The Lofty Lantern

There are two categories of polls that often get confused; there are regular polls, and then there are tracking polls. A regular poll asks a thousand voters, say, a question over a period of three or so days, and then puts out the numbers. A tracking poll asks 333 people every day, and each day publishes the results from the last three. Though intuitively each day’s tracking poll should be as accurate as one full poll, this is not the case. Then what’s the use? You read a tracking poll to see the track - i.e. which candidate is gaining, and which is losing.

This cycle, MyDD has added the useful feature of adding all of the tracking polls published each day and averaging them - it’s quick and dirty way to see sort of what the numbers are for each day. Incomprehensibly, though, they don’t write the preceding few days results, making it difficult to get the sense of the trends - the only reason you’re reading these polls anyway - without looking back. Well, if they don’t do it, I guess I do.

Date     Barack Obama    John McCain

10/25  51.25                  42.63
10/26  51.00                  42.50
10/27  50.63                  43.75
10/28  50.25                  44.13

What this shows is simple; though the numbers still look very positive for Obama, there has been over the last four days a steady weakening of his position and a steady strengthening of McCain’s. The trend, however, has been so mild that it isn’t of especial importance - over four days, a one point drop for Obama and a 1.5 point gain for McCain isn’t even close to what McCain needs with only a week to go. It does, however, suggest that there is little likelihood of an Obama blowout and that this election will probably tighten rather than explode.

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National polls are now regularly giving Barack Obama upwards of 50% of the vote, making him the heavy favorite to win the election. Unusually, however, a relatively significant amount of voters are still undecided. At this point in 2004, for example, less than 4% of Americans had not made up their mind between Kerry and Bush; the latest CBS/NYT poll, on the other hand, showed 9% yet uncertain. That difference might not appear especially large, but it signifies the difference between a tight election decision and a landslide.

Presidential elections usually narrow for the simple reason that if the front runner can’t put it away by the final weeks of the campaign, he rarely succeeds then. Obama has earned 50% of the vote largely by solidifying the Democratic backing that Kerry and Gore recieved, and then adding a few votes at the margins. These are the relatively low-hanging fruit for a Democratic candidate. Whether he gets 51% of the vote or 57% of the vote - in other words, whether this is a Bush 2004 type victory or a Reagan 1980 victory - will be determined by people who are usually solid Republicans. Intuitively, this should make sense; Bush got 48% of the vote in 2000 and 51% in 2004. If McCain’s 39% can be assumed to have voted overwhelmingly for Bush, and Obama’s 52% largely Kerry and Gore voters, then the 9 points in the middle should largely come from voters who probably backed Bush not once but twice. And in fact, the CBS/NYT poll finds that 2/3rds of the undecided voters did vote for Bush in 2004.

What this means is that the final two weeks of the campaign are being fought on John McCain’s turf; he doesn’t need to convince the undecided voters that conservativism is good or that taxes are bad. When candidates wage come-backs (think Truman of 1948, or Humphrey in 1968 or Ford in 1976), all of whom were very much behind with only a few weeks to go, this is their major advantage.

McCain, however, faces two major difficulties. The largest one is that considering Obama is already over 50, McCain needs not only to sweep the undecided voters but to steal large chunks of votes from Obama. The second problem is that though these voters largely backed Bush in 2004 and vote Republican regularly, it is October 24th and they remain undecided. The reason certainly has much to do with the general disillusion with Bush specifically and the Republican Party generally. For whatever reason, since the general election began in earnest in June, John McCain has gained virtually no support on the national level. In individual states, McCain still hasn’t crossed the 50% threshhold in North Carolina, Indiana, or even the generally uncontested Georgia.

If in the usual election, undecided voters come home - Republicans vote for Republicans and Democrats vote for Democrats - there are unusual elections. In 1980, for example, Reagan was in a similar situation to Obama with only a few weeks to go, when undecided Democrats (so-called Reagan Democrats) decided en masse to flip to him and gave him a landslide. It could happen again.

The truth of the matter is that there is really no way to tell because the undecided voters are remaining just that; undecided. There are reports that the Democrats will have a massive turn-out advantage, based both on stories about Obama’s field operation that performed so impressively in Iowa and the other caucus states, and from early voting. It is certainly true that Democratic voters are unusually impassioned. Then again, there doesn’t seem to be a lack of passion from many Republicans about Sarah Palin or Bill Ayers. We also don’t know if the large amounts of early Democratic voters mean anything more than Obama has placed a large emphasis on getting people to vote early.

What may be telling is that there is a general air of collapse in Republican ranks at all levels. Michelle Bachmann, a Republican Representative from Minnesota, for example, suggested that the patriotism of US Congressmen should be examined. Within days, a race that was assumed to be sewn up for the Republicans burst open, and Bachmann is now the underdog. It is striking how flimsy, in retrospect, Bachmann’s support was. In Kentucky, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has seen his once-solid lead dissipate over the last two months by Bruce Lunsford, a Democratic businessman who has never won elected office, and was twice defeated for a gubernatorial nomination, despite being self-funded, and won the Senatorial nomination this year with only 51% against an obscure businessman named Greg Fisher. Like Jon Lovitz, can McConnell believe he’s losing to this guy? But he is also a (slight) underdog, an incumbent with less than 50% of the vote. If Republicans can’t win down-ballot elections in MN-8 or in Kentucky, and are getting obliterated in open Senate seat elections in swing states like New Mexico and New Hampshire, then what chance does John McCain really have?

And so the story ends as it began, with nine percent of the country who after two years of campaigning and scores of debates, still aren’t sure whether John McCain or Barack Obama should be the next President of the United States.

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People sometimes ask me - what is the difference between you and Sarah Palin? I’ll tell you. I’d never underpay Amy Strozzi like that.

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Remember everybody talking about how Jews are going Republican? Implying issues of racism and such? Well, not so much.

Gallup just came out with a poll showing Jews are backing Obama by a 74-22 margin. For reference, in 2000 Jews broke for Gore by a 79-19 margin, and in 2004 went for Kerry by 74-25. Since Clinton in 1992, Jews have voted consistently on the Presidential level between 74 and 80%. Even more interestingly, contrary to Sarah Silverman’s beliefs, older Jews are not only backing Obama, but at rates significantly higher than younger Jews are. 

So why were so many people surprised? First of all, as a general rule Jews should be becoming more Republican. The historical trend is for immigrants to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and as they get wealthier and more integrated into American society, to shift steadily to the Republican Party. But Jews are refuting this trend. With the exception of FDR’s last 2 elections and when Lyndon Johnson ran against the Civil Rights Act opposing Barry Goldwater, Jews have never voted for a Democrat at a significant higher rate than they are for Gore or Obama, let alone Clinton. Consider this: Clinton did better amongst Jews in 1992 than FDR did in 1932 in the middle of the Great Depression. Ironically, in the 1970s and 1980s Jews did seem to be shifting rightwards, but in retrospect those appear to have been simply unique elections - from 1972 to 1984, only once did the Democrats come even close to beating the Republican, and that cycle (1976), Jews reverted to their usual 71-27 margin for Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford. The strongest year a Republican had in the modern era with Jews was in 1980, when not only did Ronald Reagan win the nation decisively, but he was running against Jimmy Carter, by then decidedly unpopular amongst Jews. (Astonishingly, however, Bush Sr. got 35% against Dukakis in 1988). Those elections, however, were the exception rather than the rule. In the last two decades, though Jews have become increasingly integrated and increasingly wealthy, they remain as Democratic as they had ever been.

That this story got so much play suggests that there must be something to it. A few points - one is I think we have a tendency to overestimate bigotry amongst older voters because of terms. At 25 year old who uses the word Negro is almost invariably a racist (or at least wildly uneducated). If an 85 year old uses that term itcould simply be an indication that until he was 40-45 or so, that was the accepted term for African-Americans. (Read Martin Luther King’s early speeches - the change is remarkably recent) This isn’t to imply that bigotry doesn’t exist amongst the old, or even sometimes at higher rates than amongst the young, but it isn’t quite as high as it sometimes appears.

The other point is that though Jews are voting as Democratic this cycle as they did in the 1990s, it does feel different. The reason, I think, is that Jews who are voting Republican feel more comfortable admitting this than previously. A Jew who used to not want to admit he was voting for Dole is now proud that he is voting for McCain. This is a culture shift, but not one translating into votes. Yet, at least.

One reason is that visible Jews are much more Republican than non-visible Jews. Orthodox and Chasidishe Jews, who are easily identifiable as Jews, are significantly more conservative than Conservative, Reform or non-affiliated Jews, who pass, to use an old term. In terms of Jewish politics, Orthodox and Chasidishe Jews do possess a disproportionate amount of weight - no matter how many Reform and Conservative Rabbis would like for this to change, an issue like universal health care or the enviroment will not become “Jewish” issues in the way that Israel or Darfur are until Orthodox rabbis follow (in practical terms, Chasidim are irrelevant for this discussion). Yet Orthodox and Chasidishe Jews are the distinct minority even within the Jewish community, no matter how surprising that is to those from certain communities. Though we already know that Reform and Conservative Jews cannot pull the Jewish community as Jews without Orthodox backing, we may now be testing for the first time whether Orthodox Jews can pull the Jewish community without their less religious brethren. To some extent, they are doing so; Reform and Conservative Jews seem to already be feeling a certain compunction about backing a supposedly less pro-Israel Democratic candidate rather than Republican. Yet as actual votes are showing, this wariness isn’t that sizable. It’s possible that this is an early sign of a general shift of Jews from the Democratic Party - or it’s possible that yet again, the rumors will remain just that.

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It isn’t easy to find bad news for the Democrats. The Senate map looks astonishingly strong for them, with a remarkable event having to occur to keep them from gaining at least 5 seats, and about a 50-50 shot of them gaining 9 seats. Congressional elections are shifting towards them as well, with a solid shot to pick up anywhere between 15 and 40 seats (over-under’s around 25). Barack Obama is steadily putting away all of the states that John Kerry won, and appears to have a virtual lock on the electoral college. Meanwhile, on the national level, the Democrats are wildly out-raising the Republicans, with Barack Obama alone getting 150 million dollars in September, and the DCCC and DSCC having solid advantages over their Republican counterparts.

But there is one bit of gray. The Southern Political Report found twenty Congressional seats in the former Confederacy which they rate as seriously contested. 16 are held by Republicans and only 4 are held by Democrats, an excellent position for the Democratic Party as they have little to lose and much to gain. Oddly, however, despite the general wind behind the Democratic backs, there are only four districts where their candidates have more cash on hand than the Republicans, which might decidedly limit their ability to capitalize on the potential gains in the South. In their defense, in a fifth district, the incumbent John Yarmuth has only 1,000 dollars less than the former incumbent Anne Northrup, but one might have hoped for more.

The issue isn’t fundraising - it’s spending. In 9 districts, the Democrat had raised more than his opponent, and in another two the differential was less than 100,000 dollars. Essentially, the Democrats have matched the Republicans in fundraising even in these very difficult districts against incumbents who tend to raise more money than their challengers, a not unusual situation considering the remarkable election cycle we are currently in. But the Democrats are spending more. Much of this is because the Democrats understood that they have a second line of defense - in a tight race the DCCC and the DNC can step in to back them in a way that the RNCC and RNC cannot this year. Yet, one can’t help but wonder how much of the attractive polling data the Democrats have in some of these races is because of early spending that they may not be able to continue through the final weeks of the campaign. It’s really too early to make any conclusions about this, but it is worth watching

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The California Teachers Union and SEIU have now invested a combined 1.5 million dollars against Proposition 8, a proposed anti-gay marriage amendment to the California constitution. Granted that the California Teachers’ Union isn’t exactly the Teamsters and Andy Stern isn’t quite John Lewis, but this is still a fascinating development.

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Obama should have hit McCain on his advocacy of Nuclear energy; his talk about reprocessing was strange, shallow, and alarming.  Sure, Nuclear Reprocessing exists, but it doesn’t succeed in eliminating nuclear waste.

What the process does is to seperate the waste into different components.  Some such as plutonium are used for nuclear weapons, some can be used to generate more energy, and - contrary to McCain’s implications - a significant amount is nuclear waste that’s going to be around a very, very long time.

This was a great opportunity for Obama to attack McCain on his understanding of foreign policy, domestic security, and energy.  Nuclear reprocessing has been at the core of Iran’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons, and it’s sad to see that McCain doesn’t really understand the issue.

On a positive note, at least McCain hasn’t started talking about some imaginary ability of the government to reprocess the investment bank’s toxic assets.

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Shortly after Taliban-linked operatives attacked a meeting of Pakistani tribal leaders, the tribes have reacted

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