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That 2000 Florida vote — 42 Comments

  1. As I have posted here before, polls pretty frequently yield whatever results—determined by the choice of those polled and the composition of the “universe” they represent, the questions posed, their wording and the orde in which they are asked, and that portion of the results of what may have been dozens of questions, that the pollsters or their employers want to emphasize, and the answers they want to bury/ignore, so as not to “blurr” or refute the general import of the poll—those who do the polling (or pay for it) want.

    And since the MSM is essentially the wholly bought and paid for” Ministry of Truth” for the Left, the message of almost all polls will consistently be that–despite the horrendous economic numbers and our personal, everyday experiences, despite his disastrous, crooked, larcenous, increasingly tyrannical and un-Constitutional, total failure of an administration–Obama is winning, Romney is losing–all in an attempt to convince Romney voters that the election is already lost and thus
    discourage Romney voters from going to the polls on Election day.

    All this of course, supplemented by non-stop MSM denigration of Romney, and their turning their eyes away from and studious ignorance of Obama’s manifold policy disasters and their horrific short and long term effects, all the while still praising Obama as a great success, and some sort of new Messiah, and as much election dirty tricks, and fraud as the Democrats can get away with.

    Bottom line, no matter what the MSM, the Polls, TV ads, flyers and posters, the latest celebrity or your boss, your next door neighbor, your friends, and family say, it is absolutely imperative and essential for the survival of our Republic and of the United States aswe have known it, for each one of us to turn out and vote for Romney on Election day.

  2. Yes, exactly. The polls are statistics and given that the MSM has shown itself to be corrupt and unaccountable, they should be completely ignored. Romney will win. All he has to do is point out the poor shape we are in economically (jobs, budget deficit, debt, entitlements) and his plans to turn things around, and then ask what are the issues that the Obama campaign and the MSM pushing? Romney’s ‘gaffes’ and tax returns.

  3. Anyone feeling a tad disheartened about the “way things look”, just take a little jaunt over to dickmorris.com…and read his post from yesterday,”Why the polls Understate Romney Vote”. Promise, you will feel quickly better. AND, while there click the link to Newsmax’s Karl Rove interview where he describes Obama being, “in desperate shape” in the Swing States. WHEW!! I didn’t have to put my fist through drywall whilst yelling,”ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH….!”

  4. Dem leaning polls shouldn’t discourage Rep voters, but just the opposite. Call it motivation of the underdog side.

    And Bush getting twice the votes of Gore in the FL panhandle isn’t a surprise give the number of military bases dotted across the northern FL landscape….NAS Pensacola, Eglin AFB, Hurlburt AFB, Tyndall, NAS Mayport, and NAS Jacksonville.

  5. This strikes a chord with me, as the 2000 “Post-Election Campaign” was the culmination of my change from devout Dem to Republican. When I was a Dem, I was a precinct chairman, and the chairman of the party in the majority in that precinct is offered the post of election judge. We worked with punch-card ballots, butterfly ballots, the whole thing. We never saw anyone who could not punch the little stylus through the hole and thus knock out the chad.

    So, when we first started to hear about hanging chads and illegible ballots, on NPR, of course, we were utterly bumfuzzled. Then we heard that election officials were turning away Black voters, which did not make sense, either, because election clerks and judges are appointed i n the precincts where they live, so as to recognize voters and reject imposters, or at least, that was the plan in 1900. So how would neighbors, probably also Black, turn away voters? Then we heard that the problems were only occurring in four counties, all of which had already turned out Democrat majorities, just not quite enough. Then, again on NPR, I heard a report that the canvassing board in one county had taken the ballots into a closed office, leaving reporters and poll watchers in the corridor outside shouting “Show us the ballots!” Two days later this had turned into a “mob intimidation effort launched at election officials.”
    There was more, like the statistical likelihood that recounts in only four counties would produce a skewed result, and more than I have time or space to tell.

    This was a slowly fulminating shock for us, who had come to realize that the Dems’ schemes did not actually help poor people, but we did still believe that their hearts were in the right place. When we had collected ourselves, and the election was settled, sort of, we were not the same. We actually still listened to NPR, but with the question always before our eyes,”Where is the key to the lie here?”

  6. You see almost daily yahoo headlines (which is what the average American only reads and digests as facts) saying “Obama leads in all four key battleground states” or “Obama surprisingly leads in this traditionally red state”. I know yahoo is doing this in an effort to depress Romney turnout, but does the average american who takes yahoo headlines as gospel?

    I know that this works. I work with a few guys who aren’t Americans but are very intelligent. They both say they don’t like Obama, and that they’d support a “better” Republican candidate than Romney. They say this because they’ve swallowed the MSM narrative/dirt as fact–that Romney is evil, that he hates poor people, that he’s a religious nut, that he doesn’t pay taxes, even though in reality, he’s the most dirt-free candidate you can possibly have.

  7. The correct model to look at is 2010. In the lead-up to that election, Tea Parties organized large demonstrations and captured media attention. The wave of Tea Party enthusiasm swept the GOP to major gains. Enthusiasm is probably the wrong word. The forces driving the Tea Party were disgust at Government profligacy, fear about the damage Obama & co. were doing to the country, and anger at Obamacare.

    Since then, the media believes the Tea Party has faded away. Good. The Tea Party has actually switched track from demonstrating to organizing and infiltrating the GOP grass roots. None of the motivating forces have changed; if anything, the intensity is higher. These folk are seething; they see this as a tipping point election and the last chance to save America. They will vote in droves.

    What has the other side got? The passion that gave Obama victory in 2008 has been replaced by a grim reality. They will not vote for an evil Republican but they will stay home in droves.

    The MSM sense the malaise and are doing all they can to prop up Obama. Their polls are based on 2008 turn-out models, instead of 2010. They still over sample Democrats and under sample Republicans and use registered voters instead of likely voters. Despite that, it is neck and neck in the polls. In reality it isn’t even close.

  8. Neo, your discussion about how a too early call in 2000 of Gore winning FL and that voting in pro-Republican FL Panhandle and western FL was suppressed gave me pause.

    Don’t the networks start calling states winners in the East before polls are closed in western states? Won’t that suppress voting in western states?

    Man oh man, there are many problems with elections these days our Founding Fathers didn’t anticipate.

  9. texexec,

    I thought that there was a big furor about exactly that several presidential elections ago and the networks voluntarily decided to not make any state calls until the polls closed on the West coast which would be ~11:00 PM EST (8:00 PM PST). Perhaps that was a result of the Bush-Gore debacle in 2000–I don’t accurately remember.

  10. “Don’t the networks start calling states winners in the East before polls are closed in western states?”

    The issue in FLA in 2000 was that the panhandle is in a different time zone. MSM called FLA for Obama a full hour+ before polls were due to close in the panhandle. It is entirely possible that thousands of Bush voters in the panhandle turned their cars around and returned home after learning on the radio/tv that Gore had handily won the state.

  11. Daniel (above) isn’t kidding. This evening’s top Yahoo headlines:

    “Mitt Romney Pins Last Hopes on TV Debates” (Guardian)

    “Mitt’s a Real Nowhere Man” (Huffpost)

  12. Thank you, Neo. Posts like this are the reason you are a cornerstone of my MSM. In this case, you address tangentially exactly what I have lately been wondering.

    Trying to suss out the facts of life regarding polling has been difficult by searching the interwebs. Various sources from conservative media and blogosphere to insider Republican party acquaintances here in Michigan intimate that “inside polls,” i.e. realistic surveys, give Romney has every reason to expect a blowout victory. Yet, media-published polls from 2004 turned out to be right (alas). What can we believe?

  13. Matthew M: I’ve been preparing a post on that very subject. Unfortunately, I’ve been somewhat stymied by the fact that polling is a very technical subject, and I’m by no means an expert. But I’ve found some pretty interesting things.

    The bottom line is that there are a lot of reasons to criticize polls, but they turn out to be correct very often despite that fact.

    Except when they’re not. Which is much less often, but it still happens.

  14. Rasmussen Reports is the only polling firm I check regularly. The libs hate him and think he’s a Republican pollster. That’s good enough for me.
    The conventional wisdom says pollsters don’t worry about getting it right until about 2 wks before the election – when their reputation for accuracy is on the line.

  15. How well I remember election night, 2000.

    I remember being aghast that the mainstreamers were already calling Florida for Gore, with ^so^ many votes yet to be counted [I was not yet aware of the time zone aspect of the situation]; and

    practically throwing a brick at the tee vee when the mainstreamers held back and held back on calling some other state [don’t recall which], voting pretty heavily for Bush with almost all the votes counted, for Bush.

    My contempt for the mainstreamers has only deepened in the intervening dozen years.

    I expect to see a comparable situation unless Romney is ahead by close to double digits come election night 2012. Am I too unforgiving — given what they’ve already shown themselves perfectly capable of doing?

  16. Neo wrote: “. . . polls . . . turn out to be correct very often” but at what point in the preocess?

    How accurate are they 4, 3, or 2 months out. If there are enough polls certainly the day after an election at least one of them will be close. The more “guesses” there are, the more likely there is to be a winner.

    As I’ve mentioned before polls are subject to conscious bias, unconscious bias and outright fraud. I truly suspect that they (the public polls, at least) are no longer used by the powers that be to assess a situation at given point in time, but to influence a situation. In other words they are tools for effect and results, not tools for analysis.

  17. T: the further out the less accurate as a predictor of the final result, of course. But from my preliminary study of the thing, by September they tend to be accurate predictors of the final result. Not always, but usually there are not late-course reversals. The exceptions (famous ones) were 1948, where the polls were way off for various reasons, and 1980, where there was a late surge for Reagan, although the lead had changed earlier as well.

    In 2008, Obama pulled ahead about this time (late September) and then remained ahead, so polls were good predictors from late September on in 2008. In 2004, from September on, the polls showed an extremely tight race but Bush led by a bit in more polls than Kerry did (same for the very tight race in 2000). So polls were a good predictor then, too. In 1988 Bush I pulled ahead of Dukakis in August and never looked back.

    The polls weren’t as good at predicting margins of victory. For example, they overestimated Clinton’s margin in both races (at least, Gallup did). But they were correct in predicting his win. The underestimated Reagan’s margin, but they predicted his win.

    Some of these Gallup poll trends are shown here. If you study the results from 1936 to 2000, they predicted the winner every time except in 1948 (and Gallup was closer that year than a lot of other pollsters) and in 1976, when they said Ford 49 to Carter 48 and Carter won by 2 points instead. Otherwise, Gallup picked the winner every time.

  18. “What Obama and his allies are doing now: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. ”

    Thats what I keep saying. Obama’s people always play this card. Even against other dems.

  19. Gallup might be right (at it now has Romney and Obama tied!) but not other media polls. Look at this info on polls in mid to late Sept 2000…

    From Slate Mag Sept 2000 — “Since Labor Day, the media have released about 20 polls on the presidential race. Three show a dead heat, one shows George W. Bush leading by a single percentage point, and the rest show Al Gore leading by one to 10 points. In the latest polls, Gore leads by an average of five points. It’s fashionable at this stage to caution that “anything can happen,” that Bush is “retooling,” and that the numbers can turn in Bush’s favor just as easily as they turned against him. But they can’t. The numbers are moving toward Gore because fundamental dynamics tilt the election in his favor. The only question has been how far those dynamics would carry him. Now that he has passed Bush, the race is over.”
    ___________________
    Some polls from back then:

    Battleground States:
    -Florida (Sep 7): Al Gore +3, CNN/USA Today/Gallup Tracking Poll (Bush won)
    -Florida (Sep 14): Al Gore +4, Sun Sentinel poll (Bush won)
    -Pennsylvania (Sep 17): Al Gore +18 EPIC/MRA poll (Gore won 4)
    -Minnesota (Sep 29): Al Gore +7 Minnesota Public Radio poll (Gore won by 2)
    -Michigan (Sep 17): Al Gore +8 EPIC/MRA poll (Gore won by 5)

    National Polls:
    -National (Sep 12): Al Gore +7 CNN/USA Today/Gallup Tracking Poll
    -National (Sep 2): Al Gore +10 Newsweek poll
    -National (sep 8): Gore +8 Newsweek poll
    -National (Sep 16): Gore +12 Newsweek poll

    ____________

    This is all from Battleground Watch — a great site.

    http://battlegroundwatch.com/2012/09/20/why-you-should-ignore-every-one-of-those-biased-
    polls/

  20. Again, I will confirm my confidence in Romney’s competence. I betcha’ his internal polls are accurate.

  21. Well, I note attention to your own link to the analysis by DaTechGuy on 9/17, which shows one poll that lines up with the facts, more as I suspect them to be.

    I’ve been noting that, in any yahoo news feed about the president, or about romney, if you look at the commentariat, it’s remarkably visibly anti-Obama, both directly — overt comments pro-Obama vs anti-O, as well as the majority of the replies being notably anti-O in response to the pro-O comments.

    Moreover, the “likes” and “dislikes” are also generally more supportive of the anti-O position.

    This is hardly “statistically verified” but the general impression I get is that the majority of people out there are anti-O

  22. Neoneocon,

    I don’t dispute what you have written. I offer two observations. The first, that you acknoweldge late course reversals. So, in a word, anything can happen.

    The second point is that this election seems to me to be unusual in my lifetime. I don’t know of any former campaign (not Gore, not Clinton) that expended as much Goebbel’s-like propaganda trying to influence the polls as the Obama campaign and administration has done (they’re one and the same). If we can discern this publicly, God-only knows what’s going on behind the curtain (e.g., the influence of the threatened lawsuit of Gallup).

    In my mind the fundamental question is “will the American electorate buy this new Obama bill of goods?” I believe that it won’t because the very fiber of Obama’s being has been proven to be essentially a non-American vision of America. If this is true then we’re looking at one of your off-year results as in 1948 or 1980.

    I think that 1980 is an interesting comparison because with each passing day Obama looks like a worst-case Jimmy Carter (even to the unrest in the Middle East) and there are more than a few of us voting who remember that time.

  23. T: I agree that late reversals are possible. My point is that they are exceedingly rare. In addition, in 1980, Reagan’s late reversal was preceded by an earlier period during the summer when he led for quite some time (at least, according to Gallup). Romney has not had a period like that.

    That said, I am in complete agreement that this year is different from anything we’ve ever seen before, in a host of ways. The media bias is so enormous it would be almost laughable if it weren’t still so influential. I think turnout is often unpredictable, but this year I think it’s more unpredictable than usual. It also has been a very close race right along, and that makes it even more unpredictable. The final result will in a sense depend on what’s happening shortly before Election Day, and that’s unpredictable too.

  24. “”The final result will in a sense depend on what’s happening shortly before Election Day””
    Neo

    This will be the cover for overly liberal leaning pollsters. It was simply a stroke of bad luck and timing in the last few days that did Obama in and nothing to do with his 4 years of being a horrible President.

  25. Neoneocon,

    Speaking of the media bias, if the MSM continues to attempt to excoriate Romney and laud Obama and yet 60% of Americans don’t trust the MSM it is entirely possible that the MSM are digging their own grave.

    Much of media narrative is dedicated to making Romney look like a no-holds-barred damn-the-working-class rich man, and yet that narrative has fallen apart to anyone who’s paying even cursory attention. The testimony of Romney’s good deeds for their own sake has filtered out and Romney’s long awaited tax form release leaves even the loathsome Harry Reid with no rejoinder but that Romney must be hiding something.

    As you know, I have been proposing that there is something going on that the polls just don’t record. I think there is a preference cascade in the making. I cite the Univ Colorado study, the disjunction between the polls (Romney and Obama even) and the left’s constant iteration of the “Romney has imploded” theme (precisely how many times can a single candidate implode?) and my initial argument that 47% of the electorate rejected Obama’s smarmy bill of goods in 2008; his track record since then has to have reached at least another 4% of the electorate.

    I sincerely hope that such is not wishful thinking.

  26. T: I hope you’re right.

    My doubts concern the fact that much of the media influence on people is not at a conscious level for the viewer. That’s why I posted an excerpt from Brave New World in a recent thread where I discussed the ubiquity of CNN.

    People in advertising know this principle, I think. I remember hearing that even if viewers are annoyed by ads, they are more likely to buy the product if they see the ads.

  27. }}} I think that 1980 is an interesting comparison because with each passing day Obama looks like a worst-case Jimmy Carter (even to the unrest in the Middle East) and there are more than a few of us voting who remember that time.

    Indeed. I predicted that, if elected, he would make us all appreciate the quivering mound of incompetence that was the Jimmy Carter admin the day after he won the nomination.

    }}}} T: I agree that late reversals are possible. My point is that they are exceedingly rare.

    Neo, I don’t believe this requires a REVERSAL. I believe that the polls are lying outright by manipulating the results in some way, that for The One to win he would need to be showing something in excess of a +4 rating in any state he’ll carry, and the current marginal “plus” factor the one is showing is overtly fallacious, either by undersampling Dems or some other statistical cheat.

    I just don’t see it in the commentariat. There’s almost NO ONE in open chat defending the bastard. Literally. Maybe one person in TEN. That’s not the sign of a closely divided electorate.

  28. IGotBupkis: I’m talking about a reversal that would be large enough and strong enough to be reflected in the polls (or at least Gallup), as Reagan’s was. Back then the MSM hated Reagan, so it’s somewhat similar. The polls correctly predicted the winner in 1980. So it reflected either a real reversal (my opinion is that is was an actual change), or a poll-manipulated one. Either way, my point is that the Gallup poll at least (I’m not sure about the others) acknowledged that Reagan had the lead and would be the winner. Would they do that if Romney pulled ahead? I’m not sure. Perhaps at least some pollsters are more interested in their reputations than in shilling for Obama? One can hope.

  29. I got bupkis,

    You reinforce the point I’ve been making. I have occasionally noted various “tells” at this blog. Each, in and of itself, is meaningless, but when taken as a whole I believe that they are indicative of something going on. You mention “there’s almost NO ONE in open chat defending the bastard.” That’s a tell; and even on the liberal websites, their defense of Obama is never a defense of his performance (as if it could be).

    But there is more:

    – Chik-Fil-A day;
    – Empty Chair day;
    – very few new Obama 2012 bumper stickers (it’s almost as if many of his supporters are embarassed to admit it);
    – the Obama welcome to SUX billboard;
    – the tenuous hold Obama has on a lead with any reasonable poll even given a slavish in-the-tank media (if the media’s all out best effort is a tie, what does that really say about Obama’s ground game?);
    – the undervote in the 2012 PA primary (almost the equivalent of the entire Obama vote of the city of Philadelphia; I don’t have info on other states’ undervote);
    – 47% Obama rejection already in 2008;
    – no coherent defense of his record;
    – the war on coal (the United Mine Workers has voiced no support for Obama);
    – “You didn’t build that!” Business owners and individuals who pride themselves on working for a living
    – the bitter clingers of Pennsylvania
    – the Cairo and Benghazi attacks were a film protest; shame on us for such a film;
    – he promised to half the deficit in his first term;
    – he promised to will close Gitmo;
    – he cancelled missle defense for Eastern Europe;

    and the list continues both ad infinitum and ad nausaum. There is one promise he has kept–that he would (at least attempt) to transform America. There’s another promise he made—a one term proposition–that we will make him keep on Nov 6th.

  30. Neoneocon,

    “my point is that the Gallup poll at least (I’m not sure about the others) acknowledged that Reagan had the lead and would be the winner.”

    And yet we dare not forget that this cycle Gallup operates under the threat of a lawsuit from the adminsitration. So the real question is just how trustworthy IS Gallup this cycle? I’m not saying thery’re NOT trustworthy, I’m saying that their veracity and credibility have perhaps been tainted and we simply do not have enough information to know for sure.

  31. There is a great deal of turmoil and uncertainty in our society. We have undergone 4 years of recession with no end in sight. Day after day we have been subjected to divisive rhetoric from Team Obama and the MSM. BHO, leading from behind, has made a bigger mess in the Islamic world that is worst than the wildest accusation against Bush spewing from the mouth of Pelosi. Our POTUS tells us we did not build our businesses. Our POTUS now says DC can not be ‘fixed’ from within which begs the question of why does he want to be reelected?

    Many people who are not members of the liberal elitist clan (people with a college education who will never vote for anyone other than a a democrat) are fearful. Many of the fearful ones voted for BHO in 2008 because they wrote their hopes on the blank slate the MSM created. The slate is not blank in 2012, same as 2010. 2010 was the harbinger.

    As T states above, BHO has alienated many voters who traditionally vote democrat. So, while I agree that the Obama zombies in the black & hispanic communities, and those who self-identify as liberals will vote for BHO; I submit their level of enthusiasm is nowhere near 2008. Victory will be determined by desire, as in 2010 by the anti-Obama (Pelosi & Reid) voters have the stronger desire.

    As far as the polls go, I believe many polled who voted for BHO in 2008 are very reluctant to admit to a pollster, a family member, a neighbor, or a casual acquaintance in the unemployment line that they will not vote for Obama in 2012. Be of good cheer.

  32. Parker,

    I repeat my belief that there will be three classes of voters this November:

    1) Pro-Romney
    2) Anti-Obama
    and
    3) Pro-Obama

    IMO any anti-Romney votes will not be stastically signiificant and I believe that we have no clue as to how large group number two is (I’m thinking tsunami, Big Gulp, Taco Grande here).

    I think the Obamites know this too, that’s why all their campaign efforts are designed to make Obama’s re-election appear to be a fait accompli so that as many as possible from group 2 never make it to the polls. They forget, however that there are down-ticket races that are doing the opposite—urging exactly those same voters to get to the polls to vote for down ticket Dems.

    Remember even Obama’s mother-in-law said she and the girls would be living in Hawaii in 2013; so unless it’s splitsville for Barry and Michelle . . . .

  33. T,

    IMO 2010 was not a fluke, and I assume you agree. So while I do not see a Reagan tsunami ahead, I do see a comfortable margin for Romney in the popular vote and I also think the electoral vote will push R&R well above 300. Be of good cheer.

    PS – Please excuse the grammatical errors in my previous post; I’m surfing while watching The Producers on DVD.

  34. Parker,

    The Producers—one of the best movies ever made. (OT look up the film on IMDB, you’ll find that the heavy set fellow who plays Goehring is a former NJ (NY?) policeman who also originated the roll of Mr. Cellophane in the original production of Chicago).

    Yes, I do agree that 2010 was not a fluke. I have gone on record expecting a Romney win 55% to 45% in the popular vote and 320 to 340 Electoral votes.

    Oh! and you remind me of a few other tells to add to my list:

    – Obama only ahead by +7 in New Jersey
    – Linda McMahon(R) leading for the Senate seat in CT
    – WI and perhaps MN in play (Univ CO study gives Romney MN)
    – Obama flag (see Instapundit 8:03 PM)
    – Obama flag with bloodstained Benghazi wall (Instapundit)

    But my all out favorite, which does not yet exist, will be Obama speaking from a lectern adorned with the Seal of the Former President of the United States

    Wait for it . . . . .

  35. Clarification

    That’s 55% Romney 45% Obama and 320-340 electoral votes for Romney.

    Sorry if there was confusion.

  36. Once again on poll bias from Charlie Martin:

    There is a new website, called unskewedpolls.com, that basically reweights the data to fit the Rasmussen party identification. Their results are quite different, giving Romney somewhere between a five and eleven point lead.

    Now, this should also be taken with a grain of salt. Basically, they claim (by the site name) to be an unskewed poll. In fact, they’re just a differently skewed take on existing polls

    The link:

    http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/23/skewed-and-unskewed-polls/

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