As I read somewhere the other day, Obama isn't leading in the polls because the Democratic sample is high, the Democratic sample is high in the polls because Obama is leading.

And yet, those same polls show Romney leading among both Republicans and independents.

Obama won independents big in 2008. If the D advantage is only +1 from 2008, as in today's CNN poll, then it's quite odd that Obama could now be losing among independents but still be winning by 3 points. The only way the math works out is if there's a large number of GOP defectors, which seems highly unlikely.

That kind of ignores the 2010 elections, doesn't it? While there are differences in presidential-year turnout, you don't get the 2010 results without the electorate shifting somewhat, just as in 2006, which foretold that 2008 would be different from 2004.

Midterms always, always skew R. In addition, Republican congresscritters ran campaigns specifically targeted at seniors. The efficacy of those tactics has waned after they have taken certain votes.

As I read somewhere the other day, Obama isn't leading in the polls because the Democratic sample is high, the Democratic sample is high in the polls because Obama is leading.

Pretty much this. I mean, believe what you want, but for you to believe that ALL the polls are just wrong is sort of magical thinking.

Obama won independents big in 2008. If the D advantage is only +1 from 2008, as in today's CNN poll, then it's quite odd that Obama could now be losing among independents but still be winning by 3 points. The only way the math works out is if there's a large number of GOP defectors, which seems highly unlikely.

Party ID is fluid. It's not really that odd at all. All it would take would be more Republicans identifying as Independent on a survey.

You think partisan weighting is "silly" when using a 1,000-voter sample to try to project how ~130,000,000 people will vote?

Given that pollsters are only getting an 8% response rate, if non-responders skew at all towards one party, there is a built-in inaccuracy. Polls can be inaccurate for all kinds of reasons, but not controlling for party affiliation seems kind of iffy. Perhaps this election will show which methodology is more accurate.

That kind of ignores the 2010 elections, doesn't it? While there are differences in presidential-year turnout, you don't get the 2010 results without the electorate shifting somewhat, just as in 2006, which foretold that 2008 would be different from 2004.

I assume this is Joe? Regardless, let's talk apart this logic:

In 2004, the GOP won by a few points, as polls predicted.
By 2006, voters were ready for something different, which led to a wave election for Dems in the House, as polls predicted.
In 2008, that Dem wave was cresting and swept Obama into office, as polls predicted.
In 2010, the wave had crested and was draining back to status quo, which led to House victories for the GOP. As polls predicted.
In 2012, the reaction against the Dem congress seems to have subsided and a popular incumbent is beating a weak challenger. Unless you ignore the polls.

This is just ####### madness.

Midterms always, always skew R. In addition, Republican congresscritters ran campaigns specifically targeted at seniors. The efficacy of those tactics has waned after they have taken certain votes.

Exit polls in 2010 showed a 38/38 GOP/Dem split.

Party ID is fluid. It's not really that odd at all. All it would take would be more Republicans identifying as Independent on a survey.

Party ID is fluid from election to election and even from poll to poll, but you seem to want to disconnect party ID from the results in the individual polls you're debating. That makes no sense.

According to today's CNN poll, the Dems are only +1 from their 2008 advantage, while Obama is losing among independents. How can Obama lose 5-plus points among independents while gaining only one point from Dems and still maintain a 3-point lead? Are you really claiming that a 5-point chunk of voters identifying as Republicans are defecting to Obama?

I assume this is Joe? Regardless, let's talk apart this logic:

Hey, look, crazy Sam's pretending to have me on "ignore" again, exactly two days after being the first person to quote one of my comments (for about the fourth time in this thread).

Just to help you out, that actually wasn't me, it was The Yankee Clapper.

In 2010, the wave had crested and was draining back to status quo, which led to House victories for the GOP. As polls predicted.

How does the 2010 GOP takeover of the House qualify as the "status quo" in American politics? In 2008, the lefties told us the Dems were going to maintain a "permanent majority" due to demographics, etc., etc.

Party ID is fluid.

Not that fluid. Most voters don't change parties even when occasionally voting for the "other" party. New voters are much more fluid; established voters rarely change their affiliation, absent something like the decades-long migration of Southern voters to the GOP.

Is it true that party ID is static? I have always read that partisan behavior is pretty static; barring major realignment, voters vote for the same party pretty consistently in presidential races. But I was never sure if that meant they always self-identified the same way, or if you get people floating between their party and an independent label, while not actually changing their voting behavior.

Okay. You guys win. Obama is clearly behind and the polling organizations are ignoring all of their incentives to get the election right and are instead in the tank for Obama.

Your logic is so crystal clear I cannot refute it. This is among the worst of the conversations on this lengthy thread.

Even the unskewed polls guy has Obama up by 1 in the CNN poll after he performs his magic.

A Politico article that details that Republican pros know where the ball lies, even if yahoos like Dick Morris & Rush Limbaugh would blow sunshine up your butt to the contrary.

Actually party registration is not that fluid, but that's not what these polls are picking up. They simply ask people what their party is -- it's quite simple to ID yourself as a Democrat if you're feeling Democratic when a pollster asks you what your party is.

There is powerful prima facie evidence (lots of current polling data) to support the idea that party affiliation is in fact different since 2010. Equally powerful supporting evidence is that these polling results have been fairly accurate over time. What is the evidence at that "non-responders skew at all towards one party" or that party ID hasn't shifted? Isn't the point of polling to discover the current state of the electorate?

Okay. You guys win. Obama is clearly behind and the polling organizations are ignoring all of their incentives to get the election right and are instead in the tank for Obama.

Your logic is so crystal clear I cannot refute it. This is among the worst of the conversations on this lengthy thread.

I haven't seen any logic from you except that a bunch of polls say X, so X is probably right.

Any opinion on the following?

According to today's CNN poll, the Dems are only +1 from their 2008 advantage, while Obama is losing among independents. How can Obama lose 5-plus points among independents while gaining only one point from Dems and still maintain a 3-point lead? Are you really claiming that a 5-point chunk of voters identifying as Republicans are defecting to Obama?

There is powerful prima facie evidence (lots of current polling data) to support the idea that party affiliation is in fact different since 2010.

No one has claimed that the 2012 electorate will be the same as 2010. The argument is that the electorate won't be more Dem than 2008.

Okay. You guys win. Obama is clearly behind and the polling organizations are ignoring all of their incentives to get the election right and are instead in the tank for Obama.

Regardless of what the correct answer is, what "incentives to get the election right"? Pollsters who work for candidates have a great incentive to get the election right; their efforts affect campaign strategy, and a candidate isn't going to pay someone who gives him bad info. But the only thing media polls do is provide fodder for punditry, and there's no penalty for pundits who get things wrong.

Edited to reflect my inability to sync one Bluetooth keyboard with two devices. Vote Quimby!

According to today's CNN poll, the Dems are only +1 from their 2008 advantage, while Obama is losing among independents. How can Obama lose 5-plus points among independents while gaining only one point from Dems and still maintain a 3-point lead? Are you really claiming that a 5-point chunk of voters identifying as Republicans are defecting to Obama?

Joe, it's not clear to me exactly what you're even getting at here. Lose 5 points among independents since....2008?

Regardless of what the correct answer is, what "incentives to get the election right"? Pollsters who work for candidates have a great incentive to get the election right; their efforts affect campaign strategy, and a candidate isn't going to pay someone who gives him bad info. But the only thing media polls do is provide fodder for punditry, and there's no penalty for pundits who get things wrong.

Well, media outlets are commissioning the polls for their news organizations, not their pundits. Their goal is to be a "trusted" source of news, and more accurate polls further that goal. If Quinnipac is more accurate than Ipsos, they can charge more for their polls. Are you going somewhere with this, because I assume you already know this and are trying to make some weird kind of double-bankshot debate point.

I haven't seen any logic from you except that a bunch of polls say X, so X is probably right.

Indeed, that is my whole argument. If Obama were losing, it would also be my argument.

According to today's CNN poll, the Dems are only +1 from their 2008 advantage, while Obama is losing among independents. How can Obama lose 5-plus points among independents while gaining only one point from Dems and still maintain a 3-point lead? Are you really claiming that a 5-point chunk of voters identifying as Republicans are defecting to Obama?

No, I'm claiming that it's quite likely a number of voters identifying as Independents were identifying as Republicans before. Or that a lot of Republicans died in the last two years. Or other things. I don't really care. Looking at one poll is silly. The broad polling average is pretty clear.


This is really tedious.

But the only thing media polls do is provide fodder for punditry, and there's no penalty for pundits who get things wrong.

Uh, really? That's like saying there's no penalty for bad journalism because periodicals make all of their money off of ads.

Pollsters who work for candidates have a great incentive to get the election right; their efforts affect campaign strategy, and a candidate isn't going to pay someone who gives him bad info. But the only thing media polls do is provide fodder for punditry, and there's no penalty for pundits who get things wrong.

And yet, the campaigns are certainly behaving as if the information from their commissioned polls correlates to the ones from the media. Why else would we be living through all these "reboots?" If Romney really thought he was ahead, I suspect his campaign would reflect that.

Joe, it's not clear to me exactly what you're even getting at here. Lose 5 points among independents since....2008?

Party ID might be fluid, but these polls are still a zero-sum game. In 2008, the Dems had a +7 advantage and Obama won self-described independents. In today's CNN poll, the Dems have a +8 advantage — a one-point improvement over 2008 — but Obama is now losing by 8 points among independents. The only way all of this adds up is if a ~10-point segment of the self-described Republicans are defecting to Obama, which, while possible, seems highly unlikely.

No, I'm claiming that it's quite likely a number of voters identifying as Independents were identifying as Republicans before. Or that a lot of Republicans died in the last two years. Or other things. I don't really care. Looking at one poll is silly. The broad polling average is pretty clear.

If all the polls use the same methodology and/or party ID splits and one or both of those are flawed, then all of the polls will be consistently wrong.

If you honestly believe that Dems will have more than the D+7 advantage they enjoyed in 2008, then you're certainly entitled to that opinion. I happen to disagree.

I do not have a strong idea if self-deportation was meant as a "dog whistle" or not, however, isn't a dog whistle one in which you expect/want the people on your side - the ones you want to vote for you to hear?

It has been answered, but I'll chime in now that I am back.

Typically one does expect a dog whistle to only be "heard" by those in the know, but immigration in general has two groups that are very tuned into this sort of thing. The Sheriff Joe's of the world and the immigrant community both keep track and both are tuned into the language used.

The reason it is a dog whistle is shown on this thread, it sounds so innocent, but in reality it is all about making like as horrible, as miserable as possible. Oddly enough this process of making life hell for illegals does collateral damage to their friends and families, many of whom are citizens.

Exit polls in 2010 showed a 38/38 GOP/Dem split.

wasn't the thing about the teapers in 2010 that they were supposed to be some grassroots movement that was above the partisan divide, and thus, they didn't identify as republicans despite the fact that, for all intents and purposes, they were republicans.

But the only thing media polls do is provide fodder for punditry, and there's no penalty for pundits who get things wrong.

Zogby's fallen off the map after spectacularly failing in 2008.

If you honestly believe that Dems will have more than the D+7 advantage they enjoyed in 2008, then you're certainly entitled to that opinion. I happen to disagree.

I love this logic. The view of polls that they should be weighted by party ID is just orthogonal to reality. Polls take a random sample and then weight by factors, but almost always by demographics. You would do better ignoring the party affiliation numbers. But you won't, and everyone needs hope.

I once read an intriguing counterfactual exercise in which Ford starts to say this, then stops brain farting and catches himself, and completes the answer instead in normal political platitude. Instead of this becoming one of the all-time debate bloopers and hurting Ford in the polls, he muddles through and wins instead of loses the close election of 1976.

A highly plausible scenario.

OK, then how would history have changed? The exercise I read kind of put the pedal to the metal and imagined all sorts of interesting consequences. Instead of becoming the nominee against the weak incumbent Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan is forced to be a good Republican soldier and support a generally popular incumbent Gerald Ford in his re-election bid in 1980.

Apparently this counterfactual also involves time travel, since Ford would have to go back and time and prevent the ratification of the 22nd Amendment if he wanted a re-election bid in 1980.

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

Interesting. That last part explains why LBJ stepped down voluntarily in 1968 after the New Hampshire primary, even though he was eligible to run again, while a victorious Ford in 1976 would have been ineligible for running for re-election in 1980.

IIRC at one point during the the 1960 campaign, William F. Buckley** suggested a GOP draft of Eisenhower for Vice President, presumably to help keep the Republicans in office by utilizing Ike's popularity.

**I'm pretty sure it was Buckley who proposed this, even though he wasn't Eisenhower's greatest fan.

I haven't seen any logic from you except that a bunch of polls say X, so X is probably right.

The idea that the best way to count the numbers of party affiliated by taking multiple random samples where they ask "what's your party affiliation?" of the electorate, by multiple companies and comparing their results seems like a pretty logical way to go about it.

/edited for clarity

Typically one does expect a dog whistle to only be "heard" by those in the know, but immigration in general has two groups that are very tuned into this sort of thing. The Sheriff Joe's of the world and the immigrant community both keep track and both are tuned into the language used.

But what exactly was the "dog whistle" part? By "self-deportation," was Romney really implying that he'll send ICE agents door to door at 4:00 AM to find and forcibly deport people?

The reason it is a dog whistle is shown on this thread, it sounds so innocent, but in reality it is all about making like as horrible, as miserable as possible. Oddly enough this process of making life hell for illegals does collateral damage to their friends and families, many of whom are citizens.

Make their lives as miserable as possible how? By asking employers to verify Social Security numbers against a federal database?

Typically one does expect a dog whistle to only be "heard" by those in the know, but immigration in general has two groups that are very tuned into this sort of thing. The Sheriff Joe's of the world and the immigrant community both keep track and both are tuned into the language used.

The reason it is a dog whistle is shown on this thread, it sounds so innocent, but in reality it is all about making like as horrible, as miserable as possible. Oddly enough this process of making life hell for illegals does collateral damage to their friends and families, many of whom are citizens.

I'm afraid that on this thread, those Romney dog whistles would have to be replaced by air raid sirens for some of these hard of hearing dogs to be able to notice them.

No, I'm claiming that it's quite likely a number of voters identifying as Independents were identifying as Republicans before.

This is actually quite simple. When the public id is leaning Dem, then left-leaning "independents" will identify as Democrats while right leaning independents will identify as "independents." That's how you see a +margin on the Dem side without seeing any real movement from self-identifying "independents." The indies who are moving out of the column into the D column are being replaced by the group from the right moving out of the R column into the I column.

The polls are showing a +margin for Dem IDs because more people are comfortable ID'ing as a Dem than a Rep these days, much to Joe's consternation.

Zogby's fallen off the map after spectacularly failing in 2008.

AFAIK, the most important revenue stream for these polling firms is market research for corporate clients. The political polling functions as advertising & reputation enhancement for that business. A reputation for spectacular failure in the political realm does _not_ help you land those Fortune 1000 accounts.

I love this logic. The view of polls that they should be weighted by party ID is just orthogonal to reality. Polls take a random sample and then weight by factors, but almost always by demographics. You would do better ignoring the party affiliation numbers. But you won't, and everyone needs hope.

So, by your logic, if you call 1,000 people and 900 of them happen to be registered Dems, there are no problems with the sample. Bizarre.

***

IIRC at one point during the the 1960 campaign, William F. Buckley** suggested a GOP draft of Eisenhower for Vice President, presumably to help keep the Republicans in office by utilizing Ike's popularity.

But you can't run for vice president if you're ineligible to run for president, can you?

***

The idea that the best way to count the numbers of party affiliated by taking multiple random samples where they ask "what's your party affiliation?" of the electorate, by multiple companies and comparing their results seems like a pretty logical way to go about it.

Sure, except actual voter registrations apparently aren't reflecting the same huge Dem advantage that a lot of these polls are showing. Also, the party ID spreads being used in a lot of these polls are even greater than the responses the pollsters are getting to their own party ID question — i.e., some of the same pollsters who are showing a Dem+4 edge in party ID are publishing polls that show a Dem+8 electorate. It's odd.

Zogby was one of the most-cited polling outfits not very long ago, but is now something of an afterthought. The idea that nearly all of the polling companies would suddenly, simultaneously and deliberately sabotage their own businesses and risk joining Zogby on the sidelines is one of the most nitwitted claims of the campaign.

[EDIT: Slivers just noted the fall of Zogby a few posts back.]

**I'm pretty sure it was Buckley who proposed this, even though he wasn't Eisenhower's greatest fan.

There was a National Review article making the case for a Goldwater-Eisenhower ticket, not sure if Buckley was the author. A similar case has been made every so often for Bill Clinton to be on the Democratic ticket as VP. Folks differ on whether that passes Constitutional muster, but I suspect voters think it's too gimmicky to actually help a candidate.

This is actually quite simple. When the public id is leaning Dem, then left-leaning "independents" will identify as Democrats while right leaning independents will identify as "independents." That's how you see a +margin on the Dem side without seeing any real movement from self-identifying "independents." The indies who are moving out of the column into the D column are being replaced by the group from the right moving out of the R column into the I column.

The polls are showing a +margin for Dem IDs because more people are comfortable ID'ing as a Dem than a Rep these days, much to Joe's consternation.

The math doesn't work. If that's what's happening, there'd be much more than a +1 movement toward the Dems. Again, this is a zero-sum game.

So, by your logic, if you call 1,000 people and 900 of them happen to be registered Dems, there are no problems with the sample. Bizarre.

If I call 1,000 people that, considered by demographic, are a fair sampling of the country, and 900 of them are registered Dems, I conclude that there are more Dems than Reps. (Repubs? Whatever.) I don't take my polling data and replace it with my previous assumptions about parity.

Zogby was one of the most-cited polling outfits not very long ago, but is now something of an afterthought. The idea that nearly all of the polling companies would suddenly, simultaneously and deliberately sabotage their own businesses and risk joining Zogby on the sidelines is one of the most nitwitted claims of the campaign.

I don't recall saying that they're deliberately wrong; just that they're wrong.

Also, I'm not so sure that pollsters have any incentive to go rogue, so to speak. It seems like the upside for being an outlier and being right is much less than the downside from being an outlier and being wrong.

But you can't run for vice president if you're ineligible to run for president, can you?

Yankee Clapper** answered this correctly, since the 22nd amendment only states that a person can't be elected president more than twice, or be elected president twice if he's already served more than six years by the time his first elected term has expired. But of course it was rightly seen as a gimmick, even if technically constitutional.

And BTW you're right: It was in 1964, not 1960 that the suggestion about Ike was made. And I'm 90% sure that it was Buckley himself who made the suggestion. I used to read NR religiously during the 60's, and I doubt if such a suggestion would have gotten any outside ink at all if it'd been made by anyone else than WFB.

**who has a lot to clap about tonight

If I call 1,000 people that, considered by demographic, are a fair sampling of the country, and 900 of them are registered Dems, I conclude that there are more Dems than Reps. (Repubs? Whatever.) I don't take my polling data and replace it with my previous assumptions about parity.

And to amplify this a bit, if I have 7 or 8 different companies do this, and the results come back roughly similar, I can actually begin to quantify the difference between the number of party affiliated with greater accuracy.

If I call 1,000 people that, considered by demographic, are a fair sampling of the country, and 900 of them are registered Dems, I conclude that there are more Dems than Reps. (Repubs? Whatever.) I don't take my polling data and replace it with my previous assumptions about parity.

But why would you rely on a 1,000-person sample when the actual voter registration data is available? That's like saying Joe Blow's OPS in four plate appearances vs. one particular LHP is more important than his OPS in 800 lifetime plate appearances vs. all LHPs.

***

And to amplify this a bit, if I have 7 or 8 different companies do this, and the results come back roughly similar, I can actually begin to quantify the difference between the number of party affiliated with greater accuracy.

The polling should pick up trends that might have occurred after a person had registered to vote, but with a response rate of only 9 percent (per some articles over the weekend), my confidence in that info. wouldn't be too high. Right now, no one really knows who's not responding to pollsters or why.

Also, I'm not so sure that pollsters have any incentive to go rogue, so to speak. It seems like the upside for being an outlier and being right is much less than the downside from being an outlier and being wrong.

I actually think there's a market for a pollster who's always five points more Republican than everyone else, and for one who's five points off in the other direction. Campaigns always need excuses to claim that they're winning (which proves they're right) or losing (so it's important for you to donate now!), and they need a range of poll results to pick from.

You probably couldn't get away with just releasing numbers without putting up a show of calling people, though. Unfortunately.

Make their lives as miserable as possible how? By asking employers to verify Social Security numbers against a federal database?

The government is very powerful Joe. There are many ways it can. Passing laws like AZ "show your papers" is certainly one way. There are many other much more subtle that don't require passing laws like that. But that is not really the point. The point is the threat to make their life miserable. A threat made often by the Sheriff Joe side of the spectrum. And heard, very clearly, by Hispanics of all sorts. However since you believe they all vote Democratic because they are bribed with phones or whatever, please disregard all this.

So, by your logic, if you call 1,000 people and 900 of them happen to be registered Dems, there are no problems with the sample. Bizarre.

That is quite a straw man you have up there. If a pollster interviewed 1000 people and weighed the results by demographics (age, race, marital status are the big three I believe) and got 900 people who identified themselves as Democrats that would be an interesting anomaly - but off course that is not what is happening.

First of all people who identify as Democrats is very different than party registration. Party identification is fairly fluid and often changes based on who the person is planning on voting for in the upcoming election. As stated upthread, Obama doing better means more people will self identify as "Democrat", this has zero to do with actual party registration (for some bizarre reason this distinction keeps getting lost when you write - repeat after me identifying to a pollster is not the same as registering with a political party).

Political party registration is fairly stable, with long term trend lines (in general) moving towards more independents. However for most of those that leave from the left, they still vote left and most who leave from the right to become independents still vote right.

Of course if we follow what you believe (as stated) every pollster takes a random sample. We know they weigh by demographics (the vast majority at any rate) and then release their figures. They (the majority) don't weigh at all by self identification of party. But still they are all getting way more D than you think is right.

Poll after poll, survey after survey. Randomly. They keep getting too many D. Why do you think that is? They are not weighing to get that proportion. Is it random chance? Have the demographics turned that heavily against Team Red? Are they all conspiring against Romney?

Why do you think they keep coming up with more D than R? My reason, the one the actual profession pollsters say, I gave above. What is your expert opinion?

That is quite a straw man you have up there.

BBTF: Where every example is a straw man.

First of all people who identify as Democrats is very different than party registration. Party identification is fairly fluid and often changes based on who the person is planning on voting for in the upcoming election. As stated upthread, Obama doing better means more people will self identify as "Democrat", this has zero to do with actual party registration (for some bizarre reason this distinction keeps getting lost when you write - repeat after me identifying to a pollster is not the same as registering with a political party).

Political party registration is fairly stable, with long term trend lines (in general) moving towards more independents. However for most of those that leave from the left, they still vote left and most who leave from the right to become independents still vote right.

So party ID is "fairly fluid" while party registration is "fairly stable," and most people vote for the same party in every election. I sense a conflict or two in there.

Also, I know the difference between party ID and party registration. I just disagree with the claim that there are big fluctuations.

Of course if we follow what you believe (as stated) every pollster takes a random sample. We know they weigh by demographics (the vast majority at any rate) and then release their figures. They (the majority) don't weigh at all by self identification of party. But still they are all getting way more D than you think is right.

It doesn't have anything to do with what I think is "right"; it's about the reported numbers in prior elections. The Dems had a Dem+7 advantage in 2008 and they won big. I find it hard to believe the Dems will have a bigger party ID advantage in 2012 but win by a smaller margin than in 2008. If the theory is that people identify with the winner, such a result would be entirely counterintuitive.

Poll after poll, survey after survey. Randomly. They keep getting too many D. Why do you think that is? They are not weighing to get that proportion. Is it random chance? Have the demographics turned that heavily against Team Red? Are they all conspiring against Romney?

Why do you think they keep coming up with more D than R? My reason, the one the actual profession pollsters say, I gave above. What is your expert opinion?

Isn't it obvious? The Republicans are all at work while the lazy Dems sit at home and talk to pollsters.

Electing a Veep who couldn't be elected president is interesting academically but like the McCain question in 2008 or the two Texans issue in 2000 irrelevant in practice. No Supreme Court would deny a fairly elected candidate the office on a constitutional qualm. The Senate used to seat 29 year olds, no matter what the constitution says. There's a powerful incentive to seat people who are fairly elected. Obviously in a squeaker, you could get more leeway for a Court intervention, but no Supreme Court is going to knock a major party candidate off on constitutional grounds.

Poll after poll, survey after survey. Randomly. They keep getting too many D. Why do you think that is? They are not weighing to get that proportion. Is it random chance? Have the demographics turned that heavily against Team Red? Are they all conspiring against Romney?

I think it's difficult to get a really accurate poll when the response rate is 9%.

I think it's difficult to get a really accurate poll when the response rate is 9%.

Wouldn't inaccurate polls cause the outcomes to vary rather than generally agree?

/again, edited for clarity.

As for a former president rendered ineligible to run for president because of the 22nd Amendment running as vice-president, see the 12th Amendment: "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States." Of course, this being a question of law, lawyers will find a way to logic chop.

.

Mitt Romney just said down in Orlando this morning that he'll be rooting for "an old fashioned Marlins - Rays World Series," though he also added that "sentimentally, the Yankees are my kind of team." Surely someone can start a new thread with that one.

Isn't it obvious? The Republicans are all at work while the lazy Dems sit at home and talk to pollsters.

Translation: "I have no idea, my talking points don't cover that."

So party ID is "fairly fluid" while party registration is "fairly stable," and most people vote for the same party in every election. I sense a conflict or two in there.

Part registration is done for a variety of reasons. Once you register most people will stay in their party affiliation, even if they are not voting this way. We have had someone (Bob D I think) mention he was registered R so he could influence primaries, but nationally voted D (sorry if I am getting the specifics wrong). The whole south is filled with folks who registered as D years ago and have been voting R nationally. Recently my understanding is a fair number of GOP types have stopped identifying as R, but are still pretty darn likely to vote R (many Tea Party types do this).

How any of these people choose to identify in a poll is meaningless regarding the accuracy of the poll. You sample a whole pile of people. You weigh based on demographics and turnout patterns (this is the step that is more art than science). You report the results which include votes and self identified party ID.

The only possible arguments one could make is that the demographic screens are biased, the turnout model is completely wrong (the likely voter screen is wrong) or there is some systematic error in how samples are gathered (Cell phone bias, for example). Any of those are possible, but one has to explain why it is impacting all of the pollsters and only this election cycle and not past ones.

In my mind the two best options you have are turnout (enthusiasm) and mobile phone bias. The problem here is it is hard to picture a hidden wellspring of GOP enthusiam (especially in light of the Obama GOTV operation which is thought to be at least as good as the Romney GOTV operation (by most accounts better than the McCain one, which was terrible). It is possible though, and my understanding is most pollsters are expecting a turnout model in between 2008 and 2010 in favorability to the two parties. It is also hard to imagine that the landline vs. mobile phone favors Romney, since his demographic skew older, which is the group with more landlines.

One thing to remember is the demographics of the nation continue to change, with groups favoring the D side growing faster than the R side. Of course they vote less proportionally and skew younger (which vote less as well), but as they age the migrate to a higher voting cohort. But in raw numbers the demographics will look unfavorable to the GOP going forward unless the demographic identity politics changes.

This is why even if you are correct that a GOP change will cost them more white votes than they gain in non-white votes the GOP is in trouble and appears to be in a no win situation long term. However politicians like to win and are not idiots, so there will be a pivot at some point here, even if I am not sure what exactly that pivot will entail.

Wouldn't inaccurate polls cause the outcomes to vary rather than generally agree?

All polls are to some degree or another inaccurate. The magic of poll averaging washes out most the mess and works pretty well historically. There is no reason to believe it will not continue to work, but there is no substitute for the actual election.

One thing to remember is the demographics of the nation continue to change, with groups favoring the D side growing faster than the R side. Of course they vote less proportionally and skew younger (which vote less as well), but as they age the migrate to a higher voting cohort. But in raw numbers the demographics will look unfavorable to the GOP going forward unless the demographic identity politics changes

Of course, as people get older, they vote more often and vote more conservatively. It's not necessarily a bad thing for the quote-unquote "republican" party that young, currently-liberal voters get older; though it's hard to see the party staying as radical in the long term as it is today; regression to the mean has to kick in some time and drag the party (kicking and screaming, perhaps) back to its longterm center-right spot. I suspect the pendulum will start to shift when Clinton wins in 2016.

I just made my first political donation of the 2012 cycle - and I didn't so much donate TO Scott Brown as AGAINST the utterly odious Elizabeth Warren. I don't get why Warren has popularity on the left; she seems to me to be a really nasty personality and totally unlike an Obama or even a Bernie Sanders or Barney Frank type where you might disagree with the ideology but you respect the person as fundamentally decent and well-meaning.

I'm so bored with the biased polls discussion...

Can't we just skip ahead to what extent President re-elect Obama was the beneficiary of massive ACORN voter fraud and librul media bias? Or do we have to wait for him to beat Romney by 5?

Of course, as people get older, they vote more often and vote more conservatively.

I have read this is not true, but it has been established wisdom for a long time. I am not sure if it is true or not. I suspect there is a small effect there though, but enough to outweigh the other demographics. We shall see.

Can't we just skip ahead to what extent President re-elect Obama was the beneficiary of massive ACORN voter fraud and librul media bias?

It is always open season on media bias, though I think that even more boring than poll bias. Poll bias at least there is the election and you can compare numbers and see if there was bias or not. ACORN blame is, of course, the cat's meow.

I'm so bored with the biased polls discussion...

It's what losers masturbate over.

Eugene Robinson's column is entertaining today... no earth-shattering insights, but the lede is worth the price of admission...

Wednesday’s presidential debate promises sharp contrasts. One candidate wants to repeal Obamacare, one candidate invented it. One opposed the auto industry bailout, one takes credit for it. One doubts the scientific consensus about climate change, one believes in it. One wants to “voucherize” Medicare, one wants to save it. One dismisses nearly half of Americans as a bunch of moochers, and one claims to champion the struggling middle class.

It promises to be an epic clash: Mitt Romney vs. Mitt Romney. Oh, and President Obama will be there, too.

I'm so bored with the biased polls discussion...

It's what losers masturbate over.

Sigh... it's like people don't even care about all the great porn the internet has to offer.

Sigh... it's like people don't even care about all the great porn the internet has to offer.

To be fair, most people can't access porn from work.

Sigh... it's like people don't even care about all the great porn the internet has to offer.

It is amazing. Not quite as amazing as all the mapping stuff (I am directionally impaired) but it is close.

I have read this is not true, but it has been established wisdom for a long time

I understand that party affiliation doesn't change, but voting does. Essentially, once you pick your razor you use it for life, but behind the curtain you're not the same voter.

World's largest circle jerk

Nice to have company.

No, I'm claiming that it's quite likely a number of voters identifying as Independents were identifying as Republicans before.

I posted the link earlier in the thread. Here is a study that looks for covert partisans. IE the people you're talking about.

From the link:

we can estimate that 24% of Democratic identifiers or leaners call themselves “independent” at first. On the Republican side, the figure is 32%. Nowadays, more of the voters we think of as reliable Republicans are at first calling themselves “independent”—and are classified as such by any poll that doesn’t ask the follow-up question. And if we look back to the same survey’s data in September 2004, we see some noteworthy differences. At that time, leaners made up 30% of those who were willing to term themselves “Democrats” in some form, while they made up just 26% of those who termed themselves “Republicans.”

World's largest circle jerk

Nice to have company.

I bet that poll is skewed too!

I have read this is not true, but it has been established wisdom for a long time



I understand that party affiliation doesn't change, but voting does. Essentially, once you pick your razor you use it for life, but behind the curtain you're not the same voter.

This is essentially why the party ID screening question is "Do you consider yourself..." rather than "Are you registered as...". I don't think my dad's voted for a Democrat at any level since the Carter administration, but as he loves to tell me during our political discussion to prove how independent he is -- he's still a registered Democrat.

World's largest circle jerk

Nice to have company.

I bet that pole is screwed too!

Can you say that on the internet?

Can you say that on the internet?

#### yeah you can.

I just made my first political donation of the 2012 cycle - and I didn't so much donate TO Scott Brown as AGAINST the utterly odious Elizabeth Warren. I don't get why Warren has popularity on the left; she seems to me to be a really nasty personality and totally unlike an Obama or even a Bernie Sanders or Barney Frank type where you might disagree with the ideology but you respect the person as fundamentally decent and well-meaning.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm of two minds about Warren.

Politically, I love her, since she uses blunt language to describe exactly what the Republican agenda has been, which is to strip consumer protection regulations in order to cement the power of corporations over individual citizens. Few spokespeople have been as articulate as she has in defining the choice between the two parties, and the proof of her effectiveness is the degree to which Republican hatred has been directed against her. If I were in Massachusetts this year, she would definitely get my vote.

Personally, I don't have much of an opinion about her one way or the other, although that "Indian" ancestry bit on her record definitely strikes a discordant note. And if we were in a different era, I might vote for Brown for that very reason, as I always voted for the Republican Connie Morella in Maryland even though her voting record wasn't 100% to my liking. But Brown isn't exactly without a history himself, given his enthusiastic Tea Party support in his first election, and the difference between their governing philosophies isn't so small that I can ignore that. And as long as the GOP is controlled by the forces that have an iron grip on them today, my views on that aren't likely to change.

I'm afraid that on this thread, those Romney dog whistles would have to be replaced by air raid sirens for some of these hard of hearing dogs to be able to notice them.

Call it "The White Boxer Thread."

I understand that party affiliation doesn't change, but voting does. Essentially, once you pick your razor you use it for life, but behind the curtain you're not the same voter.

Churchill's quote is so great and fits so much conventional wisdom about reckless kids that it seems like it should be true but it doesn't seem to be. People's voting habits stay the same. There may be an effect where people who stay Democrats vote over time for less leftist primary candidates in competitive primaries, and people who stay Republicans vote for less moderate candidates in contested primaries. I haven't seen that but could imagine that's true. But there isn't evidence that people vote more conservatively over time. And there's evidence that people become more liberal on certain issues as they age.

Some of this confusion is prompted by misunderstandings of the 60s. Look at all those radicals! Then they became Reagan voters. While that happened at the fringes, the reality is the generation that came of age in the 1960s was quite conservative from the beginning. It was so big that there were many radicals absolutely, many more than now, but even more conservatives. Radicals got the media coverage in the 1960s, and conservatives in the 1980s but it's not clear the proportions within that generation changed that much.

Here are a few articles about the issue of aging.

Take them for what they are worth - I google so you don't have to :)

My takeaway from them, my previous understanding, and common sense is that it is a complex question without a simple grow older = grow more conservative answer.

Politically, I love her, since she uses blunt language to describe exactly what the Republican agenda has been, which is to strip consumer protection regulations in order to cement the power of corporations over individual citizens. Few spokespeople have been as articulate as she has in defining the choice between the two parties, and the proof of her effectiveness is the degree to which Republican hatred has been directed against her. If I were in Massachusetts this year, she would definitely get my vote.

That's pretty much it exactly... I have no idea if she'd actually make a good Senator, but as an ideological standard bearer, she's top notch and I don't claim to be nonpartisan, just reasonable.

Churchill's quote is so great and fits so much conventional wisdom about reckless kids that it seems like it should be true but it doesn't seem to be. People's voting habits stay the same. There may be an effect where people who stay Democrats vote over time for less leftist primary candidates in competitive primaries, and people who stay Republicans vote for less moderate candidates in contested primaries. I haven't seen that but could imagine that's true. But there isn't evidence that people vote more conservatively over time. And there's evidence that people become more liberal on certain issues as they age.

Some of this confusion is prompted by misunderstandings of the 60s. Look at all those radicals! Then they became Reagan voters. While that happened at the fringes, the reality is the generation that came of age in the 1960s was quite conservative from the beginning. It was so big that there were many radicals absolutely, many more than now, but even more conservatives. Radicals got the media coverage in the 1960s, and conservatives in the 1980s but it's not clear the proportions within that generation changed that much.

This is definitely the case. While the "conversions" of a few former leftists like David Horowitz and P.J. O'Rourke get a lot of ink, the truth is that outside of a tiny handful of elite colleges, the "leftists" were few and far between. In 1968 Duke was the scene of a long sit-in in front of the Duke Chapel in reaction to the assassination of Dr. King, and it got reams of publicity throughout the media. But just four years earlier, in a campus straw poll, the "men's campus" at Duke (now just called West Campus) voted solidly for Goldwater over Johnson. The idea that the 60's were some sort of monolithic left wing decade is the sort of fantasy that's soothing to aging radicals and convenient for Republican candidates, but it has very little basis in reality.

Sigh... it's like people don't even care about all the great porn the internet has to offer.

Allen West has a way to handle both.

Politically, I love her, since she uses blunt language to describe exactly what the Republican agenda has been, which is to strip consumer protection regulations in order to cement the power of corporations over individual citizens. Few spokespeople have been as articulate as she has in defining the choice between the two parties, and the proof of her effectiveness is the degree to which Republican hatred has been directed against her. If I were in Massachusetts this year, she would definitely get my vote.

Is that really the Republican agenda? I mean, I can think of lots of unpleasant things the contemporary Republican party has accomplished, and "strip consumer protection" is not really on the list.

Warren has made a whole career talking about consumer protection - that's why she was a logical Democratic appointee for the new bureau - but she wasn't a respected scholar in the same way that her frequent co-author (and fellow progressive) Lynn Lopucki was. Part of the way that she was able to advance in the field was that (a) she's a hardcore ambitious gunner and (b) there's a strong conservative / law & econ group in bankruptcy academia (e.g. Baird, Morrison, Zywicki) and Warren was viewed as a "counterbalance". If you don't think that school make appointments with those kind of factors in mind, you're kidding yourself. The scuttlebutt was that Lopucki was the brains and Warren was the face of that duo - Warren had political ambitions and the minority background (yuk yuk yuk, but who knew at the time) and the gender, and Lopucki was happy to sit at UCLA and churn out these very data intensive and painstaking surveys regarding consumer bankruptcy.

I guess my point is, Warren is just a face and an ideologue, and one with bad character at that. She articulates a position well, and it's been her position since long before she was a candidate, but other than that there's nothing there . . .

It is always open season on media bias, though I think that even more boring than poll bias. Poll bias at least there is the election and you can compare numbers and see if there was bias or not.

At this point, the only interesting question to me is how the fever swamps will spin the loss, and how long it will take them to gin up enough "outrage" at whatever it is they focus on to attempt another coup-de-impeachment (assuming they hold the House.)

My money is on something along the lines of "Obama lied to Congress about the Libya embassy! IMPEACH! IMPEACH! IMPEACH!"*

*I like to think of all Republican/right wing talking points being made in the voice of Daleks.

(Is it even technically possible to impeach a second term president for something that happened in his first term?)

but other than that there's nothing there . . .

Which describes her opponent very well.

Is that really the Republican agenda?

Well the GOP agenda is very "pro-business", meaning unfettered do what you want and safety nets and government protection is for sissies and weaklings - better to thin the herd than protect the weak*. So while the agenda is not explicitely hating on consumers, in reality it is pretty much.

As a thought exercise come up with a consumer protection that the GOP is (or could be) in favor of. To be fair I think they feel (or say, whatever) that they are against them because the cost is higher than the benefit (not always $ cost, but cost nonetheless) which is a very valid standpoint. However they are pretty much against them.

* An exaggeration for mainstream GOP I admit, but not completely off the reservation.

Sigh... it's like people don't even care about all the great porn the internet has to offer.

I'm running behind a client proxy server today, so I won't go pull the URL, but Nerve published a pretty funny article on "the new porn memes" this week.

Politically, I love her, since she uses blunt language to describe exactly what the Republican agenda has been, which is to strip consumer protection regulations in order to cement the power of corporations over individual citizens. Few spokespeople have been as articulate as she has in defining the choice between the two parties, and the proof of her effectiveness is the degree to which Republican hatred has been directed against her. If I were in Massachusetts this year, she would definitely get my vote.

Is that really the Republican agenda? I mean, I can think of lots of unpleasant things the contemporary Republican party has accomplished, and "strip consumer protection" is not really on the list.

To this, I can only wonder what planet you've been living on recently.

Warren has made a whole career talking about consumer protection - that's why she was a logical Democratic appointee for the new bureau - but she wasn't a respected scholar in the same way that her frequent co-author (and fellow progressive) Lynn Lopucki was. Part of the way that she was able to advance in the field was that (a) she's a hardcore ambitious gunner and (b) there's a strong conservative / law & econ group in bankruptcy academia (e.g. Baird, Morrison, Zywicki) and Warren was viewed as a "counterbalance". If you don't think that school make appointments with those kind of factors in mind, you're kidding yourself. The scuttlebutt was that Lopucki was the brains and Warren was the face of that duo - Warren had political ambitions and the minority background (yuk yuk yuk, but who knew at the time) and the gender, and Lopucki was happy to sit at UCLA and churn out these very data intensive and painstaking surveys regarding consumer bankruptcy.

All this I'll take your word for, but then the choice here isn't between Warren and Lopucki.

I guess my point is, Warren is just a face and an ideologue, and one with bad character at that. She articulates a position well, and it's been her position since long before she was a candidate, but other than that there's nothing there . . .

I can see this as an alternative description of her from a conservative's POV, but since her evidence of "bad character" pretty much rests on that questionable ancestry claim, that's not enough for me to shove her aside, given the alternative. In an ideal world she would have been confirmed as head of the CFPB and the Dems could've run another candidate for the Senate, but you can only blame the GOP for the aborting of that scenario.

And yet, those same polls show Romney leading among both Republicans and independents.

Obama won independents big in 2008. If the D advantage is only +1 from 2008, as in today's CNN poll, then it's quite odd that Obama could now be losing among independents but still be winning by 3 points. The only way the math works out is if there's a large number of GOP defectors, which seems highly unlikely.

No, there are other ways
1: Some of those who formerly described themselves as Indies are now describing themselves as Dems
2: People who were 14-17 in 2008 and 16-17 in 2010, can now vote- while voter turnout among 18-21 year olds tends to be very low- there is some and in recent years it has been disproportionately Dem- in 2008 Obama won the 18-29 cohort by 2:1, his worst age cohort was 65+, and how do I put this, the upper end of that cohort (where he did even worse) is dying off
3: You area ware that the 1996 electorate looked much morelike the 1992 electorate than the 1994 electorate?

There's been a split between party registration and party "identification" for a few decades now- Dems have more than a +10 registration advantage- yet haven't polled near that level of party identification in along time- this is due to, among other things, "Reagan Dems"- folks who are registered Dems since they were young, but have consistently voted and self-identify as Repubs- those people are also dying off, their children (literally and figuratively) are both registered and self identified Repubs- in recent years Party "ID" and party registration had started to converge- which trend reversed itself in 2010...

IOW there is an argument to be made that the 2010 turnout/electorate, was an outlier/fluke, and that yes, the 2012 electorate is gonna look more like 2006/08, because broadly speaking/longterm that's where the country is heading- the population is getting browner, the older- anti-Obama cohort is dying and being replaced by younger pro-Obama voters...

of course we should really know which narrative is right in a few weeks :-)

So Liz Warren is a bad person for believing her family when they told her (like half of Oklahoma), that her ancestors were Native American?

Okay, whatever.

At this point, the only interesting question to me is how the fever swamps will spin the loss, and how long it will take them to gin up enough "outrage" at whatever it is they focus on to attempt another coup-de-impeachment (assuming they hold the House.)

There is still the Romney comeback narrative to come. You know it will happen, because the media wants a close race to talk about. So at some point inthe next few weeks (most likely this week after the debate) there will be a spontaneous flurry of Romney comeback stories.

But after the election (assuming an Obama win) I am very interested in what the GOP reaction will be. How much will the elected GOP leadership differ from the unelected (Rush and co versus the elected politicians) - and where will the sage commentators line up?

Then once that settles down we get the question of how do we destroy the Kenyan Muslim Socialist? Sabotaging the economy did not work and impeaching Clinton really did not work (Obama is too boring to get involved in a sex scandal, and foreign policyu is boring), so what next? Bring down the government? Tried during Clinton, did not help. Go Galt?

She articulates a position well, and it's been her position since long before she was a candidate, but other than that there's nothing there . . .

This sounds like one of those psychic certainty arguments. "I know she doesn't believe or care about what she says she believes and cares about. I just know, that's how." Such things aren't very compelling, YMMV.

3: You area ware that the 1996 electorate looked much morelike the 1992 electorate than the 1994 electorate?

This. Everyone does realize that the nutters were absolutely certain that 1994 predicted a win for Bob Dole (regardless of what the polls said) and that the interloper Clinton would be kicked to the curb and the proper restoration of the Reaganite Regency would continue apace, right? And then that didn't happen, so we dealt with 4 more years of batshit insanity, until 2000, when the restoration "really happened" and Bush and Rove established a "permanent majority" that lasted...well, it's an interesting conception of permanence.

To understand the nutters you must accept that they see the establishment of "true conservative" rule in America as an article of faith. Everything descends from that point downward.

Is that really the Republican agenda? I mean, I can think of lots of unpleasant things the contemporary Republican party has accomplished, and "strip consumer protection" is not really on the list.

I think it's a something of an outgrowth of the fiscal libertarian lilt of the GOP of late -- stripping 'consumer protection' because of the underlying idea that it is a consumer's personal responsibility to protect him or herself from abuse. Absent egregious lawbreaking, the free market takes care of the 'bad actors' so 'consumer protection' is needless over-regulation and government encumbering business.

(Is it even technically possible to impeach a second term president for something that happened in his first term?

If Nixon hadn't resigned, he would have been impeached during his second term at least partially for crimes committed during his first.

Of course, as people get older, they vote more often and vote more conservatively.

I have read this is not true, but it has been established wisdom for a long time.

ditto.

I find this Churchill anecdote my favourite.

It doesn't have anything to do with what I think is "right"; it's about the reported numbers in prior elections. The Dems had a Dem+7 advantage in 2008 and they won big. I find it hard to believe the Dems will have a bigger party ID advantage in 2012 but win by a smaller margin than in 2008. If the theory is that people identify with the winner, such a result would be entirely counterintuitive.

Let's say
Dems 40
Repub 33
Indies 27

That's Dem +7 If all Dems vote for the Dem, and all Repubs vote for the Repub and indies split 50/50- the Dem wins by 7

Dems 41
Repub 33
Indies 26
That's Dem +8
If all Dems vote for the Dem and all Repubs vote for the Repub, and Indies go 16-10 in favor of the Repub, then the Dem wins by 51-49, +2, less than when the Dems, had a +7 "advantage"

It's not that hard, it's not "counter-intuitive" - you are just grasping at straws,

why don't you just stick with the Repubs work/ Dems stay at home and answer the phone when pollsters call narrative

You do realize of course, this election is now gonna go down as a polling fiasco like 1948, Romney's gonna win, the pollsters will all have egg on their faces, and JoeK will be insufferable.

You do realize of course, this election is now gonna go down as a polling fiasco like 1948, Romney's gonna win, the pollsters will all have egg on their faces, and JoeK will be insufferable.

Well if it happens it happens and I will admit I was wrong. Crow is not yummy, but I have eaten it. 2004 was brutal and I admit I bought some (though not all) of the spin.

I can see this as an alternative description of her from a conservative's POV, but since her evidence of "bad character" pretty much rests on that questionable ancestry claim, that's not enough for me to shove her aside, given the alternative.

meh
IMO she's a bad person for
1: Being a lawyer
2: Wanting to be a politician
3: actually being a politician

Scott Brown is a bad person too, in fact an overwhelming % of our elected pols are people most normal people would not want to eat lunch with

71% of Republicans believe polls are skewed to support the President. Look for this number to go up once the results are unskewed.

2004 was brutal and I admit I bought some (though not all) of the spin.

The real funny part about 2004 was the liberal insistence that polling was oversampling Rs and was skewed in favor of Bush...
At least I think Liberals can see the humor in that now...

Just like all fans think the umps hate their team. Partisan interest does not breed objectivity!

I just made my first political donation of the 2012 cycle - and I didn't so much donate TO Scott Brown as AGAINST the utterly odious Elizabeth Warren. I don't get why Warren has popularity on the left; she seems to me to be a really nasty personality and totally unlike an Obama or even a Bernie Sanders or Barney Frank type where you might disagree with the ideology but you respect the person as fundamentally decent and well-meaning.

Why is she "odious"? This isn't meant to be a gotcha. I'm not tracking that race really closely. She seems consistent in her political positions.

and JoeK will be insufferable.

An odd use of the future tense there.

At least I think Liberals can see the humor in that now...

It is one reason I am trying to be less snarky than usual about it, is how terrible it was. But yes, it is funny now. Distance makes horrible funny.

It was mostly the perfecta of cell phone undersampling and the undecided breaks for challenger that caused me undue hope in 2004. It all sounded so reasonable. Sigh. I learned when you want to believe in something ... don't. Be skeptical. Hard lesson though, and one I learned before and since. So useful I keep learning it! :)

Scott Brown is a bad person too, in fact an overwhelming % of our elected pols are people most normal people would not want to eat lunch with

Doesn't this apply to anyone and everyone? I wouldn't want to waste the time it takes to have lunch with someone on most people, and I'm sure there are those who feel the same about me. Being a pol seems to me to be a very difficult job.