I believe in one sense that this election is closer than a lot of folks around here, in that those arguing that it was never close cause the state polls and projections persistently leaned in Obama’s favor were off-base. It’s moot now because I agree with the projections insofar as Romney never sealed the deal and the last-minute national movement appears to be in Obama’s direction. I consider the likelihood of a reverse-verdict to be greater, but I consider the greatest likelihood to be an Obama win that will not come down to the wire.
I believe Obama will win the popular vote by somewhere between 1.5% and 2%. If it’s closer to the latter, you can probably flip Florida into the Obama column (maybe you can anyway…).
Having said all of that, I do want to submit something else: There’s nothing wrong with a degree of poll-skepticism. They’re probably right. This year, I believe they are. But one of these years, they will be wrong. The likelihood of getting caught between shifting demographics, last-minute undecideds, cell phones*, and lower response rates will make polling increasingly difficult and the accommodations made for these realities will either fail to compensate or will create their own problems.
The polls have failed us before, and they’ll fail us again. Improved scientific technique seems likely to me to have a hard time compensating for various problems that will increasingly aggravate.
There are ways that this may favor Republicans in polling, and ways that it may favor Democrats. It depends on where the problem occurs, and how the pollsters respond to it.
My hope is that when it occurs, it will be something that brings a 9% margin down to a 5% or vice-versa and not something that flips an election. My belief that it could is one of the reasons I have been relatively uptight this cycle on the subject.
* – Yes, I am aware that cell phones are included in many polls. However, response rates from cell phones are likely to be lower and cell phone numbers are less likely to be up-to-date.
One important point on polling. The “polls” aren’t a heterogeneous, monolithic, entity. There’s a handful of major national polls and then lots of smaller polls, particularly at the state level. So you’re going to have a certain amount of variation between them vis-a-vis the details of their methodology and how they correct for sampling errors. I wouldn’t expect them all to suddenly grow larger error bars or fall prey to a consistent bias one way or the other. It will be more random and sporadic.
Undoubtedly, methods of contact will have to change. I foresee less reliance on phone contact and more personal contact, like door-to-door and standing around in malls. Polling will become more expensive as a consequence, and I so I would expect to see more organizations move toward Gallup’s “rolling” poll method.
I wouldn’t expect them all to, necessarily, but enough to affect the aggregate results or most of them. I do think that some of the challenges ahead will disproprotionately affect one party’s results or the other. The cell phone question represents a potential Republican bias in the polls, as does language. On the other side, I do think there is a chance that Republicans will – at some point – simply stop participating in polls in large numbers.
That’s exactly my map predictions, which are inspired by Nate Silver’s predictions.
Tell me how you were able to embed only the image of the map like that. The best I can do is share a link for people to view my predictions so far, but what I want to be able to do is embed a map. How to?
Simple screen capture, then you can edit out stray snips using something as simple as MS Paint, then MS picture editor to crop, shrink, and compress. With a little practice it can take as little as five minutes.
May I recommend that you take an introduction to survey methods course at your local community college?
It really does help you sort out the noise on competing claims about polling.
If this post is wrong, then I can plausibly say, “ROMNEY BEATS TRUMAN!”
My prediction varies from yours only as to Colorado.
If Colorado goes to Obama, it seems likely his coattails will be just long enough to make this a very blue-looking state. My take is the likely outcomes if Obama takes the state would have the Dems holding: both US Senate seats, four-of-seven US House seats, both houses in the state legislature, and the governor’s office. Oh, and very likely, marijuana will be legalized at the state level.
I called Colorado for Obama relatively early. It’s been more competitive than I thought it would be. The Blueprint is a fascinating model for political activism (and a case where Republicans complain about the influence of a handful of super-wealthy while the Democrats don’t care).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens in Montana. It’ll go for Romney, but the Democrats still control nearly every statewide office at the moment. It still doesn’t look very blue to most, though.
Between you and me, I don’t think the Democrats will make many gains in Idaho.
The Western state I’m most interested in is Arizona; they will go for Romney, but I expect to see the Dems make gains at lower levels. The Republicans have long-term problems in the West.
Missed it by one: Coffman held on to his Congressional seat.
332 Obama (the standard, plus florida). Just because nobody else is going high, I’m going to be contrarian like that.
One of the stories of the last two elections has been failure to correctly poll Hispanic voters. Or, at least, that’s what some people think caused everyone to call Nevada and Colorado way too low in 2008 and the complete miss on Reid in 2010. We’re already seeing that the polls are not quite getting it right.