POLL MANIA DOGGONE IT!

As an old saying goes: “people use statistics like drunks use lampposts, to lean upon” and there is no shortage of people leaning against the latest poll numbers in attempting to make the case, either for or against, the candidate of their choice. With the Real Clear Politics aggregate of poll numbers showing a 5.9 percent advantage for Barak Obama and a 7.7 percent Democratic lead in the generic congressional contest, many liberal commentators are voicing cautious optimism about a major Democratic victory next week. Likewise, supporters of John McCain see a ray of hope within the tightening of poll results between the two candidates, seeing in this development yet another come from behind victory for a man who can only be characterized as a true American hero.

To quote onetime Clinton operative turned Fox News commentator Dick Morris: “John McCain’s gains over the last five days are remaking the political landscape as Election Day approaches. The double-digit leads Barak Obama held last week have evaporated as all three tracking polls … show McCain hot on Obama’s heels.” McCain supporters continue to focus on the idea that there may be some degree of elemental misgiving on the part of uncommitted voters regarding Obama’s experience. McCain associate Mark McKinnon has predicted that the campaign’s efforts at drumming up support among uncommitted independents in the closing days of the race will make for a major surprise among the professional pundits who have thus far been accused of “being in the tank” for Obama. Moreover, there is the specter of what is known as the “Bradley effect” where white voters show support for an African-American candidate when polled but then fail to vote as such on Election Day.

On the opposite side of the debate, supporters of political change are placing a large bet on poll numbers that have shown clear and consistent majorities of Americans favoring change regarding financial and economic policy, Iraq, energy policy, infrastructure spending, equity in taxation as well as the desire to get the country back on “the right track”, all of which contribute to the assumption that there is no way that Obama and the Democrats can lose. Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball on the last Thursday in October, Democratic Pollster Peter Hart pointed out that in the closing days of the campaign John McCain has had to spend time and money defending those Red States once thought to be safely within the Republican orbit. Not since the defeat of Custer at the Little Big Horn has Montana loomed so large on the national landscape. In a state where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by twenty points, John McCain leads by a scant two percentage points just five days before the election. Likewise Obama is giving McCain a run for his money in states like Florida, North Carolina, New Mexico, Indiana and Colorado. But in assessing Barak Obama’s lead so late in the race, political commentator Chris Matthews raises the question:” Is it real or illusionary”.

In all the analysis of poll results we seem to have forgotten the lessons learned in the New Hampshire Primary, which predicted an Obama victory over Hillary Clinton. How accurately do poll results actually reveal what the entire electorate thinks? First and foremost, low-income voters more often than not will be reluctant to participate in polling for fear of being viewed as either uninformed or inarticulate. To what extent are they actually aggrieved by Obama’s comments regarding guns and the bible or to what extent are they likely to put gut patriotism ahead of economics? Polls tend to canvass those who have previously voted. What proportion of the nine million newly registered voters will actually vote? It is assumed that they will vote Democrat but the actual level of their participation is unknowable. Finally, pollsters rely on landline telephone numbers in their canvassing in a society where an increasing proportion of voters only have cell phones and are thus not sampled. In a sense the entire polling process in this election is somewhat like a ship steaming among a string of uncharted islands with the radar on but the sonar turned off. It’s picking up the surface contacts but missing the subsurface picture thus making the total picture somewhat of a mystery that will only be solved after the last votes are counted.


Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
October 30, 2008
Iron Workers Local # 697