Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Tracking Poll Update: Obama +7

Today’s tracking polls are important in that they are the first tracking polls to include only interviews conducted after the first debate on Friday.

9/30:

Gallup Daily: O+6
Rasmussen: O+6
Diageo/Hotline: O+6
Research 2000: O+10

Simple Average– O+7
Adjusted Average– O+6

Notice that today, for the first time, three out of the four tracking polls have exactly the same Obama advantage of +6, and therefore the adjusted average (excluding outlier trackers) of Obama +6 is a full percentage point different from the simple average of Obama +7. However, regardless of whether Obama’s lead is 6 or 7, trends have been moving wildly in his favor recently:

9/25: O+3.25

9/26: O+5

9/27: O+5.5

9/28: O+6.5

9/29: O+6.75

9/30: O+7

It is unclear how much of this movement is the result of the first debate, McCain suspending his campaign, and/or the crash of the financial markets. My guess is that the latter is having the most effect, but the other two factors are indeed interacting with this to create such a precipitous decline for Senator McCain.

In fact, for the first time, Pollster.com’s regressions shows a statistically significant 5 percent point lead for Obama with 95% confidence.

Here’s a look at the trends:

Trends:

Simple Average

9/8:M +2.0

9/9:M +2.0–Height of McCain’s convention bounce

9/10: M +1.4

9/11: M + 1.0

9/12 :M +1.0

9/13: M+1.5

9/14: M +0.25

9/15: Tied—Bounce is naturally fading back to a tied race

9/16: O +1.25

9/17: O+2

9/18: O+3.5—First tracking polls to include financial meltdown numbers

9/19: O+3.25

9/20: O+4

9/21: O+3.25

9/22: O+4—Race appears to be stable for the time being.

9/23: O+3.25

9/24: O+3.75

9/25: O+3.25

9/26: O+5–Stability ends. Majority of sample comes after McCain’s “suspends campaign.”

9/27: O+5.5—Complete sample comes from after McCain “suspends campaign.”

9/28: O+6.5

9/29: O+6.75

9/30: O+7–Complete sample comes from after the first debate.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? A Different Take on the Expectations for Palin

Many of the most seasoned pundits are of the opinion that each time Sarah Palin commits another gaffe, she makes her job easier in the Vice Presidential Debate by lowering the public expectations. Certainly there are many examples in history of a less-than-stellar orator winning a debate by split-decision, for no better reason than because he or she exceeded the lower threshold that had been set for him or her. And anyone who hesitates to agree need look no further than the 2000 debate performance of the White House’s current occupant. When the public expects one candidate to dominate the other, so sayeth the conventional wisdom, these expectations leave that apparently superior candidate with the narrower window in which to perform well without dog-piling on his hapless opponent across the stage.

All of this worked in 2000 precisely because the general public had little basis for doubting Mr. Bush’s core competency to hold down the job. True, he had performed dreadfully in a series of now infamous Sunday-morning news interviews. (”I know how hard it is to put food on your family.” “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?” “I understand the challenges of small business: I was one.”) But the general public–or at the very least, that segment of the general public that is still undecided at the end of Setpember–doesn’t watch Sunday-morning news interviews. To them Mr. Bush was a self-confident, likable guy who was true to his word, essentially untarnished by scandal (as far as they knew), and ready to take the Lewinsky-weary country in a new direction that included big, ripe checks in the mail for everybody. Indeed in hindsight it is a small miracle that Mr. Gore fared as well as he did under the circumstances.

Governor Palin, by contrast, has burned her honeymoon capital with the media and the larger body politic–first by repeatedly lying with respect to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” even after the lie was documented, then by stonewalling an investigation started by state legislators of her own party, and finally by spectacularly and very visibly mangling her should-have-been-rehearsed answers to the interview questions being posed by the unimpeachably non-partisan Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. By the time of the second installment of her Couric interview she was already the least-favorably viewed of the four major candidates, and shortly thereafter she was called upon to remove herself from the ticket, both by CNN’s self-appointed national conscience, Jack Cafferty, and by National Review columnist Kathleen Parker. The latter is the far more devastating blow, since Ms. Parker may not be summarily dismissed as either an Obama supporter or as a sexist in the McCain campaign’s now daily conference calls to blast the treatment they’re getting.

In the meantime Palin has continued to dig herself an even deeper hole, first by refusing to directly answer questions about her acceptance of over $25,000 in gifts, and then by seeming to contradict her boss on the subject of surgical strikes on terrorist bases in Pakistan. She’s been mocked by Tina Fey and David Letterman, and her very image alone is generally enough to start Jon Stewart’s audiences at the Daily Show into a fit of merciless cackling. If nothing else, it sure does seem like a long time ago that anyone was worried too much about what might tumble unexpectedly from the lips of Joe Biden!

To put it bluntly, the public has seen what it needs to see in order to have grave doubts about Governor Palin’s basic intellectual competency to stand a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. And those are not the sorts of low expectations upon which a candidate may capitalize. Indeed the true state of the situation is probably closer to the opposite. Barring a major surprise victory against Joe Biden, one which shows her both thoroughly in command of the the discussion and thoroughly proficient on issues that she has not thus far demonstrated any aptitude whatsoever, the persuadable voters watching the contest will undoubtedly resolve that the Alaska Governor has just officially run herself out of chances.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? The Navy Man and the Celebrity

On October 28, 1980, the country was in the midst of a precipitous economic decline, faced steep gas prices, felt saddled with an unpopular incumbent President, and had been recently and very visibly humbled on the world stage by radical elements in the Middle East. In the final act of their election contest, an aging and tired-looking former Naval officer took the stage for his first (and only) debate with the man his campaign had portrayed as a dangerous, impulsive, Hollywood celebrity who lacked both the experience and the soundness of judgment to respond to far-flung threats in foreign fields.

We all know what happened next.

Governor Reagan, bruised and bloodied by this tireless ad-war, came across (to many who were seeing him for the first time), as smooth, likable, and imminently worthy of the job. A few days later the election was decided in one of the biggest landslides up to that time, and, good or bad, the country has never really been quite the same since.

The story is only noteworthy in our present context because it is our present context. Pundits arguing this past week that debates have little impact on elections have cited data points ranging from the first Kerry-Bush debate (which Kerry won to very little effect on the race) all the way back to the first Reagan-Mondale debate (which Mondale won to even less effect). Those pundits have, to this author’s thinking at least, missed the story completely.

The problem is that not all election contests are created equal. John Kerry’s big debate win in 2004 didn’t have much effect on the contest because the 2004 election was a culture war, with both sides locked-in well in advance and almost no one left in the middle to persuade. Fritz Mondale’s big debate win in 1984 didn’t have much effect on the contest because, in 1984, Mr. Reagan could have taken the stage dressed only in a fig leaf and spent the entire ninety minutes speaking in tongues, and he still would have carried 39 states. To include either of these two races in a regression to determine the significance of debates, is to short-change the potential for debates to matter in elections where the electorate had not completely made up their mind about one candidate or another prior to the debate(s).

Specifically in those races where one candidate is decidedly less palatable, but the other candidate is “scary” or “new” enough to not have yet pulled away, do debates seem to afford their best chance to really shake up the dynamics of an election. In other words, an election where voters want change, but have yet to be completely convinced that they can trust this change. We’ve had three such elections since the advent of televised debates, in 1960, 1980, and 2008. And the “scary” candidate has won the first two, just by taking the stage for his first debate and not being scary. The first debate has thus been what has put the “new” candidate over this threshold of acceptability as a viable alternative to the failing status quo.

Very few among us remember how fatigued the country was with the Eisenhower Administration in the summer and autumn of 1960. Several scandals had broken more or less at once, and the Powers affair had wrought a devastating blow to American pride, prompting renowned Columnist James Reston to skewer the incumbents in language that seems more fitting for today’s scrappy environment, and also eerily adaptable to the current occupants of the White House.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Nixon could only base his argument for the job on the un-readiness of his opponent, a young, good-looking, and little-known Senator. Wisely (indeed uncharacteristically wisely), Nixon left to his surrogates the question of what effect Mr. Kennedy’s Catholicism might have on his governance. But no matter: The race was decided by Mr. Kennedy’s Presidential appearance and his calm demeanor. If there was no longer any reason to fear Kennedy, there was also no longer any reason to vote Nixon.

Twenty years later, one might have expected the sharp cookies in the Carter Administration to assume that Reagan would not play directly into their hands by throwing his bellicose weight around on stage. But Carter was unpopular not just for the devastating economic malaise that had descended over the country, but also for the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis, which was first-lead on the evening news for the comfortable majority of the 555 days over which it took place. Carter’s only card was that people should be scared of Reagan. When Reagan no longer seemed scary, the public decided it had seen enough to make up its mind.

There is obviously still time for Senator McCain to break this cycle (not to mention time for current events to shift to a more favorable playing field on which he might show his strengths). But with each passing day, almost with each passing hour, it is Mr. Obama who comes nearer and nearer to passing what Karl Rove once famously referred to as “the living-room test.” Would the American public be comfortable hearing from this man, for four to six minutes a night, on their evening news, and not be scared of what he might say? It would seem the answer to that question got a lot less qualified in the minds of many voters after the first debate. And that’s a trend that Senator McCain must shatter to pieces with an act far more brazenly game changing than a “mere” suspension of his campaign, if he still hopes and expects to become our nation’s forty-fourth President.

First Debate Viewer Ratings

Nielsen released its estimates on viewership from the first presidential debate, and the ratings were predictably down from previous debates. An estimated 52.4 million viewers saw this year’s first debate, relative to 62.5 million who watched the first debate in 2004.

Interestingly, it is still not clear whether Nielsen’s methodology has factored inthe growth of online video. In particular, C-Span’s YouTube video of the debate had over 600,000 views:

In the footnotes of the report, they highlighted the addition of BBC-America, Telemundo and Telefutura to their counts, but there was no accounting for streaming media. Another point to keep in mind is that last year’s second debate also fell on a Friday, and attracted only 46 million viewers – adding another variable into the mix. Topping the network ratings, ABC had just over 11 million viewers while Fox and CNN led the cable ratings with 8 and 7 million viewers respectively.

Zakaria Declares Palin Dangerously Unprepared

In a recent Newsweek column, entitled “Palin is Ready? Please”, foreign policy writer Fareed Zakaria declared that Sarah Palin has “simply never thought about these subjects before and is dangerously ignorant and unprepared for the job of vice president, let alone president:

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Weighting By Age

I was recently asked why we don’t include the GWU/Battleground tracking poll in our tracking poll average. There are two reasons for this:

1. This tracker is not really a daily tracker in the sense that it does not sample every day.
2. This tracker is showing very different results compared to the other trackers, and it looks to have some fundamental methodological problems.

Now, thanks to Nate Silver at 538, I know why this poll is so out of whack with the other trackers–they don’t weight by age. Nate looks at the numbers and finds that this skews their internals heavily towards older voters. While weighting by age may not have been necessary ten or twenty years ago, because of the cell phone effect and a wide disparity in voting preferences between younger and older voters in this election cycle, weighting by age is absolutely necessary in 2008.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? McCain Chaperones Palin to Latest Interview

Following several disastrous interviews, pops decided to accompany Sarah to her latest interview with Katie Couric. Pay particular attention to McCain’s hand gestures and forced smiles:

This interview is coming on the heels of news today that CBS has yet to air two segments from the original Palin interview with Couric. These segments are apparently even more damning than the ones already aired, including one that includes Palin pausing for about 30 seconds trying to think of a Supreme Court case other than Roe v. Wade (hint: she couldn’t do it).

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Waiting For Clarity on the Bailout? Don’t Wait Too Long

I don’t want to sound too alarmist, but among the circle of economists whose countenance I keep, the question now is whether it will even matter in a few more days who wins this election.

A day in which all of the major US equity indices were down by amounts ranging from six to ten percent is a bad day on Wall Street in the eye of even the most un-astute follower of these things. However, what most people don’t realize is that every time an equity market loses value the margin traders in our midst must react by selling even more equities to cover their positions.

Therefore, tomorrow is the day to watch for a major sign: if equities are down another eight percent, there could be no coming back for the foreseeable future; there just isn’t enough liquidity to cover those kinds of positions. Two or three more days like this one and the banking sector will pretty much come totally unglued. A week of these kinds of losses, and–I never thought I’d say this–the question of whether Barack Obama or John McCain reaches 270 electoral votes will not make the slightest difference to the national agenda.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Courts uphold Ohio early voting period

The Ohio Supreme Court and a federal court both upheld early voting in Ohio today. The state GOP had been challenging the law, which is being enforced by Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. As someone who witnessed the three or four hour lines in minority communities in 2004, I consider this an important victory for voter enfranchisement. Read here for more information about the early voting period in Ohio.

photo

Filed Under: Freedom Feed
Tagged: disenfranchisement, early voting period, federal court, Jennifer Brunner, Ohio, Supreme Court

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Bailout burns, markets crash

September 29, 2008 by Kevin Van Dyke, EditorcloseAuthor: Kevin Van Dyke, Editor Name: Kevin Van Dyke
Email: kevin@demockracy.com
Site: http://demockracy.com
About: A self-acclaimed politics and policy wonk, Kevin works as a health services researcher for a major association. In this capacity, his main areas of expertise are health care governance, patient safety, and quality of care. Kevin also does a variety of political volunteering for local and national candidates and other civic activities. National level volunteer experience includes the Kerry-Edwards campaign in his native Ohio in 2004 and the Obama-Biden campaign in six states, including his current home state of Illinois. He enjoys spending time with friends, family, fiancé Jessica, and cat Shelby. Kevin received his Bachelor of Arts in Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and his Master of Public Policy from The University of Chicago.See Authors Posts (179) | Leave a Comment |

The bailout went down today thanks to a unique alliance between the far right and the far left.

Here’s a look at the vote by party:

Democrats: 140 For, 95 Against
Republicans: 65 For, 133 Against
Total: 205 For, 228 Against

When was the last time we saw a vote like this? It was probably when a bipartisan alliance came together to kill the immigration reform bill.

The markets responded to the defeat of the bailout bill with the largest one-day losses in history.

So, what’s next? Those who are against this clearly want different things. The left wants more regulation, the right wants less regulation, and the center wants to do something. Most agree that something needs to be done. But, most also agree that the current bill was ill contrived and not the appropriate solution.

Filed Under: Freedom Feed
Tagged: bailout bill, congress, defeat, Financial crisis, market crash, Wall Street

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