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As I contemplated his question, I couldn't help but think that I would never want either the president or the Congress to espouse a world view that is so diametrically opposed to my own.  With liberals currently in control of both the Capitol and the White House, that is the case on both accounts.  After November, I hope half that equation will be made right (no pun intended), but that would still leave a liberal in the White House.  Only a conservative majority in Congress and a Ronald Reagan-esque president would reflect my vision of what's best for my beloved country.  Unfortunately, that is a combination we have not enjoyed in this country in my lifetime.

Sure, George W. Bush was a godsend in terms of Supreme Court and other judicial appointments, but he was a far cry from Reagan-esque when it came to spending and government expansion.  If you would point to 2002-2006 as an example of total conservative control, you miss the meaning of conservative - it is not synonymous with Republican.  Bush's shortcomings and Congress' desire to toe the partisan line severely hindered what could have been 4 years conservative reform in all its glory.  Those "anti-conservative" factors also fueled a backlash against the GOP and ushered in the most liberal leadership in Washington we've ever experienced.  Now, our nation struggles under the burdensome weight of liberal policies that threaten to break her.

Getting back to the question, then, the answer in my mind is crystal clear.  Never, and I mean never, would I be willing to forfeit what's best for my country to enable the government to dabble in compromise and concessions.  I would always, always, always prefer conservatives in all three branches of our federal government.  The farther this country has moved from its founding principles of personal responsibility, self-reliance and moral living - predicated, whether you care to believe it, on faith in a Christian God - the more we have paid the price.  Conservatism, in this blogger's humble opinion, is the best way - from a political standpoint - to restore those principles, the very ones that made the United States of America the greatest nation ever.



Filed under:  Conservatism  Liberalism  President Obama  National heritage  Christian faith 

I had previously and incorrectly noted William Barnes as Robert Bentley's Democratic opponent.  Barnes is, in fact, running against Senator Richard Shelby.



Filed under:  House  Alabama  AL House 

Recently, other polling firms have begun to release polls testing their version of "likely voters."  And guess what?  They happen to produce results depicting the same kind of movement toward the GOP that Rasmussen has been highlighting all along.  Specifically, today's poll out of California conducted by SurveyUSA shows the Republican nominee winning both the Senate and gubernatorial races.  Now, truth be known, SurveyUSA has also been accused from time to time of driving a Republican election narrative.

But, indications of a red wave among likely voters have spread to the ranks of self-defined Democratic pollsters.  Witness a generic congressional test published late last month by James Carville's Democracy Corps.  In that poll, the generic Republican candidate outpaced the generic Democrat by a 6-point clip.  Ironically, the Rasmussen measure of that same test released about the same time showed the same 6-point GOP lead.  It is hard to discount Rasmussen when even a partisan Democratic poll reaches the exact conclusion on this important gauge of voter sentiment.

Polls like these won't be the last to echo Rasmussen between now and November.  As I said in my earlier post, the more pollsters honestly try to figure out who the voters will be on Election Day, the more their polls will migrate to Rasmussen's results - not vice-versa.



Filed under:  2010 Elections  House  Polling firms 

A big change in the adjustment impacts the latest House projections, and the impact favors the GOP.  With an average lead by the generic Republican candidate increasing to 2.3%, the adjustment grows from 0.3 points to 1.1.  That's enough to push four more seats over to the red column in today's projections.  They include AL-2, ID-1, IL-14 and WV-1.  These newly-rosy districts move the overall House projection to 226 Democrats and 205 Republicans.  At 30, the net seat gain is at a highwater mark so far this cycle for the GOP.  Still, they would need 9 more to capture the majority in the House.



Filed under:  Ratings changes  House  AL House  ID House  IL House  WV House 

After the elections in 2008, Daily Kos, the largest liberal community blog out there, contracted pollster Research 2000 to conduct a large number of race-specific and "State of the Nation" polls.  The results of Research 2000's surveys have come under increasingly intense fire lately, and on July 1, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga filed suit against Research 2000 and its owner and CEO Del Ali.  As a poll compilator who has used Research 2000's polls in my projections, I am keenly interested in the beef that the uber-leftist Kos has with them.

Polling is an inexact science, and the numbers that polling firms produce are constantly scrutinized by political observers of all ideological stripes.  Sometimes, when results seem out of line with others - or they don't match one's preferred outcomes - pollsters can be accused of driving a political agenda.  But rarely, if ever, do you hear of a lawsuit brought against a pollster for outright fabrication.  Simply oversampling one demographic or another, or asking respondents leading questions, is no grounds for legal action.  Moulitsas must have seen something much more significant - and damaging - in Research 2000's work than just methodological discrepancies

In fact, what he alleges is quite serious, indeed.  The lawsuit states that Moulitsas

Pollster-introduced error
Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com, is partly to blame for the disillusion with Research 2000.  He recently revised his extensive analysis of pollster performance and published the updated results.  Using a massive database of thousands of polls from hundreds of polling firms and numerous weighted metrics, Silver constructed a quantitative method for ranking poll-taking skill.  The end of all this number crunching is a value he dubs "pollster-introduced error." Essentially, the lower that number, the better the polling firm.

At the top of the list of 64 firms with at least 10 polls published during the sample period were such familiar names as The Field Poll and SurveyUSA.  At the bottom?  You guessed it.  Research 2000's pollster-introduced error was one of the five highest.  In fact, no other polling firm releasing as many polls fared worse.  Undoubtedly, when Kos saw the polls tied to his website falling so far down the accuracy scale, he must have felt he was not getting his money's worth.  Yet Silver's calculations, while certainly disconcerting, were just the beginning of the rift between Daily Kos and Research 2000.

Astronomical coincidences
Pollster performance similar to Research 2000's might typically result in lost business and damaged prestige, not litigation and accusations of fraud.  But if there were deliberate fabrication of results, legal action could be justified.  That's just what independent analysis of Research 2000's work seems to uncover.  In the lawsuit, Kos highlights a startling set of data points contained within Research 2000's own poll reports.  They involve the male and female sub-samples of one type of weekly polling question.

Black box secrecy
Alas, Research 2000 seems reluctant to produce any raw data.  According to Kos, many attempts have been made to coax this all-important information from Ali.  All have been met with promises, obstructions, and extenuating circumstances, but no data.  Even if Silver's analysis were all wet, and even if Research 2000 could reasonably explain the even/odd phenomenon of their sub-samples, their lack of transparency does nothing to ease suspicions of impropriety.  If they have nothing to hide, why try so hard to hide it?  Ali's avoidance screams of foul play.  The most logical conclusion, then, is that Research 2000 did indeed falsify the data "in whole or in part."

So what's wrong with Research 2000’s polling? Dismal performance, statistical impossibilities, and no accountability.  Their polling, at least over the last two years, illustrates perfectly an interesting and timely correlation Silver found in his study of polling performance.  Generally speaking, the less a pollster is committed to transparency and full disclosure, the more inaccurate are their polls.  One thing is clear in this prognosticator's mind now that the dubious details surrounding Research 2000's polls have come to light.  You will see no more of them in the calculations at Election Projection.



Filed under:  Polling 

One startling item that I uncovered in my research was an internal PAC poll taken in late May which showed Ellmers just 5 points behind the incumbent.  Mind you, this poll was taken before Etheridge's now-famous scuffle.  I went on to provide Geraghty with a lot more information, but that poll stuck in my mind.  I began to wonder in how many other districts across the country this same scenario is playing out.  Could it be that there are more, perhaps many more, districts where Democratic incumbents believe they sit in relative security - while the red wave of 2010 threatens to make landfall on their own turf?

For sure, we have precedent of this kind of phenomenon. We need look no further than another district in North Carolina 16 years ago. That year, 1994, David Price lost to Fred Heineman even though he has routinely earned over 60% of the district's vote both before and after that upset.  But looking to the less-distant past, I found more eye-opening data that help put the potential GOP performance this November in better perspective.

George W. Bush's second mid-terms in 2006 were no doubt a blue wave election, but they hardly matched the red tsunami we saw in 1994.  Yet, entrenched GOP incumbents fell like flies that year.  No less than 10 sitting Republicans who got 60% or more of the vote in 2004 failed to win re-election in 2006.  In New York, two incumbents, Sue Kelly and John Sweeney, lost that year despite having garnered 67% and 66%, respectively, two years earlier.

The moral of the story?  Just because Democratic incumbents might have cruised to victory in 2008 doesn't mean a return trip is already booked.

The second moral?  Given recent electoral history, gains far outpacing the 39 net seats needed for a GOP majority in the House are on the table.  Consider that fully 60 Democratic congressmen and women earned their term in Washington on 59% or less of the vote.  Consider also that many more who earned better than 60% are in varying degrees of peril - Pomeroy in North Dakota, Herseth-Sandlin in South Dakota, Skelton in Missouri and Etheridge to name a few.  And consider finally several seats in which landslide Democratic winners in 2008 are not seeking re-election (MI-1, TN-6, TN-8 and WI-7 for example).  If you honestly consider all these factors, it is not hard to envision a pretty sizable tidal wave crashing through the current House majority on November 2.



Filed under:  House 

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