Dane’s Handy Dandy Guide to Election 2012

 I would be seriously amiss if I didn’t post a pre-election post.

I don’t know if it’s the coffee or the election, but I am on edge. I have a nervous energy today that’s given me an extra spring to my step but also a growling stomach. It’s a tradeoff I’ll take.

For the benefit of all of my loyal three readers (hi, mom!) I thought I’d post a guide for the politically non-informed as to what’s going to happen tomorrow.

Who’s going to win? My gut tells me it’s Romney, but narrowly. That said, I’ve become completely bipolar on the issue. It’s as if my brain has split into two. On one half, I am completely convinced that it’s extremely unlikely for the Mittster to lose. On the other half, I don’t see a possible route for victory for team GOP. There are two realities at stake at this election but with only one of them being true. Let me explain the logic for each.

Mitt Wins:

The polling data that’s come out has told several stories. Though each poll is different, when aggregated together, we can build a semi-coherent narrative for this election. In the summer, Romney had a slight edge. Come a series of gaffes, including the now infamous 47% video, Romney started to seriously falter in September. With this, the punditocracy declared the Romney campaign dead. And then came the October 3^rd debate. Everything changed. Overnight, Mitt rallied into the lead for national polls. At one point in time, he opened up a seven point lead on Gallup. Then, with hurricane Sandy, the polls tightened again. With election day tomorrow, Mitt has a mere one point lead in both the Gallup and Rasmussen polls.

But within those headline, national polls, another story was emerging. The gender gap, with women voters long having favored Obama and crew, closed. In several polls, Mitt was running even with women, and ahead of Obama for men. Independents, the most crucial election bellwether group, were backing Mitt in 10, 15, and 20! point margins.

Plus, there are the fundamentals. The economy is in the toilet. The Middle East is not as keen on us as we earlier thought. The signature piece of Obama’s first term agenda, Obamacare, is disliked by pretty considerable margins.

Add to all of this Gallup and Rasmussen polls that show an electorate MORE Republican than in the 2010 election, and you have a near guaranteed Romney victory. Though Romney could conceivably lose the electoral college and win the popular vote, the chances of that happening are slim. You don’t win independents in such huge margins and have a fired up base and have the fundamentals on your side and lose.

Therefore, the logic of a Mitt Romney win assumes that the national polls are right. If Mitt Romney wins independents and has a large Republican turnout, he wins the elections, state polling be damned.

Obama Wins:

And here is the catch. The state polls. There’s been numerous state polls released, and they haven’t been good to Romney. Just one poll has shown Mitt up in Ohio, a crucial state. For the other battleground states, there has been a consistent small but noticeable Obama lead.

The logic behind an Obama win goes like this: it is highly unlikely, and damn near statistically impossible, for all of these state polls to be biased, and biased in favor of Obama. The national polling be damned. The election is determined by the electoral college, and Obama still has a large lead in that count. Even granting that the south goes back to Romney, Romney has to win a significant amount of the states he is now behind in.

Democratic enthusiasm may be down, the argument goes, but it’s not down that much. And, despite conflicting reports, Obama has a large early voting lead in some crucial states such as Ohio, Nevada, and Iowa.

Mitt could still win, but it’s increasingly unlikely. All of the prediction models based on polling data (e.g. Nate Silver, the Princeton model) give it to Obama. The London sports bet makers, give it to Obama.

So What’s Really Happening?

The fundamental problem with predicting this election is that both sides have logical, coherent, and empirically backed arguments as to why their guy is winning. Unlike in 2008, when the right placed all of their hope in a non-existent Bradley effect of saving their asses from the blue wave, there are legitimate reasons, and factual data to back these reasons up, as to why Mitt Romney may be winning.

The question then becomes, what do you believe, the state polls or the national polls? If you believe the former, Obama wins. If you believe the latter, Romney wins.

Here is a final clue that might offer some insight. It’s an argument that once I read, I became convinced that Romney will win (BUT I STILL HAVE MY DOUBTS! ARGH!)

Why are we getting divergent findings? It may have something to do with the likely voter model.

Polling, contrary to popular belief, can have weight and import. It’s not mere alchemy. But in order to do that, you need to survey lots of people. And, to do that, you need to pay lots of money. Polls are very expensive and the more people surveyed, the higher the cost for your polling organization.

Polling firms have another problem. Not everyone who responds to a poll is likely to vote. If we poll 1,000 people, and get their preferences, that still would tell us very little about the election outcome, because having a 100% turnout is near impossible in America. Usually, for Presidential races the turnout is around 55%-65%.

Thus, not only do polling firms have to poll a lot of people to get any sort of statistical significance, they also have to run a likely voter screen. This is a double edged sword for polling firms. On one hand, the tougher the likely voter screen, and the better your results are. On the other hand, the more people you cast out of the net, so to speak, the lower your actual polled pool becomes.

So, returning back to our original dilemma, I think what is happening is that colleges, newspapers, and the like are doing polling on the cheap. They aren’t paying the necessary monies to have a good sized likely voter pool. Look at the sample sizes, and you’ll see polls with only 800-900 people surveyed. They can’t afford to have a strong likely voter pool, because the poll will be whittled away to statistical significance. National polling organizations, the ones reporting a Romney lead, CAN afford to have a strong likely voter sieve, because they have the money to poll more people.