Sean Oxendine's blog

Errrr . . . not so much . . .

Obviously it is one poll, and it is too early to read anything into this, but I do note that after the inclusion of one full day of post-Biden polling, the Gallup trend reversed directions, and shows a tie.

I do wonder how much of Obama's  support consisted of people who were hoping for an Obama/Hillary (or other woman) ticket, and are unhappy with the selection. Note that Rasmussen (which showed a 1-point bump for Obama/Biden) finds that women are significantly less likely to believe that Obama made the right pick with Biden.

Again, it is early, so this amounts to little more than idle speculation. But what else is the blogosphere for???

UPDATE:  The latest CNN poll (which shows a tie) actually provides some basis for my idle speculation:

Sixty-six percent of Clinton supporters — registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee — are now backing Obama. That’s down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they’ll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.

H/T Hedgehog Report

In 2004, I ran a site called MyElectionAnalysis.com.  I used a method somewhat similar to that now used by Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com.  I am now resurrecting it. 

It is basically a stripped down version of fivethirtyeight.  I use only polling numbers.  There is no trendline analysis, nor is there (importantly imho), and demographic fiddling around.  The reason is simple -- in the Democratic primary, a lot of the variables were nonlinear (eg Obama did well in heavily R and heavily D counties), and unsuited to an OLS model.

Second, a lot of the sixteen variables he uses strike me as related to each other (eg Kerry's vote performance and AA%).  This causes problems in an OLS model. 

Third, I'm not certain how useful some of them are -- such as donations -- given that Obama has actually outraised McCain in Arizona this year. 

 Finally, I think his weighting by sample size, while making some sense, results in some bad weighting.  For example, PPP -- a partisan polling outfit that uses 1,000 respondents -- is weighted more heavily than the historically very accurate Rasmussen Reports, which only uses 500 respondents.

Unlike RCP, I do weight the polls, and I explain the methodology at the bottom.

Late last week, I opined that McCain had to go negative on Obama.    This was because he tends to get the people who don't like Obama, and only the people who don't like Obama.

Here's some more data from today's Rasmussen polling:

**************

Susquehanna Pennsylvania General Election

• Barack Obama 46%
• John McCain 41%

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• Barack Obama 46% / 32% (+14%)
• John McCain 44% / 34% (+10%)

**************

Rasmussen Louisiana General Election

• John McCain 55% (54%)
• Barack Obama 38% (34%)

With Leaners:

• John McCain 57% (56%)
• Barack Obama 39% (37%)

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 60% / 34% (+26%)
• Barack Obama 43% / 56% (-13%)

**************

Rasmussen Florida General Election

• John McCain 46% (45%)
• Barack Obama 43% (46%)

With Leaners

• John McCain 48%
• Barack Obama 46%

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 61% / 36% (+25%)
• Barack Obama 49% / 48% (+1%)

**************

Pennsylvania is an outlier here for some reason.  Louisiana pretty much gets exactly the anti-Obama vote.

But check out Florida.  This is a state where McCain is hugely popular, and has a massive popularity edge over Obama.  But he STILL only gets the people who don't also like Obama.

McCain needs to keep hitting Obama.  Hard.

The conventional wisdom is that going negative on an opposing candidate is a risky decision for a candidate to make.  The convetional wisdom is that it is doubly risky for a politician like John McCain, who owes much to his reputation as a maverick politician who rises above the normal give-and-take of politics.

I think most readers here instinctively don't buy the  conventional wisdom (and I think some are just happy to see someone finally rip into Obama).  But I've been noticing a trend that validates this intuition.

Over at Race42008.com, they regularly collect polls.  It is one of my first stops every time I take a blog break at work.  I've gone back through and collected McCain's percentages over the month of August from Rasmussen Reports, as well as Obama's unfavorables.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the pattern here.  McCain gets people who don't like Obama, and not much more, and not much less than that.

The key to winning this election is to make people like Obama less.  People who don't like McCain vote for Obama.  People who like McCain and Obama vote for Obama.  McCain needs to make more people that either like McCain and don't like Obama, or don't like McCain and don't like Obama.

Over at DailyKos, Adam B argues that the F&M poll that I blogged about yesterday is actually biased to favor McCain, rather than Obama.  His argument is this:

The Keystone Poll has the following regional sample:

I now have a final few questions for statistical purposes only.
CNTY. Region of state (What is the name of the county you live in?)

35% Central
15% Southeast
14% Northeast
11% Allegheny
10% Southwest
8% Northwest
7% Philadelphia

Here, by way of comparison, is the 2004 CNN Exit Poll breakdown of the Pennsylvania vote:

VOTE BY REGION  

Philadelphia (12%)
Phila. Suburbs (21%)
Northeastern Pa. (14%)
Pittsburgh Area (23%)
Central/North Tier (30%)

[Based on Keystone's regional definitions, Phila. Suburbs = "Southeast", Pittsburgh Area = "Allegheny" + "Southwest", and "Central/North Tier" = Keystone's "Central" + "Northwest".]

He has been making this argument at least since 2005, and Keystone's internals show that they've been using this rough breakdown at least since early 2004.

There's a couple of problems with this.  First, while Keystone provides the counties that make up its section, to my knowledge CNN does not.  While Mr. B may infer that Pittsburgh Area = Allegheny + Southwest, that's really just an educated guess. 

For example, Keystone defines Southeast as being Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties.  Is this what CNN uses?  Who knows?  It probably uses them, but then again, Berks County is also part of the Philly MSA.  What do you do with counties like Lancaster?  Does CNN count it as Central/North Tier?  Or as a Philly suburb (or as a Baltimore suburbs)?  Keystone calls it "Central," but as to whether CNN agrees, your guess is as good as mine.

One way to test this, though, is to look over the course of time and determine if F&M has a history of favoring Rs over Ds in their results systemically.  So let's look at the Presidential polling from 2004.

In 2004, Keystone did show the Specter/Hoeffel race to be less close than its competitiors, although it also had one of the two polls that showed a single-digit race.  But then again, its general 23-27 point spread was pretty much spot on (Specter won by 26).

In the Presidential race they, like most pollsters, consistently showed Kerry with a 5-6 point lead, except for one poll after the R convention showing a tie (when most contemporaneous polls showed a small Bush lead), and a pre-Abu-Ghraib poll showing Bush up by six (much like the Q poll did).

In 2006, there is some tendency to be a pro-Santorum poll, but its "final answer" -- Casey +17, ended up being the most generous poll to Casey -- and pretty spot-on for that matter.

In other words, I don't think the record shows the Keystone poll has a systemic bias.  Its used the same methodology since at least 2004, and has tended to get these things pretty close to right.  I think comparing its internals to the 2004 exit poll internals is probably comparing apples and oranges.

Over at Redstate, Adam C raises what is probably the most important question of the election season for pollsters:

Let's take a look at PA polling and party ID. Today, Franklin and Marshall released a new poll showing Obama +5. This is in line with other recent polls showing a comfortable Obama cushion (RCP Ave.: Obama +6.8%) that is similar to his national lead. But the F&M poll is a sample of 50D/38R or D+12. I thought that looked a bit more Democratic than I would expect so I looked into.

In 2004, PA exit polls showed the electorate was D+2 (41D/39R). Surely it is more Democratic now for the well-known reasons: R registration drop nationally, D registration increase nationally, close D primary led to more registration/participation, and national party ID numbers have gone from D+4 to D+10 regardless of actual registration. But a shift of 10 points in four years would be quite devastating for the GOP in PA.

The last F&M poll showed a D+14 partisan makeup and showed Obama winning by 6. In both F&M polls Obama only wins 68% of Democrats but he leads the race because the polls show an overwhelming partisan advantage for the Ds.

So do other polls in PA show a similar margin? Well, I cannot find party ID breakdowns for the Rasmussen, Quinnipiac, and Strategic Vision (R) polls. So it's hard to tell. I find it unlikely that Ds have gone from 41% of the electorate to 50%. But if that is true, the GOP is going to face a steep hill in winning back Congressional seats in addition to the Senate and Governor races in coming years. And a 50% Democratic electorate may be insurmountable for the McCain campaign.

As I point out in the comments, the official Pennsylvania registration numbers are 51% D, 38% R.  In 2006, the turnout numbers were 43% D, 38% R, 19% I.

The big question then is what this change represents.  You will notice that R numbers are more-or-less consistent from 2004-2008.  What has happened is that Independents have swung D, and did so in large numbers from 2006-2008.

Are the Independents who swung to D from 2006-2008 -- who make up about 15% of PA Demcorats today -- true Democrats who are creating a party registration edge that is almost insurmountable for the GOP to overcome?  Or are they merely independents who wanted to play a role in the Obama/Hillary fight?  And of that latter group, how many are independents who became registered Democrats to stop Obama?

The answer to that question is important.  If the latter is the case, most of the polling we are seeing out of PA may be badly skewed in the Dems' favor when it is weighted by the polling companies.  This may be true in other states as well.

UPDATE:  I really should have thought of this myself.  In the comments over at Redstate, someone dug up the historic registration numbers in PA.  In 2004 it was 47-40 D/R.  In 2006 it was 48/40 D/R.  Now it is 51/38 D/R.

In other words, Dems in PA typically run 5-6 points behind their party registration.  F&M shouldn't be normalizing to 50% Dem makeup; they should be normalizing to ~45% Dem makeup of the electorate.

Now this year may be different.  Dems are probably fired up, especially AA Dems in Philly.  But I'm not certain that Rs won't be similarly fired up by election day.  I'm also much less than certain that all those D's are REALLY D's; a substantial number may be "4/22/08 only" D's who haven't bothered to re-register as I's (or R's).

Incidentally, if you take the F/M numbers and normalize to a 45/38 turnout split, you get a narrower 48.5 %- 45% Obama lead.

“This is how shaky Republican fortunes are in 2008: In one of the most conservative corners of the conservative South, Democrats stand a good chance of winning a congressional seat.”

That is how the latest bit of gloom-and-doom begins about House Republicans’ chances in the Fall. This comes from, of all places, the Wall Street Journal..

According to the WSJ, nowhere can the decline of the GOP’s fortune be more readily found than in AL-02, where Republicans may actually lose a seat that they’ve held since 1964 to a conservative Democrat named Bobby Bright. And in a district where Bush won 64%!

Pretty grim stuff, huh?

And its true, this seat hasn’t been competitive since . . . 1992, the last time it was open!

So just to recap, we have assessed three theories of re-alignment. The first theory, the so-called “landslide theory” of re-alignments, posits that re-alignments can be judged by their size. The problem with this theory is that many elections considered “re-aligning” are not landslides, and many elections that are landslides are not realignments.

The second theory posits that a sufficiently charismatic politician can remake a country’s politics, such as Ronald Reagan did in the 80s. The problem with this is that Reagan did not remake our country’s politics; they were already fundamentally conservative. He simply brought those conservative voters further into the GOP fold, a process that had been under way for the better part of a century.

The third theory was that candidates such as Obama and McCain could potentially re-make the electoral map, with their unique appeals, opening up a slew of swing states. The problem with this argument is that July/August polling is not particularly predictive of what happens in November, and that the current electoral map, adjusted for Obama’s overall lead in the polls, is really an exaggerated version of what we saw in 2004.

On the heels of his excellent European adventure, Obama opened up leads of 6 points in the Rasmussen poll (up from a tie) and of nine points in the Gallup poll (up from a two point lead).

As of today, that is largely history.  Obama leads by only two one in Rasmussen's tracking poll of likely voters, and by six in Gallup.  We'll know more by this time tomorrow, but as of right now it looks like Obama received a quick bounce from his Berlin speech, rather than a sustained bump.

Of course, all of this is beside the point, given that leading in the summertime has something of a negative correlation with eventually winning . . . but it keeps me occupied.

Glenn Greenwald continues his jihad crusade war (gosh it's hard to be politically correct these days) against Democrats who buck the party line.  Today, in a charming little piece, Glenn Greenwald advocates a purge of the Blue Dogs from the Democratic party.  Lest you think that Greenwald is being hyperbolic, note that the html title for the file he published is "Blue Dogs Die."