Why 2008 is Not 2004 Redux: Remember the Bush/Kerry Matchup? Kerry was Polling Strongly, Right? Think Again.
I've heard whisperings the last few days that, despite the polls, people shouldn't be too confident in an Obama victory next week. The reason? Kerry was polling well leading into election 2004, but Bush won the election. While the latter is true--obviously, we've all been suffering under it--the former is a memory that is been clouded by wishful thinking. We wanted the polls to be better, so we remember them as better.
Looking at polling results from the final days of the 2004 campaign paints a very different picture: With only three exceptions, Bush held the lead in 22 out of 25 polls going into election day. Those leads, which averaged 2.23% for Bush, very closely mirrored the final election outcome: a 2.45% margin of victory.
It was going to be a close race--but it was clear who was going to win. The thing about close races, though, is that you can look at a close race and hope that your candidate can leap that final distance (the few polls that had an Kerry victory showed him at 1.33% up). But, with the luxury of time, it's easy to see now that there wasn't really a contest: the numbers were overwhelmingly in Bush's favor, even if the margins were small. Realizing that back then would have saved me a lot of heartache (probably many of you too).
2008 is a different story. In the most recent data available (10/26) Obama leads in every single national poll. His average? Of the seven polls released, he averages a margin of victory of 7%, more than three times what Bush was averaging in 2004. That's an entirely different ballgame.
As a result, this year you can see the "wishing a poll was better" game flipped on its head. The Drudge Report today (in addition to butchering a seven-year-old quote from Obama) cites a single poll, John Zogby's, as evidence that the race is getting closer. Even that poll has Obama up by 4.7%. By cherry-picking the outlier (an outlier that still shows the other guy ahead by a healthy margin), Drudge hopes to show that the race is "tightening." It's not.
This election is not going to swing 7% away from Obama in the next seven days any more than 2004 was going to swing 2% towards Kerry in the last week. Even someone as bad at math as myself can see that 2008's numbers are beginning to look like they add up to victory.
An update on a previous post: In my last blog entry, I compared Google Trends results for Obama and McCain. They very closely mirror "real" polling results, showing the same sorts of fluctuations, preferences, and trends--yet they're based on nothing more than Google searches for a candidates name. A few people in the comments said that it wasn't representative, that it just demonstrated that more people search for Obama and that, if you were to include Sarah Palin in the search criteria, "I bet she out-paces Obama on that graph." You'd guess wrong.
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Good article - but your update did not make sense.
What is the link between searches and voting - just because I searched for the name I will vote for that person?
Great article, and no doubt accurate, but let's not forget that Karl Rove was pulling the campaign strings last time around. Say what you will about him, his tactics were certainly unethical, but if politics is war, he was a very effective general. He's not there now and the Republicans are divided internally. A Karl Rove campaign would never have permitted the Republican coalition to come unglued as it has during this campaign.
The trend lines, amongst which are the national polls, point to a profound electoral college victory for Barrack Obama - perhaps the first mandate in 12 years. George W is all but silent these days. Republicans are fighting for their political lives in states that are solidly red - Mississippi, Virginia, and North Carolina for instance. The divide between the Main Street Republicans and Wall Street Republicans has not been bridged by John McCain's selection of a "Hockey Mom" vice presidential running mate but rather has exposed a latent tension. Its George Will versus Rush Limbaugh and its rather entertaining.
The network that "religiously" polled for George W in the previous two elections will not make it out for John McCain this time around. There is no Swift Boat Vets, there is no Willie Horton, there is no Gay Rights Amendment to mobilize the Evangelicals. What we need to worry about is 1) the eventuanlity of voting day shananigans by Republicans (since 2000 they're 2 for 2) and 2) how the Republicans will regroup.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast have documented the immense amount of voter fraud in Ohio. Also, I read that Kerry was ahead by 51% to Bush's 48%. For Bush to "win" by that exact amount suggests that Bush's margin increased by 6%. Statistically, that is a near impossibility. That was based on fraud in Ohio. So I'm convinced that Bush and company engaged in voter fraud in Ohio to "win" the election.
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The "Kerry Led Bush in Ohio" meme that you cite there is inaccurate. While it's true that a single poll had Kerry in the lead in Ohio in the last week of the election, the rest showed a Bush lead from anywhere from 1 to 6 points. Beware cherry picking polls to prove a point--that's what Drudge is left with now (and even his polls show Obama up).
There;s a dread that is starting to creep up again like that of 2000 and 2004, good lord!
I'm glad someone finally debunked the myth that Kerry was ahead in Oct 2004 going into election day. Some of us know that is not true. Kerry was never consistently ahead the way Obama has been this election year.
If you look at it from a 2004 perspective, Obama = Bush, McCain = Kerry.
Please be right.
I'm so afraid of GOP voter fraud! They are very good at stealing elections!
Don't be fooled: You need to get out the vote by helping any which way you can. We shall be all rewarded by this effort.
I sure hope you are right. As we speak, however, organized crime figures are planning to manipulate the Diebolds etc and by no means can we be sure they will not succeed. They have done so before and will do it over and over, it is the science of human behavior.
mdahlberg, you are so right. I can't understand nobody in the media is mentioning this. Come Nov. 4th, McCain will win by fraud..just as bush did in 2000.
Look, easy to do in one state perhaps.....not so easy to do when you're losing in many states, and the polls say 7%.
If they even try it, I'm taking to the streets.... Who's coming with me?
By about the Saturday before the election, I thought we had Ohio. If we got those electoral votes, we'd win. The overall percentages were not that relevent.
what about North Carolina where its possible that upwards of 100,000 votes may not be recorded for PRESIDENT on ballots that are confusing. Seems that if you vote STRAIGHT TICKET you must ALSO vote President, or no vote will be recorded for President. That is not a small number, and could change the outcome electorally of North Carolina. Seems they may not be interested in stealing "small numbers" this time,,,
I use Google search statistics all the time in marketing polls and the like in one of my businesses and they can be extremely accurate! However, if the wrong key words are searched on or if the search has nothing to do with popularity or extent of marketing/advertising of something, the page count statistics become less accurate. In any case they are part of a whole bag of statistical analysis techniques that have helped improve the accuracy of polls.
Has anyone here heard about this?
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/georgia/news-article.aspx?storyid=79939
Unfortunately, this is one of the GOP's favorite techniques to disenfranchise voters. Sign up thousands of voters, then secretly just toss the registrations in the trash if they are for Dems! This is happening hundreds if not thousands of times over across the country, particularly in swing states, but also in so-called Blue states as well. On another note, I have been registered to vote at the same address for 20 years, yet I got a mailer from the elections office claiming that they did not have my signature on file and that I needed to "re-register". It was an attempt to disenfranchise me because I run a business in another state as well and have a dual residence, with my primary residence in CA. I ignored the mailer, then after filling out a new registration through CREDO to change party affiliation to Independent, I found the site to verify my existing registration. There I found that I am still registered from 20 years ago and still active/valid. So these tricks are being implemented en masse to steal the election once again!!
I live in FLORIDA. WHAT ELSE IS NEW?????? (My absentee ballot got fed to the gators in 2000. I am ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of this!)
I read this article but just to let you know, this happened in April of 2007. I wonder if there was any fallout from this. This was not only ripe for disenfranchising voters but for ID fraud. These cards have Social Security numbers on them. Scary!
my sixth-sense tells me that OBAMA's numbers are so huge,
that they know they're playing with fire if they steal this one.
in a way, this election is like the 2006 congressional one:
it went as it was predicted.
It is not going to stop them from trying their best to steal it, but if we can effectively outsmart them and "steal back" our votes by voting early, avoiding mailing in our ballots and doing other suggestions made by Greg Palast and Robert Kennedy, Jr. in their Steal Back Your Vote guide. See http://www.gregpalast.com/ However, if we have an absolute landslide, it should be difficult to steal the vote effectively!!
That's what I'm counting on! My whole family and most of my friends voted early.
2008 will be stolen as well. Even with a landslide majority of American voters casting votes for Obama, most of those votes will be cast on electronic voting machines (evm's). The White House bought these evms and has 'forced' the states (except NYS) into using evm's for this presidential election. (How convenient for McSame!)
Are we all that stupid? Do we deny the existence of the Internet? What is to keep the White House from using the vote manipulating technology they now own and have put in place throughout the country? Certainly it is NOT an informed electorate, because you, the "educated progressives", like the rest of the country, are clueless about what happens to your electronic vote. (Your senator knows, but (s)he's not talking.) Do you remember the Senate hearings with US Attorney General Gonzales in the summer of '07? Guess what Gonzales was hiding on behalf of the White House. . . .
Yes, individual evms are hackable, but that is not how the election will be stolen. The White House has the capacity to hack the entire voting system. All the evm's are linked on a single computer network. Ultimately, on the evening of November 4th, the ENTIRE voting network across the United States will be altered from a single central control server (computer). Some of Obama's votes will be counted as McCain votes and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it (except go back to lever voting machines for election 2012).
If you're in the least bit worried then go VOLUNTEER!!!
Obama Campaign is looking for volunteers in EVERY STATE to help 'Get Out The Vote'
The reason why Obama will win is not only high polling numbers, but he is pulling crowds of 100,000 in the midwest, raised $150 million is September and also has many many more volunteers than McCain.
It's making sure your supporters vote that wins an election, not luck.
Wrong, Natalie4Obama,
It is they who "count" the votes that determines who wins the election, not how many people vote for a particular candidate. (Remember presidential elections in 2000 and 2004.)
This time around, the White Houseis taking no chances, having spent the last four years "sewing-up" what will happen on the evening of November 4th. You, like most Americans, are absolutely clueless as to what will happen to your vote cast on an evm (electronic voting machine). Suffice it to say that a master server computer owned by the White House will determine how many, which & where "Obama" votes will be counted as "McCain" votes. It is as simple and as evil as that.
My guess is that early paper votes, absentee ballots and even NYS-lever-cast votes will ultimately be entered electronically into the White House's voting network system, thus rendering even these {partially accountable} forms of voting no better than voting on an evm.
Just a comment on the google trends - they're ridiculously tricky to interpret. Sure, comparing 'Palin' to 'Obama' shows Obama w/ a greater # of searches - but comparing 'Sarah Palin' to 'Barack Obama' shows Palin with a 2-1 margin. I'm just saying you can't really make any inferences out of google trends.
It's all in the proper key words, but it can be used as part of the mix. It is accurate only in context of other things like polling numbers, etc.
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