©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The Duplex, by Glenn McCoy

Hot Air has a ‘real time’ interactive map available to show poll closings and results, for those who want the full edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting, ulcer-inducing experience.

UPDATE:

More interactive goodness from Hot Air and AOL:  a nationwide poll, by state.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

“But the polls!” you say.  Some look bad, some look less bad, but they all seem to show Obama leading.  For those (rooting for McCain) that find the polls depressing — and those (rooting for Obama) that are already patting themselves on the back — I have four words:  Obama; Hillary; New Hampshire.

There are reasons to distrust the polls, and even more reason to distrust the media narrative built on top of them.  An anonymous Obama worker (or workers, it’s not clear) claims that (1) “some pollsters get up to an 80% ‘refuse to respond’ result.” corresponding to McCain supporters who “are afraid to let people know who they are voting for;” and (2) that the Obama campaign has made affirmative efforts to skew the polls, such as by pushing the narrative of younger voters being overwhelmingly in his favor (with the result that pollsters change up their likely voter projections).  Keep in mind these allegations are coming from an anonymous source (or sources), so take them with a grain of salt.

A better critique of the current political polling comes from Ace at Ace of Spades HQ.  Ace discussed in some detail both individuals’ tendency to give the ‘socially desirable answer’ to poll questions, and how the — usually young and/or poor and/or minority – polling employees may unconsciously “give subtle cues as to whom they believe is the better candidate. They tip to the interviewee what the socially desirable answer is to the polling questions.”  As support, he points to the practice of polling companies to keep callers that have done work calling on behalf of candidates away from doing actual polling calls precisely to avoid this sort of skewed data.  Since those that are working in polling company call centers are precisely the sort that we are told prefer Obama by an overwhelming margin, how much (if any) does their support for Obama translate into corrupted polling data?  Only time will tell.  The unprecedented enthusiasm of groups that do not ordinarily get involved or excited in politics could explain why polling this cycle seems more erratic and less reliable than usual.

The polls may actually be dead on — or at least some of them may; there is too wide a variation in polling results for them all to be right.  We will know Wednesday which, if any, of the numerous polls are actually accurate.  However, both logic and my gut tell me to be sceptical.

My prediction is that McCain gets an outright majority of the popular vote, and all of Bush’s 2004 electoral votes, plus Pennsylvania’s 21, for a 307-231 victory.  Not a prediction, just a fact:  Democrats will blame racism, voter suppression, and outright fraud for a loss, rather than accepting that their candidate and policies just aren’t palatable to the electorate.

UPDATE:

Meant to include this earlier, but didn’t get it in.

Even Joe Biden says not to trust the polls:  “This election’s going to be a lot closer than everybody thinks it is.”  (h/t Don Surber)

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes that some polls still don’t get the 2004 election right.

Don’t forget to vote early and vote often.

UPDATE (again):

The IBD/IPP Poll, touted as having been the most accurate in 2004, has McCain behind Obama by less than 2%, well within the margin of error.  It also shows a whopping 8.7% undecided.  (h/t Hot Air).

FYI, in case you were wondering (as I was), IBD is Investor’s Business Daily, and TIPP is the TehcnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, the polling arm of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence.

UPDATE (November 3, 2008 at 14:49):

Another good discussion of why political polls are not reliable by Iowahawk.  Pollsters have no rational (and certainly no mathematical) way of correctly estimating their margin of error.  Starting with a word problem from a hypothetical statistics test involving red and blue balls in an urn, he reaches the conclusion:

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?

Because, in this case, so-called scientific “sampling error” is completely meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by unmeasurable non-sampling error. Under these circumstances “margin of error” is a fantasy, a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact. If a poll reports it — even if it’s collected “scientifically” — the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Until then, fondle your own balls.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

The debate begins at 9 pm EDT.  I am on central time here, so I’m not sure yet what time I will use; I’ll clarify before it begins.

This post will be sticky until after the debate.

** BAD NEWS: It looks like I will be ‘time-delay-blogging’ rather than liveblogging.  Life has intruded, and it is likely that I will not be able to start watching the debate until 8:30 or 9:00 (CDT).  I will still essentially be liveblogging, watching the time delay feed from C-Span, but will be off by up to an hour. **

I’ll go ahead and throw out another prediction right now:  Palin will be on the offensive most of the night.  I am hardly going out on a limb with this one, but I see her best strategy as keeping Biden on the defensive, responding to her, and the spotlight on herself to minimize any influence by Ifill.

2034

Tap, tap.  Squeeeal.  Thump.

Is this thing on?

I am finally settled in to where I could start, but I will go ahead and wait until just before 9 before I fire it up.  That way my times are not quite as random, and as a bonus should match up fairly closely with the EDT which will likely be used on the feed.

2055

Getting the feed cued up.

Just a note – since I will be concentrating on the debate rather than writing, I will probably come through after the fact and clean up typos and uncomprehensible grammar.

2100

And we’re off.  ”Can I call you Joe?”

2101

Wow, race to the center to shake hands.

Bailout question . . .

Biden – Bush, bad policy, etc., right off the bat.  [Golly, where have I heard that?]  Barack’s 4 points.

2107

Palin seemed a bit nervous at first, but although she is still speaking fast she seems more comfortable.  May be trying a bit too hard to be homey – asking parents at a soccer game (why not hockey?) about the economy.

Joe is smooth.

2112

Palin is saying she will answer how she wants, not how the moderator or Biden want her to.  Biden just got done attacking McCain’s tax record, and calling out deregulation.

Ifill just cut Palin off.

2116

Great line from Palin re: health care — Obama’s plan is run by the government, but the government hasn’t done such a great job of running things lately

Biden follows up regarding healthcare, saying the $5,000 will not replace $12,000 from employer, then zings calling that the ultimate bridge to nowhere (getting a laugh from the audience).

2125

Question regarding bankruptcy bill that would make it harder to declare bankruptcy.  Ifill ties it to mortgage default.  Palin says that she would have supported it, but conditions have changed.  Repeats line about McCain’s call for reform and bipartisan work toward bailout.

2131

Kudos to Ifill.  Biden mentioned clean coal, and Ifill came back and said that she didn’t think he had always been for it.

2137

The gay marriage/civil union question seemed pointless, as both candidates seem to agree.  However, at the end it seemed that the audience laughed, maybe at Palin’s expense.

2147

Palin seems very prepared on foreign policy.  Biden is repeating Obama’s ridiculous distinction between ‘sitting down’ to talk and preconditions, ignoring presidential level (which was Obama’s comment).  Biden seems to be more on defensive, a good thing.

2250

Did not plan on focusing so much on Palin, but another great statement from her regarding Biden’s attacks on Bush:  for a campaign that advocates hope and change, they do a whole lot of looking back and pointing fingers.

2156

Ok, I’m confused. Biden said the commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge will not work there.  Then Biden said the answer was more troops and spending on infrastructure and nation building . . .  So, then, what’s the plan?

Palin, very impressively, named McClellan (instead of calling him ‘commanding general’), and pointed out that he did not say that the surge unequivocally would not work.

2207

Again, I like Palin’s answer on how her administration would differ from McCain’s far more than Biden’s.  Mainly because he refused to admit any differences with Obama, while she said that McCain never asked her to check her opinions at the door.

2210

Best line of the debate: “Say it ain’t so Joe!  There you go again!”  (Palin calling Biden out again on the backward-looking Bush bashing).

I think I was wrong about the audience being hostile to her, she has gotten a couple of laughs from the audience here.

2215

Biden gaffe: stated that Article I of the Constitution defines the execution executive; wrong, it’s Article II.  Article I is the legislative. (Freudian slip on my part?)

2227

My stream cut off right in the middle of Palin’s closing statement, but I don’t think I would have much to say about those in any case.  I am going to wrap this up and think about the debate for a few minutes, then write a separate post about my initial thoughts on the debate.  Later, probably this weekend, I’ll write a more detailed discussion after I have had a chance to see how the media and campaigns spin this, and see what fact checkers might have found.

If anyone was keeping up with this, thank you for your patience.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

Please be aware of this:

If you get an e-mail with ‘Nude Photos of Sarah Palin’ in the subject line, do not open it.
It might contain a virus.

If you get an e-mail with ‘Nude Photos of Hillary Clinton’, do not open it.
It might contain nude photos of Hillary Clinton.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.