Since our previous episode we’ve had individual polls from red states Georgia and Montana showing Barack Obama narrowly in front, so they’re now included in the polling aggregates. However, John McCain leads in both due to the overall polling picture from the past few weeks. The other remarkable development has been an Obama blowout in Ohio, underscoring a picture of Democratic strength in the rust belt states.
| Obama | McCain | Sample | D-EV | R-EV | |
| Michigan | 54.7 | 39.4 | 3005 | 17 | |
| Washington | 54.9 | 40.1 | 3379 | 11 | |
| Maine | 54.5 | 40.0 | 2185 | 4 | |
| Minnesota | 53.3 | 41.8 | 3677 | 10 | |
| Iowa | 52.6 | 41.7 | 3530 | 7 | |
| Pennsylvania | 52.2 | 41.7 | 5505 | 21 | |
| Wisconsin | 51.5 | 42.1 | 3490 | 10 | |
| New Hampshire | 51.5 | 42.3 | 3305 | 4 | |
| New Mexico | 50.5 | 43.3 | 2927 | 5 | |
| Colorado | 50.8 | 44.3 | 3450 | 9 | |
| Virginia | 50.9 | 44.7 | 3777 | 13 | |
| Ohio | 48.7 | 43.0 | 4337 | 20 | |
| Nevada | 50.0 | 45.4 | 3418 | 5 | |
| Florida | 48.2 | 45.3 | 5021 | 27 | |
| North Dakota | 45.5 | 44.7 | 1206 | 3 | |
| Missouri | 47.4 | 46.5 | 4050 | 11 | |
| Indiana | 47.4 | 47.0 | 3828 | 11 | |
| North Carolina | 47.2 | 48.9 | 4564 | 15 | |
| Montana | 44.8 | 48.7 | 2628 | 3 | |
| Georgia | 45.6 | 50.0 | 3530 | 15 | |
| West Virginia | 42.7 | 51.0 | 3622 | 5 | |
| Others | - | - | - | 175 | 137 |
| RCP/Total | 49.9 | 43.9 | - | 363 | 175 |
So who’s going to win then? The polls of course leave little room for doubt. However, there are a couple of items of conventional wisdom floating around which suggest they might not be telling the full story, one way or another.
• The Bradley effect. A compelling paper by Dan Hopkins of Harvard University examines the popular notion that polls overrate the performance of black candidates in biracial contests due to white voters’ reluctance to appear illiberal when interrogated by pollsters. Hopkins finds the effect was a serious factor into the 1980s, most famously when black Democratic candidate Tom Bradley failed to win the Californian gubernatorial election in 1982, but has ceased to be so. Pew Research charts a corresponding decline in the number of respondents willing to admit they would not vote for a black candidate, from 16 per cent in 1984 to 6 per cent. Hopkins notes a very sudden decline in the Bradley effect (he prefers the “Wilder effect”, after Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder) “at about the time that welfare reform silenced one critical, racialized issue”.
• The reverse Bradley effect. Strictly speaking, a “reverse Bradley effect” would involve voters telling pollsters they were voting for McCain or were undecided when they were in fact set on Obama, which is plainly not on the cards. Far more likely is that turnout of black voters is being underestimated in pollsters’ determinations of “likely voters”, which in many cases go on whether they voted last time rather than what they say they will do this time. Whatever methods are being used to account for the certainty of higher black turnout, I’m pretty confident they are overly conservative. When a pollster is required to explain inaccuracy after the event, “I was going on past experience” makes for a more professional sounding excuse than “I made a wrong guess”. I haven’t studied this systematically, but the one example I have looked at has proved to be an eyebrow-raiser: the most recent SurveyUSA poll of Pennsylvania has 10 per cent of black voters among its overall sample, whereas this paper from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies tells us it was 13 per cent in 2004. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight provides support for this and related impressions in taking to task pollsters who have gaps of 4 to 6 per cent between results for “registered” and “likely” voters.
• The late Republican surge. I recently heard it said that Republican candidates tend to come home strong in the last week or two of campaigning. Remembering how much of Bill Clinton’s lead vanished shortly before the 1992 election, I thought this sounded plausible and went burrowing through the archives for evidence. The following chart plots the last 15 days of polling at presidential elections from 1992 onwards, day 15 being the election result. I have used composites of polling obtained from Real Clear Politics for 2000 and 2004; Gallup tracking polls for 1996; and a list of various pollsters’ results I found in the New York Times for 1992.
The case of 1996 stands out, but this might well point to a general inaccuracy in the Gallup series I was using rather than a late surge to Bob Dole (unfortunately I could only locate one poll from the final week). Beyond that, the chart provides pretty thin gruel if you’re in the market for a McCain comeback in the last 10 days. The 1992 Bush recovery was less dramatic than I remembered it once I removed Gallup from the equation, which exasperatingly shifted from “registered” to “likely” voters in the final week, eliminating much of Bill Clinton’s lead at a stroke. If anything the trends from 2000 and 2004 point the other way.
• Front-runner decline. The aforementioned paper on the Wilder/Bradley effect by Dan Hopkins informs us that polls “typically overstate support for front-runners”, which is demonstrated in the scatter plots under “Figure 3” (see right at the back). These suggest a candidate like McCain who is on about 42 per cent is probably being underestimated by as much as 2 per cent, while a candidate like Obama on 50 per cent is probably being represented accurately – unless he’s black, in which case he will suffer a Bradley effect of a bit over 1 per cent.
• Advertising. The Washington Post informs us that the cashed-up Obama campaign is fielding “as many as seven commercials for every one aired by Republican Sen. John McCain”.
My guess is that point one will be comfortably countered by point two; point three is worth little if anything; point four might help McCain close the gap by 2 per cent, but some of this gloss should be taken off after accounting for point five. In sum, there seems little reason not to take the polls more-or-less at face value. That being so, my final prediction is that Obama will win every state where my polling aggregates currently have him ahead except North Dakota, where the result is derived from two small sample polls, one from an agency of little repute. The margin in Florida is narrow enough that front-runner decline might be expected to account for it, but I find it hard to believe Obama would fail to carry so marginal a state when he’s up by eight points nationally. That makes it 375 electoral votes for Obama and 163 for McCain.
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The redistricting one I would say is pretty neutral politically.
Re 783,
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:aPD36UDi1C4J:elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/24/politicians-stack-biarre-initiatives-ballot/+ballot+proposals+US+election&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=au
http://www.iandrinstitute.org/ballotwatch.htm
http://www.iandrinstitute.org/BW%202008-1%20Preview%20(v4%2010-24).pdf – this one is an itemized list state by state but you have to dig into the .pdf file about 6 to 8 pages to get the beginning of the list. It isn’t structured to have all like minded measures together such as all states which have marijuana proposals on the ballot nor is it structured to give results after the fact.
Sigh, how many mistakes can I make?
There are 12 Ca ballot initiatives, not 11.
Prop 10 is arguably right wing not left-wing.
The redistrcting one is opposed byy the Democrats, but I’m not sure that makes it right-wing – it’s because it will remove control of redistricting from the Ca assembly, usually controlled by the Dems. So in a partisan sense it’s advantageous to the Repubs over the Dems.
The Childrens Hospital one may or may not be good policy, but it’s hard to say it’s strongly right wiong or left wing.
I would suggest that attempting to divide things into “right” or “left” blocs rarely works and serves no purpose.
Now we get it after the fact, thank you to HP for putting this link up …..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/28/obamas-prime-time-tv-comm_n_138767.html
I disagree, I think the political distinction between state-oriented redistribution, and creationof public goods, and market-oriented policies promoting the interests of established capital are real and frequently observed. But this is a debate for elsewhere and when so am happy to just agree to disagree.
Anyone else find Obama’s ad and the reception it got slightly nauseating?
Seven news “Beautiful production values, wonderful, soothing music, Obama comfortable in an Oval-office like setting…”
How shallow.
Explain what that has to with gay marriage?
Or explain whether that Prop. about “Victim’s Rights” is left wing or right wing?
Or we could just agree to disagree…
http://news.smh.com.au/world/palin-faces-new-ethics-complaint-20081030-5bsy.html
“Send us to Washington to clean things up!!!!”
I think not, Mrs. Palin.
“Or explain whether that Prop. about “Victim’s Rights” is left wing or right wing?”
It would depend on what the proposal actually said. A proposal will usually have some sort of ideology which supports its passage. This ideology will most likely be able to be placed somewhere along the left-right spectrum.
I think left and right are fandamentally defined in terms of economic approaches.
As far as social policies go, these don’t necessarily correlate in principle, which is why there are people described as economically left wing but socially conservative, or right wing but socially progressive. Even within social policy opinions are rarely monoltihic.
Nonetheless it is a historical fact that leftist economics has tended to correlate with more progressive social policies, which is not entirely surprising since leftist approach is geared towards using the state to provide distributive justice for exploited groups.
So I wouldn’t say that left and right is quite so clearly defined in social policy, but the distinction is observed enough in practice for it to be meaningful.
Martin defined right and left in economic terms. In a shallow definition like that, there’s no room for describing gay marriage, drug legalisation, judicial systems in right and left terms.
In fact, drug legalisation would probably “right-wing” in economic terms as it removes government intervention in that particular area.
Issues and proposals are not “right-wing” and “left-wing”.
Personally I have no problem acknowledging a social position as being somewhere along the left-right spectrum. Others may wish to sit on the fence but that’s their choice.
But noone would describe drug legalisation as a right wing social initiative in itself.
from 236.com
…..
“Martin defined right and left in economic terms. In a shallow definition like that, there’s no room for describing gay marriage, drug legalisation, judicial systems in right and left terms”
I think there is a central definition by which is extended by a process of family resemblance, if you want to be like that.
Why? The Libertarian Party has drug legalisation in its policy platform and it’s a right-wing party. Right-wing has historically meant less government intervention in the economy and in the lives of individuals. That is what “conservatism” as an ideology is.
I don’t believe the Democrats, or even the Socialist Party want to repeal drug prohibition.
And the Democrats aren’t a left-wing party…
I suppose the SPA isn’t left-wing either.
Are left and right definitive or relative? One could just as easily say that the Republicans are not right-wing, judging by their dramatic intervention in both economic and social spheres in recent years.
been travelling with a group of yanks from all over. Majority hv voted for mccain and think obama will not win. So dont count yr chickens yet
No, I don’t think any major political party can be described as consistently right-wing or consistently left-wing in a doctrinaire sense, yes of course the distinctions are mostly observed in a relative sense and sure, I don’t disagree that one can’t be rigid about applying the framework to the complexities of actual policy.
But I think it is going all to far to say that the distinctions don’t exist or don’t work. Even if you didn’t attempt any kind of formal definition but just took an observed basis, its an empirical matter that there are a group of issues and policies that one bunch of partisans tend to support and others that the other bunch support (notwithstanding the existence of people like libertarians who cut across both).
I think we’ll take polls over anecdotal evidence thanks
Anyway, next question: When is the earliest that the election might reasonably be called?
Assuming Obama goes on to win. By 11:30am AEDT, polls have closed in Ohio, Virginia and most of Florida. How long before early returns would be enough to give the likelihood that Obama is winning those states which would strongly suggest victory, especially if he is also looking competititve in states like Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia & Indiana.
(Before Glen comes in with the H word I just point out that my assumption is only that Obama is the only one who can acheive a crushing win; if McCain wins I assume it will be a nail-biter.)
Martin B, I hear what you’re saying. I don’t see the sense in fence sitting on it. I consider the Republicans in general to be quite far to the right of the political spectrum and the Democrats more generally to be centre-left and have no qualms in saying it. There will always be exceptions to the general conception but I’m not going to ignore the quite clear positions of the parties.
It’s the same with people who fence sit by saying there’s no difference between Labor and Liberal. I’m sorry if it bugs those people but I see quite clear differences.
I gota admit it would be hilarious if we had a ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’…
Phillies win!
There’s something really obnoxious about newspapers declaring victory for one side or the other and betting agencies paying out on bets for one candidate that just begs people to prove them wrong.
Well if Obama wins any of those early states you mentioned, he’s pretty much won hasn’t he.
Yes, so how many hours after polls close would early returns be able to suggest that he has won those states? I’m not familiar with the US processes and timeframes. I suppose it will vary a bit from state to state.
Agreed. Can’t really blame the candidate though…
According to Reuters it could be over as early as 8:30 eastern time.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49S1VO20081029
New poll shows Obama and McCain tied in Indiana(47% each)
Half an hour after polls close? Surely that would have to be on exit polling, not early returns. What do you want counted before the projected result starts to look reasonable, 20-30% of the vote?
But yes, my concern is missing early excitement before SBS tunes in at 2:30pm AEDT, 3.5 hours after polls close in Virginia.
Re 830,
time zone map for US states and cities
http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-usa12.php
poll closing times chronologically
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G08/closing.phtml?format=c
* note: read all the way through poll closing times list, there are many notes and individual exceptions written at the bottom of the list
** note: the time in which the polls MOST commonly (not always) close in each state is highlighted in black
They have electronic polling remember?
Martin @ 834,
You don’t get cable? CNN and Fox broadcast 24/7 on Foxtel. Also, too, since you’ve the internet connection, you could work yourself up a whole host of sites to check into online …. many of the US TV options have live stream viewing on their websites ….. I know that CNN had this option during the convention through their website ……
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49S8BA20081030
Delta and Northwest have merged, creating the worlds biggest airline.
Bad luck US fliers.
“You don’t get cable? CNN and Fox broadcast 24/7 on Foxtel.”
No I don’t but am assessing the need to go and find some.
Where abouts do you live? There’s plenty of pubs around doing coverage.
Glen 826
I think if that were to happen in this case it would be more like “Goofey defeats Dewey”.
Melbourne. Know of any?
Hmm, just saw that the Port Phillip Greens are doing something in South Melbourne.
Martin B,
Give the consulate a buzz. They are over on St. Kilda road in St. Kilda and they would surely be able to set you straight on all of this?
The CSpan site I spoke of earlier? I’ve got them on now and listening to it. They are interrupting a live call in show where people are giving their opinions of the Obama broadcast tonight to show Ted Steven’s arrival back home in Alaska. Listening to his comments and the crowds comments (granted they are a biased crowd) I’m not so sure that he won’t win on Tuesday …..
RE: Timing of announcements on election night
MSNBC had a really good article the other day that had all of the times the polls close in the swing states. Just use timeanddate.com to line up the US times with our times. I think the US eastern polls close at 9.00am our time. If Ohio or Florida go early to Obama then there will be a lot of twiddling thumbs early in the night.
My question is really as much about how quickly the vote is counted as it is about the poll closing times. I’m not too fussed about exit polls, I want to see the real numbers rolling in.
injuddstree,
US drops their DST this weekend so the time diff. is opposite time of day plus 4 hours. So you need to make that 10am for their 6pm (those states which close at 6p eastern) ……… See my 835 this thread for list of times and poll closings ……
juliem
But was it rent-a-crowd at the airport? Who would have even known which flight back Stevens was on?
847,
Martin if you can’t access cable TV, I would suggest then accessing CNN’s website and they will up date their map there as quickly as anything…….
with the exception of not airing the Obama thing today, CNN hasn’t put a foot wrong in their election coverage to date …..
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