New LA Times Polls, conducted 10/22-26 provide the following results for RV’s in 3 key states:
Florida – Bush leads 49-41 percent, 3 percent for Nader.
Ohio – Kerry ahead 49-45 percent in 2-way matchup.
Pennsylvania – Kerry up 48-45 percent head-to-head.
Kerry leads Bush among PA RV’s 49-46 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted 10/23-6.
Kerry leads Bush 48-47 percent of Iowa RV’s in a Gallup Poll conducted 10/22-25.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 25: Can “Reverse Coattails” Help Biden Win?
A relatively new term is popping up in articles on 2024 strategy for Democrats that I explained and explored at New York:
When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally benefits the president of the United States.
That’s not the conventional wisdom, as the term reverse coattails makes clear: Normally, it’s the head of the ticket from whom all blessings flow, which makes sense insofar as presidential-election turnout dwarfs that of off-year and midterm contests in no small part because people who don’t necessarily care about the identity of their senator or governor are galvanized by the battle for the White House. But as Russell Berman of The Atlantic explains, this year is different:
“Faith in the reverse-coattails effect is fueling Democratic investments in down-ballot races and referenda. In North Carolina, for example, party officials hope that a favorable matchup in the governor’s race — Democratic attorney general Josh Stein is facing Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who has referred to homosexuality as ‘filth’ and compared abortion to slavery — could help Biden carry a state that Trump narrowly won twice. Democrats are also trying to break a Republican supermajority in the legislature, where they are contesting nearly all 170 districts. ‘The bottom of the ticket is absolutely driving engagement and will for all levels of the ballot,’ Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me.”
In other states, high-profile ballot measures, particularly those aimed at restoring the abortion rights denied by conservative courts and Republican lawmakers, may generate bottoms-up enthusiasm benefiting Biden and embattled Democratic Senate candidates as well:
“In key states across the country, Democrats and their allies are planting ballot initiatives both to protect reproductive rights where they are under threat and to turn out voters in presidential and congressional battlegrounds. They’ve already placed an abortion measure on the ballot in Florida, where the state supreme court upheld one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on the procedure, and they plan to in Arizona, whose highest court recently ruled that the state could enforce an abortion ban first enacted during the Civil War. Democrats are also collecting signatures for abortion-rights measures in Montana, home to a marquee Senate race, and in Nevada, a presidential swing state that has a competitive Senate matchup this year.”
Berman notes that the reverse-coattails strategy is unproven. Voters, for example, who attracted to the polls by abortion ballot measures don’t always follow the partisan implications of their votes when it comes to candidate preferences. Red-hot down-ballot races are probably more reliable in attracting voters who can be expected to follow the party line to the top of the ticket. A positive precedent can be found in Georgia’s coordinated effort of 2020, when a powerful campaign infrastructure built by Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock clearly helped maximize Biden’s vote; the 46th president won the state by less than 12,000. Perhaps a strong Senate candidate like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey could help Biden survive as well. As for the possible effect of ballot measures, it was once generally accepted that in 2004 a GOP strategy of encouraging anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measures helped boost conservative turnout in battleground states like Ohio, enabling George W. Bush’s narrow victory (though there are analysts who argue against that hypothesis). One reason it may work better today is the increasing prevalence of straight-ticket voting and the heavy emphasis of Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot on the kind of support for abortion rights that should help them take advantage of ballot-measure-generated turnout.
We won’t get a good idea of how either reverse-coattails strategy is working until late in the 2024 campaign when it becomes possible to measure new voter registrations, screen registered voters for their likelihood to participate in the election, and assess states where down-ballot contests are turning into a Democratic blowout. Team Biden would be wise to do everything in its power to lift the president’s popularity and build a favorability advantage over Trump that can reduce the number of “double haters” likely to stay home or vote for a change in the party management of Washington.
10,000 Voters in PA just had their polls moved. And they don’t know.
The Republican Board of Elections in Lackawanna County just changed voting locations for 21 precincts.
And the voters don’t know.
10 to 15,000 PA voters could show up at their regular polls, find them closed, and not know where to vote.
It’s Friday before election day and postcards announcing the change won’t be in the mail until tonight. What if they don’t arrive? Or don’t get read? One smallish ad is running on Saturday in one local paper. What if no one notices?
The Democrats are organizing a volunteer effort for people to stand at the old polls and give directions to the new. But the polls are open in PA from 7am to 8pm. It’s 21 precincts. They need a lot of people.
But this is easy, significant GOTV for people who were uncomfortable with traditional doorbell ringing or phone calling. All you have to do is stand there and give directions.
Scranton PA is only 90 minutes from NYC.
To help, e-mail AlanEGross@aol.com or Calyndha@aol.com. Put “POLL GOTV” in the subject line.
What meaning, if any, can be ascribed to Novak’s (i.e., Rovian) claim today (see excerpt) that Zogby is now essentially calling the race for Bush based on the latter’s current read of the polls?
WASHINGTON — Pollster John Zogby surprised the political world back in April with a long-range prediction that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush for president. On Monday this week, Zogby told me, he changed his mind. He now thinks the president is more likely to be re-elected because he has reinforced support from his base, including married white women.
That conclusion would be a surprise for frantically nervous Republicans and cautiously upbeat Democrats entering the campaign’s final days. In fact, nobody, including Zogby and all the other polltakers, can be sure who will win this election. Yet, it is clear that President Bush’s strategists have succeeded in solidifying his base to a degree that makes it much harder to defeat him next Tuesday.
Thanks, Ruy, for this and Memory Lane.
It does much to lighten the burden of an oppressed and lifelong Dem.
I personally don’t believe the LA Times poll on Florida, nor do I believe the alleged 9-point lead for Kerry from the suppressed CBS survey (a 4-point lead for Kerry seems reasonable, though a bit high on the Kerry side.) Both results seem implausible (though of course either could be right.), so why not release all the polls? We politically knowledgeable folks can sift through them and root out the clearly wrong-looking ones. Unfortunately, the media doesn’t always do the same (Exhibit A: Gallup.)
Incidentally, I read that Kerry’s lead among likely voters in the LAT’s Ohio poll was 6 points, larger than the RV margin. In fact, that also seems too large to be believed.
I’m starting to think the polls are even more UNreliable than I first thought… Great piece in the WP today… Refusals, caller ID, etc. are making it incredibly difficult to actually reach a random sample of Americans…According to the story, “less than one in five calls produces a completed interview — raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up…”
If Gallop has Kerry leading in PA by 2 and in Iowa by 1, then he must really be up by 5 or 6, judging by their previous accuracy.
Kerry in a Landslide!
Transparency International publishes a Corruption Perception Index for countries. It may be worthwhile to publish something similar for state election processes. Consider: very few people are fretting at the moment about transparency or reliability of voting in Utah or Maine. The idea of 60,000 absentee ballots vanishing is almost inconceivable. In Florida or Ohio, on the other hand, the lack of transparency and likelihood of hanky-panky is practically a given. In worst-case situations, like voting in the Soviet Union, the certainty of the vote rises to 100% and the trustworthiness of the vote as a measure of actual voter desires approaches zero.
Is there a statistical methodology that can be applied in addition to standard polls that would anticipate for fraud? Or at least, like in moral hazard questions, quantify the susceptibility of particular voting arrangements to abuse?
absentee ballot link= http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6346293/
Have you heard anything more about the supposed CBS/NY Times Florida poll (discussed on both MyDD and Atrios on Wednesday) that had Kerry up by 8 or 9 and was returned for further investigation due to the “implausibility” of this scenario. (A further version of this rumor was that the new, adjusted results still had Kerry up 4 … but there’s been nothing yet released.)
What are the internals on that Florida poll? Strange that a CBS poll showing Kerry up 9 in Florida is suppressed while a Gallup and LA Times poll showing Bush up 9 is published. Both are equally wrong – Florida is ties and turnout will determine the winner.