For those of you who are fascinated by the inexact science known as polling, there’s plenty of interesting reading about What Went Wrong in Nevada (and elsewhere). Major news organizations blew off internal tracking polls, to their eventual mortification. They evidently couldn’t bring themselves to believe that, say, that the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee had it right and their preferred buy-a-poll outfits were errant by a country mile. The rinky-dink methods of Mason-Dixon, garbage-in/garbage-out pollster of choice in Southern Nevada are getting particularly unflattering examination. The erstwhile Jedi master of poll methodology, Nate Silver has an interesting mea culpa regarding the undersampling of the Hispanic vote (a hornet’s nest that Sharron Angle insanely swatted time after time after time, even though it represented a quarter of the Nevada population and 17% of the electorate, and broke 9-to-1 the other way), which led to several Tuesday-night surprises, like the considerable underestimation of GOP Sen.-elect Marco Rubio‘s victory margin in Florida.
As for the cell phone vs. land line issue and pollsters’ adherence to the latter, we have reached a nodal point in the history of opinion-sampling. In 1932, George Gallup made his name by polling the presidential race on a door-to-door basis. His rivals simply polled people who had telephones (during the Great Depression, mind you). Thus, Gallup was the only pollster to show Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the presidency … and the rest is history. I know a number of people whose only phone is their cell and if polling methods don’t change to reflect this irrevocable technological shift, 2012 could be a lot like 1932 — hopefully in a non-economic sense.
Sore losers. Despite a 7,000-vote margin of victory for a casino in Oxford County, Maine, opponents are demanding a recount and muttering dark threats of legal action. (I’m surprised that the constitutionality of the ballot question wasn’t litigated beforehand — a matter of routine in Nevada.) Surprise, surprise, amongst those pouting, sulking and plotting revenge is Penn National Gaming, known better for political skulduggery than casino operations these days. And if a recount and a court challenge don’t produce the result Penn wants, it’ll got to the legislature. “[O]therwise it just sends a poor message to people from out-of-state and people in-state, that certain industries are not welcome to do business here and those that are here will be treated differently,” whined flack Dan Cashman. “I don’t think you can write a public law for private gain,” huffs an ally. Funny, but that’s exactly what Penn did — with success — in Ohio, where it now enjoys a protected duopoly.
True, there are inconsistencies in tax rates and what’s legal to play in Oxford County but not in Bangor … but that’s inevitable when casino legalization is handled in a patchwork, localized fashion. Oxford residents could counter that Hollywood Slots has horse races and Black Bear Entertainment‘s casino won’t (which might force Penn to “commit truth” and concede that the ponies are a loss-leader). Considering the economic misery in Oxford County — which is a considerable drive from Bangor and much, much closer to the border with New Hampshire — Penn should stop behaving so churlishly and pursue either table games, lower taxes or both at the ballot box in 2012. It’s the American way.
Casino backers had their act together, opponents didn’t and the latter got skunked on Tuesday. Suck it up, guys.
I wonder how accurate the Rasmussen polls were in other races.
That’s the joint favored by most Republicans because they’re almost guaranteed to get numbers favorable to gNOp positions.
If the poll results don’t match up with vote totals, at least Repubs get bragging rights beforehand.
I wish I knew more about Rassmussen’s methodology so I could answer that question. Mason-Dixon is disinclined (or constrained by Stephen Media’s stinginess) to sample more than 600 voters, tops, which is why M-D’s polls always have such high margins for error.