Daily Archives: 09/14/2008

(Community Matters) While bantering with other bloggers on another site, one of my responses:

My two cents about who’ll win this election – Obama. It has never been about winning over McCain’s base or even completely dependent on winning over likely swing voters (though, don’t get me wrong, we’re trying). This campaign, like the primary, is about winning over the 83 million voters who didn’t vote in 2004.

It’s about beating Bush’s 2004 370,000 margin in Florida by awakening the 500,000 REGISTERED African American voters who didn’t vote and the 900,000 REGISTERED young voters who didn’t vote in that election;

it’s about the 317k newly registered Democrats in Pennsylvania while 60,000 Republicans have fallen off the rolls;

it’s how in 2004, when Bush won Nevada by 22,000 votes, there were 5,000 more registered Republicans in the state, now there are 50,000 more registered Democrats;

it’s about registering at least 4% of the 200,000 unregistered Hispanic voters in New Mexico to beat GWB’s 5,800 2004 margin, and so forth and so on in each state.

At the time of the Democratic convention, Obama enjoyed 81% enthusiasm, McCain only 45%. Since McCain’s vice presidential nominee announcement, the enthusiasm for his ticket has increased among some of the base and a few others, but there is still a 20% gap as compared to Obama’s ticket.

And, hey, don’t dismiss Biden so quickly – Pennsylvania is a critical state and older voters (especially women) love him.

(Community Matters) I was thinking about something else Arianna Huffington said yesterday. According to her, pollsters only reach 25% of respondents today and we should categorize polls as enlightened opinions (my words not hers), entertaining but not scientific. She even went so far as to say they should be placed along side horoscopes and advice columns in newspapers.

So, I’ve gone on line to try to find research on the accuracy of today’s polling. In fact, I can’t find much since 2004, even more from 2002. No information on the importance of the rate of respondents. Alas, I’m left not knowing how to integrate Arianna’s information into my thinking.

I do recall David Plouffe’s (co-chair Obama Campaign) comments in a conference call 5 or 6 weeks ago. He said three things about polls: 1) national polls are worthless, look only at state by state polls, 2) there is no Brady effect, they proved this during the primaries (those who would skew the polls this way aren’t identifying as Obama supporters), and 3) all the good pollsters have accounted for no land line groups of voters and accommodated for this in their methodology (again proven to BO’s campaign during the primary)

(Community Matters) Wonderfully quiet evening in sharing a pizza and a great bottle of wine with Steven, Michael & Cameron Lockley. Thinking about our friends and family without electricity in Houston. Fortunately, mom & dad at the ranch. Eli, Luci and the kids moved there yesterday.

(Community Matters) Wonderfully quiet evening in sharing a pizza and a great bottle of wine with Steven, Michael & Cameron Lockley. Thinking about our friends and family without electricity in Houston. Fortunately, mom & dad at the ranch. Eli, Luci and the kids moved there yesterday.