Lessons Learned from the 2008 Election

The 2008 election cycle was endless, at times exhausting, and often exhilarating. It had no shortage of surprises, twists, and turns. Before it starts to recede in our rear-view mirror, let us take stock of some of the lessons that we learned from it.

1) The pollsters were right. Before I get to the accuracy of the public polls, let me toot my own horn for a moment, and remind readers of my own projection from the previous blog entry:

...here is my fearless prediction for 2008. Obama will win the popular vote 53% to 45%, with the remainder going to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr...The final electoral result will be Obama 353, McCain 185.

The final vote total was Obama 52%, McCain 46%. As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by that much!" In terms of the electoral vote, the count now stands at 349 for Obama, to 163 for McCain. Once you award Obama North Carolina's 15 votes (he currently holds a narrow lead) and award McCain Missouri's 11 electoral votes (he currently has a narrow lead), the final tally becomes Obama 364, McCain 196. What that means is that out of the 50 states, I called only one state wrong: Indiana, which Obama won 50% to 49%. Since my arm is aching from patting myself on the back, let's look at the professional pollsters:

The final realclearpolitics.com average of all the professional polls was Obama by 7.6%. Obama actually won by six per cent. With all the tricky variables at play--new voters, young voters, early voters, African-American voters, weather issues--the pollsters have good reason to feel proud. That is an excellent result. Particularly noteworthy among the pollsters was the Pew Research Poll, which called the election at 52-46, and for the second straight presidential cycle, nailed it perfectly. Rasmussenreports.com also called the race perfectly, at 52-46. An honorable mention must be given to the CNN Opinion Research Poll, which forecast a 53-46 result.

People love to bash the pollsters when they're wrong, accusing them of incompetence. They also love to bash the pollsters when they're right, accusing them of sucking all the romance out of politics. In this election cycle, the pollsters get nothing but serious props from me.

2) Our voting process is a disgrace. In the presidential campaign of 2000, had either Gore or Bush won handily in Florida, no attention would have be paid to the atrocious "butterfly ballot" in West Palm, the punch-card voting system with all its hanging chads, nor the problem of voters being illegitimately purged from the rolls. It was the closeness of the race that magnified these issues. Conversely, Obama's comfortable victory in this election has hidden the fact that our election process is still in a shambles, with intolerable lines, non-uniform procedures throughout the country, machines that break down, large numbers of votes that can't be recounted because there is no paper trail, and uneven distribution of machines that disfavor and burden poor communities.

Can somebody please explain to me why designing a voting system that works is so damned complicated? After all, every day millions of people use ATM machines. You walk up to the machine and it asks you, do you want $20, $40, or $60? You then make a choice from these "candidates," it completes the transaction, and produces a paper record of your decision. Millions of these transactions are carried out, error-free, every day. If people had concerns that the transactions were not secure, or that they would be recorded inaccurately by the bank, the system would collapse immediately. For decades, it has worked smoothly. Why on earth can this same technology not be replicated for elections?

Some analysts have suggested that paradoxically, early voting may have had the effect of actually lowering voter participation. This is because many people who observed three hour waits during the early voting period, may have become fearful about going on election day. The Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that this dynamic occurred in Georgia:

It's possible that the 4- to six-hour lines many voters epxerienced during advance voting scared some people away from the polls on Tuesday, some country officials said. Both Fulton and Gwinett Counties said they saw and early push of voters on Election Day, but lunchtime and after work crowds never materialized. "Could it be that people were afraid of the long line they saw? said Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson."We definitely expected the polls to be full all day long."

It is estimated that once all the votes are counted, voter participation will be at 64% in the 2008 election, the highest percentage since William Howard Taft beat William Jennings Bryan exactly a century ago in 1908. Surely, however, we can do better than 64%.

3) How (not) to pick a vice-president. Much has already been written about the strange process by which John McCain picked Sarah Palin: He had met her only twice, and there was virtually no vetting of her before the choice. Robert Draper offers an anecdote in his article in the New York Times Magazine that shows how just how bizarre and impulsive the choice of Sarah Palin was:

After that first brief meeting, [top McCain advisor Rick] Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

It is this kind of sophomoric thinking that led to the disaster that was Sarah Palin. Only now that the election is over, are we learning the full story of just how dysfunctional Palin was. FOX News reported yesterday that she had repeated blow-ups and temper tantrums, didn't know that Africa was a continent, and that a staffer who leaked information supportive of her was fired, then rehired, to avoid publicity. Other outlets are reporting that her shopping spree was far greater than originally reported:

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

But the real problem with Sarah Palin is the same one that she would face in 2012: She's not very bright. Palin's problem was not one of experience, it was one of intellect. Who in their right mind would babble incoherently to Katie Couric that they had an understanding of Russia because Vladmir Putin flew over Alaskan air space?

There is a simple but profound lesson to be drawn from the choice of Sarah Palin: When picking a vice president, imagine them being interviewed for a full hour on Meet the Press. If the image doesn't work, strike that individual from the list immediately. The notion that Palin was ready for the presidency, but not ready for Meet the Press, was one apparently taken from Alice in Wonderland.

4) Miscellaneous. A few quick notes. As inspiring as Obama's victory gathering in Grant Park was, I was a little disappointed, for two reasons. First, Obama's tone seemed jarringly somber for such a upbeat occasion. Likewise, it was disappointing to me that when they cued the music at the end, Stevie Wonder, a staple of the Obama campaign, was not to be heard. I think that the Obama team forgot that the Grant Park audience was not there to hear a ponderous speech; they were there to celebrate the election with a great party! And no scene would have been more perfect than 100,000 people dancing while Stevie Wonder sang that Obama's election was now "Signed, Sealed, Delivered."

Finally, I suspect that I am only one of thousands of people who would stop at various points during the campaign and say to themselves, "God, I wonder what Tim Russert would say about that," or "I wish Tim Russert were here to see that." Russert's absence changed the campaign season in ways both big and small. His loss was yet another bittersweet reminder to all of us how life moves on even after the most talented among us have gone away. Rest in peace, Tim.
- posted by jeffrowan111 @ 9:00 AM

 
Fearless 2008 Presidential Prediction!

On election day, 2008, there will be 152 initiatives and referenda on the ballots of the fifty states and Washington, DC. Such initiatives range from banning same-sex marriage in California, to changing the age of sexual consent for girls from 14 to 16 in South Carolina, to a prohibiting dog racing in the state of Massachusetts. There is one overarching issue, however, that all voters will be watching: The 2008 presidential election will be a referendum on the question, "Are the presidential polls any good?"

John McCain and his surrogates have been crisscrossing the country, gamely predicting the they will pull off a "Truman beats Dewey" shocker in the election tomorrow. That seems highly unlikely, for three reasons: 1) In the 1948 Truman/Dewey election, when the polls proved so wrong, the science of population sampling was in its infancy, and was far more primitive than the sampling techniques of today; 2) In 1948, pollsters Roper and Gallup were lulled into complacency themselves, ending their polling a week before the election; 3) The sheer number of polls today, and the subsequent averaging of them, is a significant check on sampling error in any given poll.

As I write this the day before the election, three pollsters have just issued their final reports of the campaign:

1) Gallup predicts that independents will break significantly for Obama, with the final result being Obama 55%, McCain 44%. In 2004, the final Gallup Poll showed the race a tie at 49% for Kerry and Bush.

2) The final Pew Research Poll has the race 52% Obama, 46% McCain. In 2004, Pew predicted a 51-48 margin for Bush, nailing the outcome exactly.

3) The final CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Obama with a 53-46 lead in the election. Four years ago, the final CNN poll showed Bush with a 2 point advantage. Bush eventually won by 3 per cent.

At the statistically rigorous website, fivethirtyeight.com, numbers-cruncher Nate Silver lists the most recent, major, 14 presidential polls. All of them show Obama winning, ranging from the CBS/NYTimes poll, which shows an edge of 13% points, to the IDB/TIPP poll, which gives Obama a 2% national lead. It is noteworthy that the polls that incorporate cell phone sampling in their methodology give Obama the greatest leads. This is presumably because contacting cell phones expands the sample to a younger group of voters, who overwhelmingly favor Obama.

Before I give my own prediction of the popular and electoral outcome, I would be remiss if I didn't give some props to the poll which has predicted the winner of race accurately in 12 of the last 13 elections, stretching back 52 years: The Weekly Reader Poll. Every election cycle, the Weekly Reader takes the views of its readership, school children from K through 12. The only election since 1956 where the Weekly Reader Poll erred, was the Clinton win in 1992, and that was probably because they left Ross Perot off the ballot. Otherwise, the Weekly Reader's national poll of students from has been uncannily accurate. In 1972, the Weekly Reader Poll accurately predicted that Nixon would carry 49 states to only two for McGovern. In 1980, while some pollsters had the race close between Reagan and Carter, the Weekly Reader predicted a blow-out. The kids predict a similar Obama blow-out this year: 54.7 pcer cent for Obama, 42.9 for McCain. The other 2.5% went to other candidates. This result is almost identical to that of Gallup. On the electoral front, it was even more lopsided. The kids forecast a 420 to 118 electoral rout.

One last piece of data: A look at the offshore betting shops shows that they have made Obama a 10 to 1 favorite in the election. That is, order to win $100 betting on Obama, you would have to risk $1000!

So with all of that data to build on, here is my fearless prediction for 2008. Obama will win the popular vote 53% to 45%, with the remainder going to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. In the all-important electoral count, Obama will eke by in Florida, and Virginia. Obama will also hold on to Pennsylvania, overcoming a surge of white, working class support for McCain. By virtue of superior organization, Obama will also squeeze by in Ohio, with comfortable wins in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and of course, Illinois. Early voting and a massive turnout by students and African-Americans in North Carolina will give Obama a win there. McCain will take Georgia, and will nip Obama in Missouri. Out west, Obama will triumph in Nevada, New Mexico, and gain a sweet victory in Colorado. McCain will escape humiliation in Arizona, and will win Montana and North Dakota. McCain will make no inroads in New Hampshire, and Obama will make no inroads in Nebraska. The final electoral result will be Obama 353, McCain 200.

I invite all readers to show some cojones, and make predictions of your own in the comments section!

Finally, many have told me that they fear a withdrawal phase once the election is over, a letdown from all the campaign excitement. Not I. Personally, I can't wait for the real business of governing to begin under a Democratic administration. And don't try to reach me on Wednesday morning; I'll still be out celebrating!
- posted by jeffrowan111 @ 12:08 PM