Predicting election turnout

The New Neo Posted on by

The predictions of the polls for this election are all over the place. Although in general a Republican win is expected, the scope and breadth of that win is highly disputed.

Liberal rags and bloggers say that the Republicans have peaked and that Democrats will stage a surprising resurgence by election day. They are trying to rally the troops, of course, and it might represent whistling past the graveyard.

Then again, they might be correct. Who knows?

Who knows? Why, the pollsters, of course. Except when they don’t.

Polls are always somewhat unreliable. It’s only ex post facto that we learn which ones were right and which ones wrong. But this year they are probably more unreliable than ever, because of that all-important variable: voter turnout.

Turnout always matters, and especially in off-years where it is usually low and therefore small variations matter even more. But in 2010, turnout is an especially wild wild-card.

We know that voter enthusiasm is higher on the Republican side, and we know that it will almost certainly make a difference. But how much higher, and how much difference? The gap is highlighted by this recent Gallup poll, the first this year to take into account likely voters rather than registered voters, and the results are shocking for Democrats and heartening for Republicans:

Under its “high turnout model” Republicans lead 53%-40%. Under its “low turnout model” Republicans lead 56%-38%.

That’s not only astounding, it’s an outlier. The volatility of the polls is further reflected in the flux of the Rasmussen polling of likely voters: the Republicans have only a 3-point lead this week although they had a 10-point lead a mere two weeks ago.

What does this mean? It means that each side will fasten on the polls that are more encouraging to its own agenda. It means that polls are likely to keep changing right up till election day. It means that in general Republicans are ahead. And that’s all I can figure it means.

Polls are good at prediction, to a certain extent. But they are acknowledged to be flawed, and there is always a fairly significant margin of error that in close races can be determinative. This year I believe the margin of error is even greater than usual, because this year the mood of the electorate is profoundly different than in previous years—even previous “throw the bums out” years such as 1994.

There is a disgust towards both parties the depth of which I’ve never seen before. There are more entrenched incumbents at risk. The energy level of the electorate is stronger and more seriously angry. So pollsters, beware. The usual rules may not apply.

Who gets to govern?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve sometimes wondered whether, as John Dickerson wrote here, the Obama administration’s struggles will make at least a few Bush-haters acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, his predecessor wasn’t such an abysmal ignoramus after all.

That maybe, just maybe, it’s actually hard to govern. That it’s easier to sit on the sidelines and criticize. After all, if Obama is such a genius, and his brilliance (coupled with a Congress controlled by his side) can’t solve the problems of this country and the world, or make much of a dent in them (or even has managed to make them worse), then isn’t it possible that Bush had at least a modicum of intelligence and an ounce of judgment?

Until 2006, the Democrats were on the outside looking in, back-seat drivers and/or kibitzers at the card game known as politics, eager to criticize and carp. But talk is cheap; action is far more difficult, and solutions are even more elusive—as the Republicans may discover, to their sorrow, come 2011. But I’d certainly like to see them get the chance to try to pick up the pieces of this debacle.

The election is four weeks away, which sometimes seems like a short time and sometimes a long one. But if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it (and let’s hope she doesn’t), the Democrats still have plenty of time to convince the American public of Republican perfidy:

You have to understand what fighters our members are…Now our challenge is to tattoo the practices of big insurance, big oil, big banks and the rest [onto Republican opponents]. And our members feel very good about doing that.

I suppose if Democrats can’t feel good about their own accomplishments, feeling good about tatooing Republicans will have to do.

This election still looks to be a Republican victory. How much of one I cannot say, and I’m tired of all the predictions and polls. The only poll that counts, of course, is the one on November 2.

And then the real work will begin.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Sexually- and otherwise-confused spambot:

It’s sad that todays production movies unregenerate the beauty movies had in earlier life. Although it’s fun to bonk ultra postgraduate school effects, I avoid the categorise that movies were prefabricated sanction then

Jonathan Cohn’s bright idea: hey, let’s talk up HCR reform

The New Neo Posted on by

TNR’s Jonathan Cohn thinks Democrats should try telling the American public the advantages of the new HCR bill.

Ever hear that before? Thought so.

The people are just confused about HCR, says Cohn, and new ads could straighten them out. Here’s an example of his reasoning [emphasis mine]:

But the public’s frustration with health care reform reflects, among other things, a lot of confusion. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, for example, 30 percent of seniors thought the new law will give a Medicare panel authority to make life-or-death treatment decisions and 39 percent thought it would diminish the benefits that Medicare guarantees to all seniors. (Large numbers were also uncertain whether these false claims were true.)

This says far more about Cohn’s own confusion than it does about anyone else’s. Cohn, like many partisans on the left, thinks it is self-evident to any thinking person—or regular reader of TNR, which is tantamount to the same thing in his eyes—that “death panels” are a scurrilous and transparently absurd falsehood, or that Medicare will obviously remain untouched, and that the American people’s doubt about either proposition is an example of ignorance about the truth and a result of misleading conservative propaganda.

The persistence of this idea among the left is puzzling, as is the persistence of the notion that the Democrats haven’t explained the benefits enough, and that more explaining will somehow help. It won’t, for the following reasons:

(1) people need to see results, not be promised them, especially when trust in Congress and politicians (and their promises) is at an all-time low.

(2) the arguments about the drawbacks of the HCR bill are not mere Republican hyperbole, easily countered by hyperbole on the other side: they have legs, they are real, and they have not been countered in an effective, convincing, and substantive manner.

The comments to Cohn’s article are revealing. The first one states:

Jonathan, you are right that arguing the benefits would seem a good strategy. The problem is the common sense understanding that with every benefit comes a cost.

Common sense? What’s that?

The second comment is more typical of the mindset on the left, the one otherwise known as elitist and cynical:

HCR must be sold to the public like soap, with simple themes repeated over and over.

But the American people, unfortunately for the Democrats, seem to have developed a certain amount of sales resistance.

Greta Van Susteren vs. Gloria Allred

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve thought for quite some time that Greta Van Susteren is one of the very best interviewers on TV.

There’s something about her that’s intensely likable—and this despite the fact that she’s (gasp!) a lawyer (some of my best friends…). She’s down-to-earth and has a remarkable lack of ego for a TV personality. Her interviews and commentary seem sensible and without much political slant; her devotion is, if anything, to making an attempt at getting the truth. She’s not afraid to ask more pointed questions than her fellow press-members usually do, and more follow-ups.

And she’s smart. Very very smart.

The following exchange makes me like Greta even more. It’s more aggressive by quite a bit than her usual style. But her combativeness here seems driven by a sense of outrage, both as a lawyer and as a decent human being, at what fellow lawyer Gloria Allred has been up to lately.

Allred doesn’t see it coming at first. But she gets the drift pretty quickly as to what’s happening to her, and by the end she looks as though she’d rather be almost anywhere than on this program, answering to Greta Van Susteren:

American History 101, by Rahm Emanuel

The New Neo Posted on by

Did you know that these are “the toughest times any president has ever faced”?

Rahm Emanuel knows. And he’s saying goodbye to all that.

I don’t know what’s more frightening: that this is what the president’s Chief of Staff for the last one and a half years actually thinks, that this may be what President Obama actually thinks, or that either or both of them thinks the public will actually buy it.

[Hat tip: Drew M. at Ace.]

McDonald’s meets Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

This is one of those fabulous unintended consequences of Obamacare:

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.

The mini-med plans are a way for a fast-food business, which employs many young, low-earning, high-turnover employees, to offer them at least something in the way of health insurance. What the present administration and Congress seem to neither know nor care is that decisions about such things are not generally arbitrary; they are based on financial considerations and real limitations.

Businesses—unlike government—have to make a profit or they will go out of business. Likewise, insurance companies, which are a type of business. Most business people are not evildoers out to screw their employees, although such types certainly do exist. But to merely declare a rule should be implemented is not the same as to make it possible for a business to implement it without losing a significant amount of money. And businesses are not in the business of committing suicide.

Aetna, the company that writes the policies for McDonald’s and many other large corporations (such as Home Depot and Staples) that offer similar deals, has declined to comment. But this guy has something to say:

“There is not any issuer of limited benefit coverage that could meet the enhanced MLR standards,” said Neil Trautwein, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, using the abbreviation for medical loss ratio.

Ah, but Obamacare will take up the slack, right? Wait; not so fast. Because of the delayed-action effect of the HCR bill, designed to allow the CBO to score it so that it could pass muster, the provisions that might do so (and that we all will pay for) won’t kick in till 2014. Till then, “workers on mini-med plans would have few affordable alternatives for coverage.”

Good going, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and company. Of course, it’s possible that McDonald’s and Aetna will get a waiver. But don’t sit on a hot stove till they do:

Federal officials say there’s no guarantee they can grant mini-med carriers a waiver. They say the answer may not come by November, when many employers require employees to sign up for the coming year’s benefits.

The government is waiting for the association of state insurance commissioners to draft recommendations. The head of the association’s health-insurance committee, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, said she doesn’t think these types of mini-med plans deserve an exemption.

[NOTE: For those who do the math and find the premiums for these mini-med plans very high compared to the benefits, that is correct. But the policies are voluntary, as far as I know. No one is holding a gun to their heads and forcing employees to take them. And for a worker who believes he/she will incur medical bills that are higher than the premiums will be, they represent a savings.]

RIP Tony Curtis

The New Neo Posted on by

He wasn’t considered the greatest of actors, although his role in “The Defiant Ones” was highly praised in its time. He had a lot of tragedy in his life. Hungarian was his only language until the age of six. He was married six times. And in recent years, it sometimes seems as though he’s been most well-known for being the father of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Now Tony Curtis has died at the age of 85. His most lasting legacy will probably be his brilliant comic turn as the cross-dressing saxophone player who romances Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder’s 1959 masterpiece “Some Like It Hot.”

I loved it when I first saw it as a child in the movie theater, and I have loved it every time I’ve seen it since then—which is many. And I am hardly alone.

Co-star Jack Lemmon may be more flamboyant and wildly manic in his obvious delight in his role. Marilyn Monroe is—well, Marilyn Monroe. But Curtis’s more understated genius is equally important, and equally wonderful. Watch him in his maiden scene, as he goes back and forth between his masculine self and his new feminine persona:

His Wiki bio says that Curtis was inspired to join the Navy in WWII after watching Cary Grant in “Destination Tokyo.” But that wasn’t the only inspiration he drew from Grant: