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A view from a statistician

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RogerRabbit
Master Chief Petty Officer

Joined: 05 Sep 2004
Posts: 748
Location: Oregon

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:11 am Post subject: A view from a statistician

Another interesting analysis from JayCost

http://jaycost.blogspot.com/

Quote:

News of the Day for 10-27

1. Kerry spends today in Sioux City, IA. Sioux City is a swing section of IA. It is almost evenly split between GOPers and Dems. He then heads to Cedar Rapids, IA. Bush was here last week. It is in Linn County, which Gore won in 2000. In between the two IA stops, Kerry heads to Rochester, MN. Apparently, his trip there last week was insufficient to put the state away. At any rate, Bush won Rochester by a few points in 2000.

Bush, meanwhile, is in Lancaster, PA -- which was slightly pro-Gore in 2000. He then heads to Findlay, OH, roughly in the NW portion of the state. It is a Bush stronghold. Bush also heads to MI today for his big rally. Bush will return to OH on Thursday and Friday, with two trips to the center of the state and one trip to Toledo.

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer announced today that Kerry is going to spend election eve in Cleveland with Bruce Springsteen. This is on top of trips Toledo and Springfield tomorrow. And then Youngstown on Saturday. Bush, meanwhile, will be in Westlake and Dayton tomorrow. Friday is the big day for Dubya...he's going to be with "Ahnold" in Columbus.

Prediction for 11-02: After voting here in Chicago, the Horserace Blogger heads to the local buy/sell/trade CD shop, head slung low, to sell back his cherished Born To Run. He then stops and decides against it. He realizes that all rockers, except (of course) Pete Townshend, become uber-lame in their fifties...and this is simply how Bruce is expressing his uber-lameness. The Bruce of 1975 would never countenance the Bruce of 2004. That's good enough for the Horserace Blogger!

2. I wanted to take a moment and make mention of the very, very different strategies that Bush and Kerry are pursuing. Kerry seems intent on winning every news cycle this last week. Generally, this has been his strategy since the first debate. I remain supremely unconvinced of the wisdom of this strategy. It is clearly time to win over the undecideds. That is obviously what Kerry/Edwards is trying to do. However, the current unweighted average indicates that Bush is up about 2.6% over Kerry -- with less than 4% of the vote left to divy up. What keeps bugging me about this strategy is that Kerry should expect to win these last week undecideds anyway. So why is he trying to win the news cycle?

The only answer I can come up with is the following. Kerry/Edwards has its own statisticians and pollsters crunching the numbers all over the place. They know they are definitely down in more states than they can afford. They know they are down nationwide. They also know that they have not moved the polls in OH, and are more-likely-than-not down there. Kerry is only up in one nationwide poll -- and chances are the race will settle back down in it today. The only movement in the last week has been a modest movement to Bush. This is the point where the base starts to panic -- they realize that they are going to lose by a hair's breadth, but they are still going to lose. I think that this news cycle strategy is actually an attempt to ramp up the basese voters, get them feeling all good and juiced, who would otherwise spend their time looking at the polls and feeling a little unease.

My advice to GOPers out there is to put the news cycle out of your mind. Bush/Cheney is not making a play for it. The national media is drinking it up, but think of it this way:

1. Kerry heads to WI and blasts Bush on Iraq. He then goes into his stump speech. As Ryan Lizza notes, the media only covers the blasting on Iraq (which, let's face it, will not un-convince a convinced person and will not convince an un-convinced person in a way that the person was not destined to go anyway) and completely ignores the stump speech.

2. Bush heads to WI and gives his stump speech: "Kerry is a liberal, Kerry is an opportunist. Trust me." The local media covers the stump speech. Check out this piece from The Des Moines Register as a perfect example of how Bush's stump speech plays. In just the second paragraph, we see Bush's central theme quoted directly: "The final clear choice in this election is on the values that are crucial to keeping our families strong. And here, my opponent and I are miles

Who would you rather be? I would rather be Bush. Let Kerry have the national news cycle. Who cares? This week is designed for two things: 1. Amp up the base and 2. Seal the deal in discrete areas of the nation. Bush is working on both. Kerry is doing the former and trying to seal the deal with Rather, Brokaw and Jennings. He is giving them grist for their news mill. Bush is ignoring the national networks and is using local media as a microphone for his message. Bush is doing what he has to do. Kerry is trying to create a news cycle in which he seems to have momentum. One is real. One is a paper tiger.

3. Returning to that TNR piece for a moment, it is very telling to compare it with a piece in The Weekly Standard. Let's start with Lizza:

Despite all the data points that reporters aboard Kerry's campaign plane were swapping indicating that there is a small shift toward the guy they're covering--"He's pulled ahead in The Washington Post tracking poll!" "Zogby has him up four in Colorado!"--yesterday was a reminder that the American electorate is like a game of Whack-a-Mole: Every time Kerry thinks he's got a state or constituency locked up, it jumps out of its hole and demands another thump.

Note first from this how it is the media, not the Horserace Blog, that seems to be cherry-picking polls. Now, either they are doing this because they want Kerry to win, or they just want a close race. But they clearly want this guy to get closer to Dubya.

Second -- consider what Kerry has spent his time doing on the day Lizza covered. As Lizza notes: 1. He talked health care with working women in NH. 2. He used Clinton to amp up urbanites in Philly. 3. He headed to MI to amp up the base there. Lizza sums up nicely the real state of the campaign:

Politically, Monday was a day spent tying up loose ends in these three states, but news-wise it was about Clinton's return and Kerry's new attacks on the missing Iraq explosives.

You see, Kerry is winning the news cycle, but he is having serious problems with his base. Why oh why was he in Philly and Detroit? Shouldn't those places be "in the bag?" Why was he talking healthcare with working women in NH...shouldn't that demographic be in the bag?

A winning campaign does not have such serious base problems with one week to go. That is a political truth. A disconnect between the media's reporting and the reality on the ground cannot change this.

Footnote, Lizza notes that ACT had actually pulled out of MI in September to redirect their resources. The MI numbers have since softened. I find this utterly incredible. They pulled their GOTV resources in MI in September?! Are they nuts?! Are they broke?! Are they stupid?! MI is a must-win -- which means it is a must-not-leave. Do you think BC04 has pulled its GOTV from Missouri? No way! You never do something like this. Never. Nevertheless, what happened in the last month is that ACT pulled out, leaving BC04 all by itself in a state with 18 EVs and neither candidate ever about 50%. That is unbelievable. That is simply unbelievable. I am litterally speechless. How could they ever, ever, ever leave MI?!

Consider this in relation to Matthew Continetti's piece about Ken Mehlman and the numbers game. Continetti notes that Mehlman is all about the numbers. He has hordes of statistics about Bush's strength and Kerry's weakness (the latter only up on Dubya in 7 polls since October). He also has these startling revelations about the BC04 ground game:

Mehlman shoots off campaign statistics almost as quickly as his boss Karl Rove. Reporters, scribbling furiously in their notebooks, can hardly keep up. "We have 7.5 million new activists," he says quickly. "We registered 3.4 million voters; we have 1.2 million volunteers; we have 65,000 precinct chairman; this weekend we will make 14 million volunteer contacts." He takes a breath, his eyes grow wide, and then repeats that last figure, obviously impressed with it: "14 million volunteer contacts."

The bottom line of election 2000: BC00 lost the popular vote because they were outgunned in GOTV. The bottom line of election 2004: BC04 learns the lesson from 2000, vows never to get outgunned in GOTV, and wins reelection; KE04 relies on an insane billionaire financier to take care of GOTV and loses the race handily.

With the polls only showing a 2.6% difference with less than 4% undecided, this election will come down to the ground. On the one hand, we have BC04 and their dreaded 72-hour program. On the other hand, we have ACT -- who managed to waste tens of thousands of dollars registering voters with no addresses in OH, who have employed people involved with drugs, and who pulled out of MI, only to find Kerry's position collapse there. BC04 has a distinct advantage.

4. The LA Times has an interesting piece about the importance of rural voters. Here is the money quote:

Rural America is providing Bush important support again this year. In a Los Angeles Times Poll released this week, Bush drew nearly three-fifths of the vote from rural and small-town residents; recent CBS/New York Times, CNN/USA Today/Gallup and Pew Research Center surveys have found similar results.

Bush's commanding position in rural Missouri helped him to move the state out of competition virtually without a fight from Kerry. And his continuing strength in southern Ohio represents his best chance to hold the state amid job losses that have weakened him in northern Ohio: The most recent Ohio Poll gave Bush a 17-percentage-point lead in rural communities.

Strength in rural communities likewise remains central to Bush's more distant hopes of snatching Michigan and Pennsylvania from Kerry. "If we can't maximize the vote in our rural areas in a state like Pennsylvania, that's not going to end up being a state that we can win," said Nelson.

This 60% was roughly the same margin he won the rural areas in 2000. The question is consistency. Bush was a tad weaker in rural WI and IA in 2000. He needs to pump those up this time around -- hence his trip to rural Cuba City, WI this week.

5. But the big question on everybody's mind is whether HI is actually in play. I think ABC News has answered it. Says their daily must-read, The Note:

ABC News has learned that the Democratic Party plans to divert "substantial" resources to Hawaii; their independent expenditures arm will be going up on the air there, as well as some of the liberal 527s.

The Democrats also claim to "eyeing" AR and WV this weekend as well. I am not sure why this is the case. Do they really think they stand a chance there, or are they just trying to save face over HI?

If you want details on the latest HI poll, head to here.

6. Unfortunately, I think the analysis of Jewish voters is going to be tabled. Anne Kornblut notes that Bush is doing better among Jews than he did in 2000, but the difference is well within the margin of error. Thus, it defies my ability to render a statistical judgment. Peter Beinhart notes in the Washington Post that Bush will likely win back the orthodox Jewish voters. This group, however, is too small for me to do any kind of analysis. Expect Bush to do better overall, but expect this number to be too small to quantify until after-the-fact.

_________________
"Si vis pacem, para bellum"

Anker-Klanker
Admiral

Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:35 am Post subject:

I thought it was interesting today that Bush was openly appealing to moderate Democrats to vote for him.

1991932
Lance Corporal

Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 381
Location: Massachusetts

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:40 am Post subject:

I got dizzy reading that. _________________ Former "War Criminal"

Kimmymac
Master Chief Petty Officer

Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 816
Location: Texas

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 3:54 am Post subject:

Interesting. And it gets back to it being all about a ground pounder's game. Kerry is wanting to win the "shock and awe" newscycle, and Bush has conceeded winning the newscycle, and is concentrating on the ground game. Networks can't vote. People can. "Superior fire power is great, but no war was ever won without boots on the ground."---some military guy. _________________ The last refuge of scoundrels is not patriotism; it is finicky liberal humanitarianism.--Martin Paretz

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