The Six Most Dangerous Words

We are all guilty of this from time to time.  We are frustrated with the behavior of some large fraction of our fellow citizens.  They aren't behaving rationally, or aren't reacting to the incentives that seem obvious to us.  We are sure we see a better way, and we exclaim "There ought to be a law...," requiring this or that or another thing.

There they are, the six most dangerous words in the English language.

Sixth Sense (Part II)

Sherry says "Obama says 'I pay dead people.'"

[Sixth Sense (Part I) is here.]

It's Your Planning of the Economy, Stupid!

This is too surprising for words.  John Dingell?  Trailing?  In Michigan? In a D+13 District?

The Democrats keep saying "It's the economy, Stupid." Yet it is their claim to be able to plan every single aspect of the economy.  That claim is their problem: if you stand on government planning, your political fortunes will sink with its failures.

Advocates of increasing economic freedom can hope to hang this failure of economic planning around the progressivists' necks for a couple of decades.

I See Dead Policies

Yesterday, driving near a hospital Sherry and I saw a car driven by a man in medical scrubs with  the vanity plate ICDDPPL.  I think the reference is to the tagline of M. Night Shyamalan's directorial and Joel Haley Osment's acting breakouts in Sixth Sense: "I see dead people."  I didn't start laughing until it hit me that he was probably a pathologist who did autopsies.

Likely Voter Screening

Last night I got a bit flippant about likely voter screening, motivating one correspondent to point me to an extended analysis of the subject done during the 2004 Kerry-Bush presidential election on mysterypollster.com. I found it educational, and you may, too.

Yes, Virginia,...

If I seem to you to be too focused on the polls, I apologize, but I'm going to keep it up for the next four weeks.

Reasoning from principles don't mean much in the last few weeks before election day, as you must surely know if you've watched or listened to any campaign spots lately.  A friend says to any candidate in earshot "If you're explaining you're probably losing."

Today's news is the Gallup organization's release of its first polls with their likely voter screen applied.  You've probably already seen it, but if not, take a look here.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's coming early if this holds till November 2.

Friday I showed you Frank Newport's early warning of this very, er... extremely, er..., well,... huge difference between their registered-voter polls and their then-upcoming likely-voter poll.

As for the details of their turnout-based model, I can't say much about it at this point, but my guess is it's based on asking something like "How likely are you to vote this November 2: not very likely, pretty likely, likely, certain, absolutely certain, or 'You betcha!'?"  After which they collect the votes of those who say "certain" or better for the low turnout model and everyone who says "pretty likely" or better for the high turnout model.

If you're in need of a reminder as to why an economic libertarian should be so dedicated to the Republican cause in this election, perhaps you'll find it here.

Any enemy of progressivism is my friend.

How Bad Is It Likely to Be for the Democrats (Part III)

Here, I brought you Sean Trende's analysis that relative turnout of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents (RD&I) had shifted dramatically in the Virginia and New Jersey governors elections last year, and in the Massachusetts Senatorial election early this year from that in the Presidential election of 2008.  You will recall that Trende applied those shifts to explain the troubles the Democrats face in Senate races across the country, and predict, for example, the very popular Joe Manchin's deep trouble in the West Virginia special election to replace Robert "King of Pork" Byrd.

So one problem in understanding the polls this year is to remember that the usual weighting of RD&I segments in them is wrong.  But that problem is compounded when the poll includes all adults, or all registered voters.  Who will vote?  That's the question on which Trende's analysis focuses.  A polling organization that reports the opinions of likely voters must decide how to adjust its raw results by excluding those not likely to vote.  It may do so before the calls are made, by examining voter registration records to find out who has voted most often, or it can do so after the raw results are in by sifting out those not likely to vote on the basis of answers each respondent gave.  Polling organizations call the latter screening, and each uses its own proprietary model to do it.  My mental model in comparing registered-voter to likely-voter results is to shift the registered-voter results toward Republicans by 5%.

The Gallup organization's history is to report their Generic Congressional Ballot (GCB) question for registered voters until early October, after which they begin to apply their likely-voter screen and switch to reporting results from likely voters.  Here, Frank Newport of Gallup lets a very big cat out of a very deep bag.  When Gallup has applied their likely-voter screen internally to recent results, he says, the shift has been greater than 10%!  That's consistent with the findings of other polls showing something like a 20% gap in Republican vs. Democrat enthusiasm to vote.  It will make a huge difference in their GCB results when they start reporting likely voters next week.

Since Gallup and other registered-voter polls comprise about half of the total sample in the RealClearPolitics GCB average -- now +4% for the Republicans -- this means that average may need to be shifted toward the Republicans by about 5% to get the full likely-voter effect.

Even that assumes that the likely-voter screens of the rest of the polling organizations can be believed.  And here is Jay Cost dumping all over CNN/Time for reporting what appears to be a biased sample in the California Senate race.  This certainly seems to indicate that a dose of skepticism of polls performed for and released by liberal media outlets is in order from this point forward.