One Reason NOT To Check My E-mail Every Five Minutes

I've gotten burned before for being less than diligent about checking my inbox, but something happened on election night that made me glad I wasn't furiously refreshing my e-mail as often as I was the live election results from the Ohio and Colorado Secretaries' of State web sites. At 8:04 p.m. (according to the time stamp on the message), an email with the following subject appeared in my Yahoo! Mail inbox: 

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Romney Wins Michigan

The error wasn't limited to the subject line, either; the message read, in part: "Mitt Romney wins Michigan, the Associated Press reports." Of course, Mitt Romney did not win Michigan, and the AP did not project that he had. This message was followed by another at 8:10 with the subject, "WSJ NEWS ALERT: CORRECTION: Obama Wins Michigan".

I won't fault the Wall Street Journal for this mistake, but I hope there weren't too many Romney supporters who were made to feel false (if temporary) joy and crushing disappointment because of it.

The Most (and Least) Accurate Polls

As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, we're likely to be inundated by a spate of poll results from all kinds of different organizations, and if, well, everything is any indication, then different pollsters are likely to show very different things about the state of the race in key swing states. There may be no point in trying to make sense of mind-bogglingly contradictory survey results, but in case anyone is interested, I took a look at the polling done in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and constructed a little table on which pollsters came the closest to foretelling the election results in states that are now considered "battleground" territory and which missed the mark.

I measured polling accuracy by looking at the results of the last public poll of each race by each pollster and comparing the margin between the two highest-polling candidates (sometimes the only two candidates) to the eventual winner’s margin of victory over the second-place finisher. If there was more than one poll tied for most or least accurate by this metric, then I compared each candidate’s individual poll position in the survey results with their eventual share of the final vote. This is why PPP is listed as having the most accurate poll of the Florida governor’s race despite the fact that their final pre election poll had Alex Sink (D) leading Rick Scott (R), the eventual victor, 48% to 47%. This was rated "most accurate" notwithstanding Scott’s victory because it underestimated Scott’s eventual share of the vote (48.9%) by only 1.9 percentage points, while overestimating Sink’s vote share (47.7%) by only 0.3 points. The next-most accurate survey of this race was conducted by Rasmussen Reports, which had Scott leading by three points heading into Election Day.

Race	Most Accurate Poll	Least Accurate Poll
Ohio Gov.	Columbus Dispatch*	CNN/Time
Pennsylvania Gov.	Rasmussen Reports	Franklin & Marshall
Florida Gov.	PPP (D)	Suffolk University
Colorado Gov.	CNN/Time	Magellan Strategies (R)
Colorado Sen.	Denver Post/SurveyUSA	McClatchy/Marist
Florida Sen.	Rasmussen Reports	TCPalm.com/Zogby
Iowa Sen.	Des Moines Register	KCCI/Research 2000
Nevada Sen.	Suffolk University	Rasmussen Reports
New Hampshire Sen.	WMUR/UNH	ARG
North Carolina Sen.	PPP (D)	SurveyUSA
Ohio Sen.	PPP (D)*	Suffolk University
Pennsylvania Sen.	Susquehanna	McClatchy/Marist
Wisconsin Sen.	McClatchy/Marist Rasmussen Reports	PPP (D)
Wisconsin Gov.	McClatchy/Marist	Rasmussen Reports Reuters/Ipsos
Nevada Gov.	PPP (D) Suffolk University	CNN/Time
Iowa Gov.	KCCI/Research 2000	Rasmussen Reports
New Mexico Gov.	Daily Kos/PPP (D)	SurveyUSA
Michigan Gov.	EPIC-MRA	Rossman/Team TelCom
New Hampshire Gov.	WMUR/UNH	ARG

*Nailed it! (Poll results conformed exactly to election results.)

Of course, not all these races were as close as the presidential race is this year. The Senate races in Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire, and the gubernatorial elections in Colorado and Michigan, were all blowouts. Take that however you like. Also notice that the above table does not include any data from Virginia, which had neither a U.S. Senate race nor a gubernatorial election in 2010. In the 2009 race for governor there, SurveyUSA was right on the money; its final poll before Election Day showed Bob McDonnell (R) leading his Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds, by eighteen points 58% to 40%. McDonnell won that election with 59% of the vote to 41% for Deeds. That was three years ago, however, so it may not be worth much.

Finally, there are a handful of states that are assuredly not up for grabs in the presidential election but are experiencing heated U.S. Senate and/or gubernatorial races. For those who are interested, here are my findings on polls of 2010 races in those states.

Race	Most Accurate Poll	Least Accurate Poll
Connecticut Governor	CT Capitol Report/MRG	Suffolk University*
U.S. Senate – Connecticut	PPP (D)	Rasmussen Reports
Maine­ Governor	PineTreePolitics/MECPO	Critical Insights
Massachusetts Governor	Suffolk/7News	Rasmussen Reports
U.S. Senate – Washington	FOX News/POR-Rasmussen	PPP (D)

Obama’s Ad Blitz Failing in Iowa and Out West, Working Elsewhere

President Obama has spent more money on ads per electoral vote in Iowa than any other state, but it doesn’t seem to be paying off.

The latest poll results out of the Hawkeye State show Mitt Romney leading the president, 47% to 44%. That’s within the margin of error, but if you’re an incumbent trailing your opponent by three points, then it also has to be worrisome.

Following the Republican National Convention, the Romney-Ryan campaign hit Iowa with this ad:

As you can see/hear, the ad is not very good. I think this, however, is a better ad:

Just imagine what effect more ads like this one would have on the polls. 

The Desert West Deserts Obama

In 2008, President Obama won Colorado by nine percentage points and Nevada by twelve points. Polls have shown the presidential race this year to be a dead heat in both states. Rasmussen Reports shows Romney with a two-point lead in Colorado, 47%-45%, while the president leads him by the same margin in Nevada. (The president has a one-point lead in Colorado, according to a Quinnipiac poll, and a CNN/Opinion Research survey puts his lead at three points in the Silver State, 49%-46%,.) Nevada is a particularly interesting case because, while polls have shown the president with a consistent lead in the state for months, he can't seem to break 50%. In any other state, this would portend inescapably bad news for the incumbent in what is essentially a two-way race, but Nevada is unique, in that it allows voters to cast their ballot for "None of these candidates." Thus, Obama's sub-50% approval rating need not be drag on his campaign if he can convince enough voters that Romney is an unacceptable alternative.

There's a lot of stupid people out east.

The money the president's campaign has been pouring into other swing states has yielded more appreciable dividends, however; he's opened up a small but obvious lead over Romney in Ohio and Virginia, and Michigan--which once looked like a swing state--now appears to be out of play. The Obama campaign has not been spending a lot of money in Michigan, but outside groups and labor unions have been covering for them, and the polls indicate a marked shift toward Democrats. The Detroit News poll has Obama up leading Romney by 14 points in Republican's the native state; last month, that lead was six points. EPIC-MRA also shows the president widening his lead over Mitt Romney in Michigan; late last month, their poll showed Obama ahead by just three points, 49%-46%, but their latest poll of likely voters in Michigan gives the incumbent a ten-point lead, 47%-37%. (Note that both candidates have lost support, though Romney has lost a lot more than Obama.) Republicans aren't convinced Michigan is a lost cause, however; Restore Our Future, the conservative super PAC that boosted Romney in the primaries, will be running ads in several media markets throughout the state through October 2nd. 

I'll cover Ohio and Virginia in a separate post, but I wanted to also mention that the presidential race remains a dead heat in Florida, which has expectedly been the largest recipient of campaign spending this election cycle, and of course, Obama's campaign has outspent Romney's, while pro-Romney/anti-Obama groups have slightly outspent pro-Obama/anti-Romney groups on the airwaves. With less than seven weeks to go before election Day and early voting already underway, the question becomes whether Romney, Ryan and their allies can overpower the president's machine (which I'll be posting about next week), especially with voters in some swing states feeling overwhelmed by all the attention focused on them. As November 6th draws closer, the effectiveness of campaign ads becomes more and more limited. Let's hope the Romney campaign makes the most of the next few weeks.

The "TEA Party"/"Washington Insider" Overlap

For nearly four years now the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party has been a force in American politics. Granted, in its cradle, it was barely a ripple in a sea of money, incumbents, special interests and power elites, but by 2010 it grown into a massive tidal wave that swept out incumbents of both parties, in national, state and local races, in primary and general elections.

After such a showing in the 2010 election cycle, whatever modest activity the TEA Party could generate in the off-year elections of 2011 would seem to be a letdown, but the grassroots activists and deep-pocketed donors who joined forces in '10 really spent much of last year gearing up for the next big round of elections in 2012, when they would get the opportunity to show their strength in a presidential election.

No candidate for president this year was able to win over TEA Partiers en masse (not even Ron Paul, the so-called "godfather" of the movement), but the TEA Party was able to score a historic win in arguably the second-most important election this year when they helped Wisconsin Gov. and champion of the taxpayer Scott Walker (R) survive a recall election, the first governor in U.S. history to pull off such a feat, and they proved critical to the upset victories of Nebraska State Sen. Deb Fischer, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock and former Texas Solicitor Gen. Ted Cruz in their respective U.S. Senate primaries this year. In Indiana, certainly, anti-Washington sentiment played a role in the downfall of six-term Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) in May and a smattering of other entrenched incumbents in congressional races two years ago. Disdain for politicians who have been in Congress so long that they succumb to that awful mentality that manifests itself in the form of reckless deficit spending, backroom deal-making and that insufferable I-know-best hautere has fueled the TEA Party since its genesis in the Winter of '08-'09. The tactics of branding a candidate with the epithet of "Washington insider" and campaigning as an "outsider" predate the TEA Party movement but have proven effective in advancing so-called "TEA Party candidates".

Of course, every once in a while, we are reminded that there is some crossover between Washington "insiders" and the TEA Party. There are constant reminders, such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and the aforementioned Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), as well as various TEA-Party-affiliated groups like FreedomWorks founded and/or run by former members of Congress. Take last night's primary election results, for example: Four states held primary elections yesterday: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington. In two--Michigan and Missouri--Republicans chose their candidates to take on vulnerable Democratic incumbents in hotly contested Senate races (Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is also up for re-election this year but faces a considerably less daunting challenge.), and in both, they nominated candidates who had spent over a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In Michigan, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, whose 2010 bid for governor had floundered, handily defeated a slew of weaker candidates and will take on two-term Sen. Debbie Stabenow in the general election. Hoekstra, a Dutch immigrant and former Herman Miller executive, represented Michigan's 2nd congressional district (a shard of the lower peninsula along Lake Michigan's eastern shore) for eighteen years. Last month, some super PAC called Prosperity for Michigan released an ad attacking Hoekstra for "voting for millions in earmarks, raising his own pay, adding trillions to the debt" and "raising the debt ceiling repeatedly." This stupid waste of money failed to propel the group's favored candidate, Clark Durant, to victory in the primary and may have just weakened Hoekstra's chances of winning the Senate seat.

Republicans are better positioned to knock off Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. McCaskill won her seat by a razor-thin margin in 2006 and is arguably the most vulnerable U.S. senator running for re-election this year, so it's no surprise there was a spirited contest in the GOP primary. The TEA Party splintered in that race, and the result was victory for Rep. Todd Akin, who has represented Missouri's 2nd congressional district (west of St. Louis) since 2001. (Interesting factoid: Akin's predecessor in the House, Jim Talent, was elected to the U.S. Senate and lost his re-election bid to McCaskill.) Akin's win came as a disappointment to supporters of former Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, who were hoping for a younger, more attractive nominee, and the family of businessman John Brunner, who spent over $7 million of his own personal fortune on his failed campaign. The latest polls out of the Show Me State have Akin leading McCaskill, albeit within their margins of error.

So, is being a "Washington insider" not the political liability it used to be? Of course not, but this week's primaries show that a candidate can convince voters he's the right choice to take on an entrenched incumbent senator and really change Washington, even if he's been in Washington just as long as--or, in the cases of Hoekstra and Akin, longer than--his opponent...