Eugene Robinson: The Wave and the Reality

[marmar]

from truthdig:



The Wave and the Reality
Posted on Oct 18, 2010

By Eugene Robinson


I’m cautious about the conventional wisdom that the Democratic Party is about to get flattened by a Republican steamroller. Pollsters are less certain than they’d like you to believe about who’s a “likely voter” and who isn’t. It’s easy to imagine how Democrats, facing near-unanimous predictions of a wipeout, could bestir themselves to narrow the enthusiasm gap by just enough to turn a potential “wave” election into a regular midterm setback for the party in power.

Then again, Democrats might react to the prospect of big losses by pulling the blanket over their heads and going back to sleep. If this happens, Republicans could plausibly win not just the House but the Senate as well. America will have sent Washington a message—and Washington will go on, basically, with business as usual.

The conservatives and tea party activists who believe they’re going to fundamentally change the relationship between citizens and their government will become just as disillusioned as the progressives and independents who believed they were fundamentally changing that relationship in 2008. Two years from now, we might well be looking at yet another wave—flowing in the opposite direction. Our politics have become tidal.

Begin with the central argument that the Republicans, and especially the tea party people, have been making: that the federal government, especially under President Barack Obama, is grotesquely large and tyrannically intrusive. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_wave_and_the_reality_20101018/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[bemildred]

2. "Likely voter" is just a fudge factor, just saying.

In statistics it is called a "biased sample".

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. But it's still more accurate than just measuring 'registered voters'

If you don't use the likelihood of voting in a prediction of an upcoming election, what would you use?

[bemildred]

5. Except when it's wrong.

I would not use anything, just like I don't go to palm readers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Yeah, but, realistically, people are not going to give up predicting election results

It's been done for many decades on an organised basis, and, less organised, for centuries. And the parties find it useful to guess how many votes they'll get in an area, to distribute their election efforts. It's pretty wasteful to say "I have no idea how any election result might turn out, so we'll put as much effort into winning Washington DC, rural Alabama, and Los Angeles, because they're all as likely to vote Democratic as each other".

And if you think all polls are as worthless as palm reading, then you personally can ignore them all. But it seems to be the concept of polls that you think is unreliable, rather than just the use of 'likely voters'.

[bemildred]

7. True, but as you say, I am free to ignore them, and to state my views.

I think the whole idea is questionable, unscientific, to assume that there is such an entity as "the American public" and that it has such attributes as "President Obama's approval rating" and that you can track such imaginary things in a meaningful way by taking small, biased samples with interviews from week-to-week, and that the result of that has some value as a predicter of future behavior better than flipping a coin. It lacks rigor.

[AldebTX]

3. I Remember Bush's First Mid Term

The conventional wisdom then was big Repug losses....when it didn't happen, the next day it was the genius of "nationalizing" the midterms by Rove and Co.

[yellowcanine]

8. That was also the year that the bloody "terra terra terra" shirt got waved and demagogued to death.

That was what the pundits kindly referred to as "nationalizing" the elections.