard of show Lee now with a solid lead. Will the move to the GOP save troubled incumbent Mike Lee in a ruby red state? National Trumpland is worried, and in a panic they’ve poured millions into the state in late attacks on CIA agent turned Independent candidate Evan McMullin. Some other new polls from outfits I’ve never heard of show the GOP vote Loyal Republican spend has propelled Lee into a comfortable lead. We’ll have to wait now for the only poll…
GIBBS: ...that counts, the one on Election Day. I know! I know! Five more dollars, Murphy!
MURPHY: Let’s roll the ten I owe into a bet on Senate control Gibbs! Finally, one interesting race to watch: NH-1. A true swing district, this is the sort of district the GOP should have the edge in. But in the primary a truly nutty Trump fringe candidate beat the frontrunner, a more normal Trumpy Republican. So NH-1 will be a test? Is the wave strong enough to elect a really weak candidate? We’ll see.
We’ll be back on Friday kicking things off with our final big questions to help guide you through the big day.
Murphy and Gibbs