Why we can’t quit election polls

Often in error but still seductive

W. Joseph Campbell, American University School of Communication

Polls showed Joe Biden, right, holding double-digit leads
over Donald Trump, left, in the run-up to the 2020 election,
but he won election by only 4.5 percentage points. 
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File

Their record is uneven. They misfired in one way or another in the past three presidential elections. And yet the prevalence of election polls is undiminished. Thirteen months before the 2024 election, polls are many – and inescapable.

Why is that? What explains polling’s abiding appeal despite its performance record?

The reasons go beyond facile analogies that election polls are akin to weather forecasts in offering a fluid, if sometimes contradictory, sense of what lies ahead.

Polls and poll-based forecasts are not always in error, as I noted in my 2020 book, “Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.” Their enduring appeal rests in part in offering a sense of data-based certainty that can be irresistible, especially to journalists who tend to value precision in a field awash with ambiguity.

It is hardly surprising, then, that news organizations also are polling operations. Ties to election polling live deep in the media’s DNA.

Look how far we've come in eight years

 

Welcome news from Rhode Island Greens

R.I. Green Party won’t run a presidential candidate

By  UpriseRI 

In a state committee vote taken over the Memorial Day weekend, the Green Party of Rhode Island, one of the nation’s oldest Green parties, has broken ranks with the national party and decided not to nominate a candidate in this year’s presidential election. 

Instead, the local party will focus on local and state races, and a campaign to adopt ranked choice voting for state elections.

This will be the first time since 1996 that Rhode Island’s presidential ballot won’t include a Green Party candidate.

“Running a presidential campaign in Rhode Island, as we’ve learned in the past 24 years, takes a great deal of work that gains short-term visibility, but very little long-term progress,” declared Greg Gerritt, the party’s most visible spokesperson.

“This year the stakes—and risks—are greater than they’ve ever been for us. Beyond the health risks of gathering thousands of face-to-face signatures this summer, there are major political risks as well.”

The local party says a top priority for the Greens this year has to be defeating Donald Trump in his re-election bid.

“Trump threatens everything Greens stand for,” declared a party statement.

Chasing the wind energy boogeyman

General Assembly to Study Marine Impacts of Turbines

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

In case you were interested, Charlestown's Tina Jackson (left) thinks
wind turbines are bad

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article marks the apparent return of one of Charlestown's strangest political figures - Tina Jackson, whose 2012 failed attempt to defeat Charlestown's much respected former state Representative Donna Walsh is the stuff of legends. 

Despite multiple arrests and convictions for drugs, bad checks and assault, Jackson claims she was just the right person to represent Charlestown. Voters didn't agree.

The legacy of Jackson's campaign lives on in the form of $50,088 in unpaid fines for violations of Rhode Island's campaign finance law. Click here to read my wrap-up article on Jackson's 2012 escapades that included losing the corporate charter for the fishermen's group that she headed - presumably the base of expertise she draws on for her comments in this article. - Will Collette

The House of Representative is set to authorize a study to determine if offshore wind facilities are killing whales and other sea life.

The sponsor of the proposed legislative commission, Rep. Sherry Roberts, R-West Greenwich, sought the study after a juvenile humpback whale washed ashore in Jamestown in June 2017.

The story received international attention after conservative media websites publicized speculation that the Block Island Wind Farm was to blame for the whale’s death.

Former commercial fisherman and Republican political candidate Tina Jackson of Charlestown is convinced the five turbines are to blame for killing the whale. She said she warned the community that Deepwater Wind's Block Island Wind Farm would hurt the environment. She has offered no proof.

“And look what happened. Sure enough within five months of Deepwater (Wind) going on-line there were seven whale deaths and two turtle fatalities. There hasn’t been seven dead whales in a decade, let alone in five months’ time. So it’s clear that the turbines are a problem. It’s the only logical reason for the tragedy.”

What does a mandate look like?

Location, location, location

The Democrats' Bad Map
by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica




Even as Hillary Clinton appears poised to win easily against a highly erratic candidate with a campaign in meltdown, a sobering reality awaits Democrats on Nov. 9. 

It seems likely that they will eke out at most a narrow majority in the Senate, but will fail to pick up the 30 seats they need to reclaim the House. 

If they do manage to win a Senate majority, it will be exceedingly difficult to hold it past 2018, when 25 of the party's seats must be defended, compared with eight Republican ones.

The Republican Party may seem in historic disarray, but it will most likely be able to continue to stymie the Democrats' legislative agenda, perpetuating Washington's gridlock for years to come.

Liberals have a simple explanation for this state of affairs: Republican-led gerrymandering, which has put Democrats at a disadvantage in the House and in many state legislatures. But this overlooks an even bigger problem for their party. 

More than ever, Democrats are sorting themselves into geographic clusters where many of their votes have been rendered all but superfluous, especially in elections for the Senate, House and state government.

Trump Was Born on Third Base

The stories politicians tell about their successes matter — including the ones they omit.

By Chuck Collins

Springfield News-Leader - June 6, 1990 via News of the Weird

Donald Trump was born on third base, but claims he hit a triple.

Throughout history, we’ve had many “born on third base” presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, George W. Bush and now Trump. These politicians trumpet their business acumen, but reveal little about their privileged head starts.

This twisted narrative is dangerously misleading.

Trump campaigns on his business prowess, but understates the tremendous advantage of inheriting his father’s real estate empire, with its existing assets and financial and political connections. Even without that million-dollar loan, Trump was set-up for success.

Similarly, George W. Bush built his oil business and baseball team with networks of investors who were friends of the Bush dynasty. Yet he attributed his success to “results and performance.”

And in 2012 presidential candidate Romney told supporters that he’d “inherited nothing,” saying “Everything that Ann and I have we earned the old-fashioned way, and that’s by hard work.”  But this understates Romney’s extraordinary privileges.

Winning by Destroying

Trump and Gingrich

By Robert Reich

When I was a boy and lost just about every sporting event I tried, my father told me, “What counts isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.”

Most parents told their kids this. It was part of the American creed. But I doubt Fred Trump passed on the same advice to little Donald, who seems to have learned the opposite: It’s not how you play the game but whether you win or lose.

If there’s one idea that summarizes Donald Trump — his character, temperament, career, business strategy, politics and worldview — it’s winning at any cost. That’s the art of the deal. 

Playing the game well or honorably is irrelevant.

Now that he is the presumed Republican nominee for the highest office in the land, this view is outright dangerous.

Government is about process. Democracy is about law. The Constitution establishes the rules of the game. A tacit social contract binds us all together.

By the numbers

Didn't that already happen?

Why people vote against their own interests

Who Turned My Blue State Red?
by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica
This story was co-published with The New York Times' Sunday Review.

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.

In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against "intergenerational welfare" and said that "the culture of dependency on government destroys people's spirits," yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits. 

Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country's largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.

It's enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that's taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party's growing conundrum with working-class white voters. 

And it also keeps us from fully grasping what's going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

Not saying anything would be a good start

The Republican Strategy to Win the Racist Vote without Appearing Racist

By Samuel Warde

In 1981, the legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater, after a decade as South Carolina’s most effective Republican operative, was working in Ronald Reagan’s White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University.

In this audio, made public for the first time ever in 2012, Atwater lays out how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves.

James Carter IV, the same researcher responsible for revealing Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks dug up the entire forty-two minute interview detailing the Republican strategy for winning the vote of racists without appearing to be racist themselves.

The best government money can buy

And Now the Richest .01 Percent

By Robert Reich

The richest Americans hold more of the nation’s wealth than they have in almost a century. What do they spend it on? As you might expect, personal jets, giant yachts, works of art, and luxury penthouses.

And also on politics. In fact, their political spending has been growing faster than their spending on anything else. It’s been growing even faster than their wealth.  

According to new research by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics, the richest one-hundredth of one percent of Americans now hold over 11 percent of the nation’s total wealth. That’s a higher share than the top .01 percent held in 1929, before the Great Crash.

We’re talking about 16,000 people, each worth at least $110 million.

One way to get your mind around this is to compare their wealth to that of the average family. In 1978, the typical wealth holder in the top .01 percent was 220 times richer than the average American. By 2012, he or she was 1,120 times richer.

It’s hard to spend this kind of money.

UPDATE: Big turn-out leads to a big victory in Exeter recall election

Gun-lobby instigated special election draws huge voter turn-out

Volunteers working the phones at SaveExeter.org headquarters

By Will Collette

UPDATE: Late tonight, we got an e-mail from SaveExeter.org, saying that the gun lobby recall attempt was defeated. 

All four of the Democratic Town Council members who had been targeted by the gun lobby - and state Tea Party Representative Doreen Costa (R-Fruitcake) handily beat back the recall.

The unofficial margin reported to us was 63%. The Providence Journal confirms the win and reports that more than 1800 votes - close to 40% of all Exeter's registered voters - turned out. 

I don't know if many of all those voters who turned out to say NO to the gun lobby were thinking about the Newtown massacre anniversary today, but I'll bet some of them were. For me, that adds a lot of meaning to this win.

The recall election was organized by the RI Firearm Owners League, based in Cranston. They set up a front group called "We the People of Exeter" whose leaders are really mostly from out of town and include Charlestown's Raymond Bradley, owner of Brad's Guns. Click here for background.

The gun lobby group had expected perhaps 600 out of Exeter's 4,900 voters to come out to vote, but as of 2:00 PM, more than 1,400 voters had cast their ballots. Supporters came out in droves early on, partly out of enthusiasm, partly to beat the evening snow storm.

Special elections of any kind are generally lucky to attract as many as 10%.

VIDEO: Just when you think they can’t say anything worse….

Rick Santorum Compares Obamacare To Apartheid, Himself To Nelson Mandela

BY STEPHEN D. FOSTER JR. Addicting Info

Never one to shy away from insanity, Rick Santorum claimed that his fight against
Obamacare is like the fight Mandela waged against apartheid.
Cartoon by John Darkow, CagleCartoons.Com.

On December 5, the world lost one of the greatest human rights giants in history. 

Nelson Mandela spent his life fighting for civil rights and human dignity. 

He died peacefully at the ripe old age of 95. 

But instead of paying tribute to Mandela, former and perhaps future GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum went on Fox News that night and compared himself and the Republican Party to the celebrated world leader.

Rick Santorum compared Obamacare to apartheid.

During an appearance on the O’Reilly Factor, Santorum claimed that his fight against Obamacare is like the fight Mandela waged against apartheid. Apartheid was the brutal system of racial segregation that dominated life in South Africa for decades until it came to an end in 1994. Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, is the program that provides health insurance options to millions of Americans.

But, Santorum insists that the two are one and the same.

“Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he is mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed,” Santorum said. “And I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that.”

Here’s the video from the O’Reilly Factor. after the jump. 

A coup by process

Exeter recall election
By Samuel G. Howard in Rhode Island’s Future - See more at: http://www.rifuture.org/exeter-recall-election-a-coup-by-process.html#sthash.cjD2cwlW.dpuf

Save Exeter by supporting the Exeter Four. Click here to find out how.

If you’re not up to speed on the recall election in Exeter,  Progressive Charlestown‘s Will Collette has a synopsis for you. 

Essentially, four town councilors (all Democrats) approved resolution that would've allowed the General Assembly to allow the RI State Police to issue concealed carry permits for guns in Exeter; necessary because Exeter lacks a police force that can run background checks. 

The legislation died in committee.

Naturally, this miffed gun owners, so a bunch of out-of-towners organized a recall campaign, and voila! They met the 10% threshold required for signatures and the Democratic town councilors will all face a recall campaign.

Money and Politics

An evening with authors of important new book

By David Segal

I'm writing to invite you to a free event at Brown next Wednesday, about the biggest threat to American democracy -- and how we can fix it.  It's cosponsored by a number of great orgs, including mine: Demand Progress.

On Wednesday, join Nation magazine DC correspondent/MSNBC contributor John Nichols and renowned communications scholar Robert McChesney for a discussion of their new book:

Dollarocracy: How the Money 

and Media Election Complex Is

Destroying America

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Where: Smith-Buonanno Hall, Brown University, Room 106

95 Cushing St. (corner of Cushing and Brown)

Admission: FREE

Event cosponsored by Brown Democracy Matters, DemandProgress.org, and RI Progressive Democrats of America.

About Dollarocracy

More RISC-y moves

RI Taxpayers picks obscure consultant as new President

By Will Collette

Group formerly know as RISC picks mystery man to rescue it from itself.
[From the RI Taxpayers website]

RI Taxpayers started out as the RI Shoreline Coalition, a group of Shelter Harbor fat cats with allies among Charlestown’s landed gentry. They started out dedicated to fighting against the Narragansett Indian Tribe and for voting rights for non-resident property owners. 

For years, they were headquartered in Charlestown. There’s a lot of overlap between RISC and the CCA Party. Indeed, I sent samples obtained from a reliable source to a blood lab and discovered that the CCA Party and RISC have very similar DNA.

The Plan to Turn Medicare into ‘WeDon’tCare’

Paul Ryan is still stuck in the same old rabbit hole.

By Jim Hightower

Apparently, Rep. Paul Ryan missed the outcome of last November’s presidential election. Oh, wait — wasn’t he on the ballot in that election as Mitt Romney’s running mate?

Well, yes, but less than five months later, the Wisconsin Republican seems to have forgotten that he and the Mittster were soundly rejected.

Was there voter fraud at the RIGOP Convention?

Did Charlestown GOP votes make the difference?

By Will Collette

The successor to State Republican Chair Mark Zaccaria was supposed to have been picked at the GOP State Convention on March 21^st, but Zaccaria declared the convention vote was nullified.

It seems that Mark Smiley beat Zaccaria’s hand-picked successor Dan Harrop by one vote.

However, when all the votes were counted, according to ABC6 and WPRO, there were 187 votes cast, but only 186 delegates who were registered to vote. WRNI reports the vote was a 94 to 93 vote, also in favor of Smiley over Harrop, and says the whole scene was “chaos.”

Based on the closeness of the count and this disparity, Zaccaria said that the parliamentarian recommended voiding the vote. 

Smiley declared winner after "investigation"

Compounding the chaos - and the bad media coverage that came from it - apparently Zaccaria decided to switch gears over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, he announced in an e-mail that upon further "investigation," Smiley was the winner after all.

This closely fought battle to become the next captain of the RIGOP Titanic is rumored to be one of the reasons why Mark Zaccaria stuck his beak into Charlestown’s Republican politics. As I reported, Zaccaria recruited defeated state Representative candidate Tina Jackson to “re-organize” the town Republican Committee without consulting with the duly elected members of that Committee to find out if they wanted to be re-organized.