Were the polls right?
posted at 11:24 am on November 5, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Pretty much, yeah. CNN has the popular vote at 52/46 as I write this but the numbers are still moving; when I run the math from the actual vote totals, it’s 53.0/46.9, for a margin of 6.1 percent. The final RCP spread: 7.6 percent, a figure boosted by a few eleventh-hour double-digit outliers like Gallup and Zogby but otherwise reflective of the conventional wisdom over the last month that had the race steady at six or seven points. Rasmussen and Pew nailed it and Fox, CNN, Hotline, and McClatchy were all off by a single point, well within the margin of error. Nate Silver’s statistical model? 6.1 percent exactly.
As for the key states, here are CNN’s reported margins as of 11 a.m. versus the RCP spreads as of yesterday:
OH: 4/2.5
PA: 11/7.3
VA: 5/4.4
FL: 2/1.8
NC: 1/-0.4
IN: 1/-1.4
IA: 9/15.3
MN: 10/9.8
CO: 7/5.5
NM: 15/7.3
The only two that were called incorrectly were razor thin and were called incorrectly for McCain, and the only one that vastly overestimated Obama’s support was Iowa, where he won by nine points anyway. Oh well.
Exit question via Taegan Goddard: Did The One head-fake Maverick in Pennsylvania? Better exit question from yours truly: Even if he hadn’t, wouldn’t McCain have been forced to make a play for the state anyway to try to make up the difference in electoral votes?
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Things I’ve learned at Hot Air this week.
Major profitable, professional polling firms are a more accurate depiction of what’s happening then anecdotes from anonymous commenters about all the McCain/Palin signs they see in their neighbourhoods or how their sister in law is voting for McCain — so things are changing.
CanadianGuy on November 5, 2008 at 11:28 AM
Great. The campaign for POTUS has now turned into a perverted version of Survivor.
Dr.Cwac.Cwac on November 5, 2008 at 11:29 AM
Can you really say Pew called it when they had Obama ahead by 15% for a while? What the hell was that?
frankj on November 5, 2008 at 11:29 AM
I argue that the deluge of polls (3 times the amount of 2004) turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The consensus seems to be that Republican turnout was heavily decreased, and the polls probably had a hand in that.
KingGold on November 5, 2008 at 11:30 AM
That was one supreme head-fake.
p0s3r on November 5, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Were things-a-changin’ when the country voted for Bush just four years ago?
badpenguin on November 5, 2008 at 11:30 AM
A lot of people around here had their heads fully submerged in a bucket of Kool-Aid. The fact that 80% of people here thought that he was going to win is pretty staggering. I’m not happy about my new socialist overlords but again, I’m not surprised that it happened.
Tacitus_SGL on November 5, 2008 at 11:32 AM
Bush led in some polls, McCain was never ahead in a single poll for 6 weeks. Yet all I heard hear was how Allah was an eoyore because “Don’t believe the polls.”
CanadianGuy on November 5, 2008 at 11:32 AM
You said what I was thinking. The media uses polls to an excess, the latest poll data is frequently used as headline news. As such, they are perturbing the data they hope to measure.
Schroedinger’s cat and all that…
SPCOlympics on November 5, 2008 at 11:33 AM
That, and I demand an apology from every commenter on Hotair the past three weeks who viciously attacked me for saying that McCain was toast and the polls were right. I wrote a thesis on survey research and know a thing or two about it. These efforts by people on our side to claim that “every poll was wrong” were just in bad faith. You can’t put lipstick on a pig.
The one consolation prize I’ll take from this election is that I think it’s pretty evident that lack of turnout from Republican voters doomed McCain. Obama only got 400k extra votes than Kerry got in 2004, but McCain got over 7m fewer votes. That’s consistent with the total lack of enthusiasm about the candidate.
McCain also lost among young voters pretty dramatically. That’s to be expected, though, because what economic message did McCain have? All he did was go “oooga booga, Obama scary!” As Rush, Rove, and Dick Morris have said a million times, you have to give people a reason to vote FOR you and not merely to vote AGAINST the other guy.
Outlander on November 5, 2008 at 11:34 AM
I think I am going to take a break from all of this…
I just spent too much precious time obsessing, worrying and losing sleep over the polls and the election and every little thing that was said…its time I will not get back and I don’t want to make that mistake again.
I love this country, I am a conservative and we will comeback, but for now, it will be nice to put my effort into important things: Family, Faith, Work, where my effort and time make a REAL difference.
Ciao!
joepub on November 5, 2008 at 11:34 AM
Don’t look at me. I always had more confidence in Rasmussen than the daily HillBuzz “friend of a friend who’s an internal pollster for Obama swears they’re going to lose” post.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:34 AM
I’ve always trusted Ras.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 11:34 AM
to think that the teacher at school handing out lolipops to the kids would lose to the janitor getting after the kids in the lunchroom to be responsible for cleaning up their own table was lunacy
Pedro won
gatorboy on November 5, 2008 at 11:35 AM
I don’t care. I realize there is one small silver lining here.
I know racism will still be used as a tool,,, but I believe we may seen the end of white guilt.
JellyToast on November 5, 2008 at 11:35 AM
McCain had to play offensively he was losing and you cant just play it safe.
This election was lost in2006 not 2008. The democrats got their machine up and running and it gave them congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008. It is a perpertual election machine not one that only shows up just a few months before the elction like the GOP does.
ACORN and other dem groups went on steroids in 2006 and never slowed down. The GOP was simply out bid for the presidency and we spent our money so unwisely.
Add to it the Media created the Britney Spears presidency of Obama and we couldnt counter the touchy feely crap that they were spewing about Obama.
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 11:35 AM
I know. You were merely the messenger of bad news and you put up with tonnes of crap for it. People were calling for you to put up African Press International polls whenever you posted a Gallup that had Obama up by nine.
CanadianGuy on November 5, 2008 at 11:36 AM
That’s how it was during the 2006 midterms, too. And that’s how it’ll be two years from now, however well or badly the GOP’s faring at the time. If we’re on pace to pick up 20 House seats, people will predict 100. I don’t understand it.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:36 AM
I never understood why so many conservatives thought the polls were seriously wrong. Two or three percentage points would make sense, but not the size of margins the polls predicted, which proved to be right. Or, if a few polls showed big Obama leads while others showed little or no lead, that could be chalked up to bias, but to believe in bias so overwhelming that all the polls showed big leads one would have to believe in a “vast left wing conspiracy”, and conspiracy theories are usually more fantasy than theory.
Furthermore, aren’t conspiracy theories usually a leftist phenomenon? Let’s stay away from that kind of thinking in the future.
OscarSchneegans on November 5, 2008 at 11:38 AM
Where’s the poll that asks how many people think Michelle My Belle has a HUGE ass?
dinkyjackson on November 5, 2008 at 11:39 AM
I think people like ManlyRash have been thoroughly discredited. I have more sarcastic things to say about him, but I’ll keep them to myself.
MedSchoolCatholic on November 5, 2008 at 11:39 AM
Well, some of the polls I posted were drastically wrong. Lots more, like Rasmussen and Hotline, weren’t. Any single poll can be stupidly off, but the point about Silver’s model and the RCP spreads is that it’s extremely unlikely that that many polls are going to be off by that much. McCain ended up with basically the same odds you have at roulette. Yes, there’s a chance you’ll win, but the chance you’ll lose is much greater. I don’t know why 80 percent of our readers didn’t see that.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM
McCain was toast the minute he won the GOP nomination. The man simply could not connect with the majority of Americans, something George W. Bush was easily able to do even with the media trying to tear him apart. McCain is too old, too eager to pander, and responsible for some of the worst legislation of the last 10 years or so.
Hopefully the GOP learns its lesson and nominates someone a bit more electable in 2012. And I hope it isn’t Sarah Palin.
HebrewToYou on November 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM
I’m polled out.
So, how’re the early numbers for 2010 and 2012 shaping up?
/
JammieWearingFool on November 5, 2008 at 11:40 AM
What’s really surprising is people are already so quick to cheer for “Palin 2012!” when polls (yes, polls) have at least 60% viewing her as unqualified for President.
Sure, polls don’t tell the whole story, but they aren’t made up either.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 11:41 AM
Obama bought this Presidency. I’m sorry, but if the media actually did its job right instead of researching Palin’s tanning bed, we would see a very different race.
But the Presidency was bought and paid for.
Were the Polls accurate? Sure why not? But the fact of the matter is no one knows anything about Obama except that he likes terrorists and bigots and now he’s President-elect. Well done, well done.
mjk on November 5, 2008 at 11:41 AM
Bobby Jindal 2012!!!
mjk on November 5, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Either way, I think post-election blamestorming is pointless. We nominated a guy who conservatives were not excited about and the GOP has spent the last ten years straying away from fiscal conservatism and it fucked us. The blatant hypocrisy of Republicans who sang the praises of small government while simultaneously porking up their own districts to high hell and voting on every asinine government-expanding measure possible came back to bite us in the ass.
This loss is on us; accept it. Yes, the blatant bias in the media helped Obama but that’s only part of the story; the GOP failed to put its money where it’s mouth is and we got burned for it. Look at this as an opportunity to clean house, to purge the RINOs out of the party and put some real, conservative leadership back into the driver’s seat.
Also, let this be the last nail in the coffin to the entire notion of “we need independents to win, we need to reach out to independents.” McCain is the ultimate bipartisan candidate, and he got his ass kicked. So much for that theory.
Tacitus_SGL on November 5, 2008 at 11:42 AM
So Allah, Ed…
Other than reporting all this inside-baseball stuff, what are you going to do to organize all of these individualists into an influential dynamo? Because you guys have a lot more power to do that sort of thing than we do.
And we’ll try. But we could use your help.
How do we expand our influence and educate people? How do we recognize and organize locally? How do know about solid candidates early? Get involved in their campaigns early? How do we locate each other geographically?
Are you willing to help coordinate efforts like that?
beatcanvas on November 5, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Dude, don’t be pompous.
There’s only one person on this site that deserves an apology from tons of commenters, and it’s AllahPundit.
MadisonConservative on November 5, 2008 at 11:43 AM
Correction:
She’s really James Brown in a dress!!
pherrman on November 5, 2008 at 11:43 AM
She has plenty of time to repair her image, but yeah, that’s part of the same phenomenon. She might be a formidable challenger to The One in four years, but she was work to do. My sense is that a lot of her biggest fans think she’d be a formidable challenger to him now. I figure a lot of those same people were part of the 80 percent.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:44 AM
Allah when is that GOP meeting again ? The one post election where they are suppose to get together and deceide on the future of the party ?
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 11:45 AM
Losing Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida is revolting. Those southerners must love being made fun of by libbies.
Speedwagon82 on November 5, 2008 at 11:45 AM
AP still needs to be ribbed for the slights against Fred Thompson. ;)
Fred would have chewed up and spit out Barack Obama.
HebrewToYou on November 5, 2008 at 11:45 AM
Thanks for the chuckle… that was pretty funny.
I always felt that the polls coupled with the “assistance” from the mainstream media, the inability of the Clintons to dispense with Obama and the tepid support among Republicans for the candidate at the top of our ticket meant an inevitable win for Barack Obama. It’s probably why I am not at all sad or depressed or angry today — I’ve been coping for months in advance.
Ann Coulter remarked a couple of times in the run up to the general election that Republicans never win with a “moderate” candidate. She was proven to be correct this time around.
D2Boston on November 5, 2008 at 11:46 AM
I don’t want one. I’m not happy to have been right. Which, incidentally, is something else a lot of people misunderstood.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:46 AM
It’s called optimism, you should look into it.
clearbluesky on November 5, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Those polls are meaningless. I voted that McCain would win, even though I was 99% sure he wouldn’t. I didn’t want to contribute to depressing turnout, so I went with what my heart wanted, not what my brain told me would happen.
Buy Danish on November 5, 2008 at 11:48 AM
She needs to do that whole Rocky training thing from Rocky IV for the next four years.
frankj on November 5, 2008 at 11:48 AM
Being optimistic and being unrealistic are two separate things.
Tacitus_SGL on November 5, 2008 at 11:48 AM
It’s northerners fleeing the mess they created in blue states and coming to red states that turn them blue. They are like a cancer. They do not even realize its their votes and policies that made their former states suck.
lorien1973 on November 5, 2008 at 11:48 AM
The left went out of its way to demonize the right and have gotten free pass with it from the Media.
Chris Matthews and the rest of the media was getting thrills up their legs covering Obama while digging into the question of if Trig Palin was really Sarah’s daughter’s baby.
The Media went wholeheartly in the tank for Obama and never looked back.
Yes the polls looked bad for Sarah but considering how hostile the media was to her even Mother Teresa would have come out looking like a monster.
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 11:49 AM
You’re right. Obama had been running for President for nearly 2 years leading up to the election.
The GOP needs to mobilize right now. Have a strategy going forward. Low taxes, smaller government, strong defense, energy independence, protected borders, victory in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on Terror, reform of government, elimination of earmarks. That took me all of 2 minutes to type. How hard is it for them to produce a 2nd Contract With America and designate a leader or group of leaders who can articulate this agenda?
Doughboy on November 5, 2008 at 11:49 AM
I believe that it was a small turn out for the Republicans and a large turn out of voters that don’t normally vote. Blacks and kids came out to be part of history. AP and the media suppressed turn out for McCain by being very negative.
As the previous post noted, there were only 400,000 more voters. Some independents went for Obama because McCains campaign wouldn’t get in the dirt and the rest were new voters. We have a lot of mindless people who vote the way the media directs them.
Vince on November 5, 2008 at 11:49 AM
The seeds of this election loss were planted in 1920 (19th amendment). Transferred dependency paved the way for FDR in 1932, which ultimately led to the 60s liberal majority that created the ‘great society’ programs, which was capped off by the 1965 immigration reform act.
It’s ludicrous to think that a country conceived on the basis of individual liberty would continue to maintain those principles when the underlying desires of the populace had switched to demand for gov’t services.
Nothing lasts forever; not Greece, not Rome, not the US. It’s the new generation’s turn, and from the looks of it, they are very gullible. The time is ripe to pluck the easy fruit. Look to Mexico to see our future – the rich simply rape the peasants.
kuhio on November 5, 2008 at 11:51 AM
BTW, AP stands for Assoc. Press not Allahpundit. Sorry Allah!
Vince on November 5, 2008 at 11:51 AM
I wouldn’t bet on it.
txsurveyor on November 5, 2008 at 11:51 AM
Money + pollsters + media + cult-like followers = win. Obama had all 4. No sour grapes here, facts are facts.
New agenda:
2010 – get rid of Dingy Harry.
re-take Congress.
n0doz on November 5, 2008 at 11:51 AM
Yeah. Last night people here were totally unprepared for what was unfolding. I knew it was over when McCain started predicting victory two weekends ago. Nobody who was confident in victory would want to jinx it or look too cocky two weeks before an election. Sure you can predict victory on election day — many have — but you don’t start predicting victory in your stump speeches if you’re five to seven points down on most polls.
CanadianGuy on November 5, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Leave it to Allah to continue the poll shilling long after it is semi-relevant.
McCain lost because he is democrat lite. He could have spent 600 million himself and he still would have lost.
csdeven on November 5, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Yes. So funny and true. But most of us knew that. It was that we needed to believe in something!
I think there is still a real question about whether the polling became a self-fulfilling prophecy however. How many were influenced by the ACORN inflated numbers of increased Democratic registrations… It gives an inexperienced canidate some credibility to be ahead in the polls.
And before we all jump on the Palin bandwagon let’s see how the next couple of years shake out. I personally had never heard of her before McCain picked her. She shows promise but what if she does something stupid and we find out she wasn’t all that…
We don’t need to throw her under the bus. But Republicans seldom do that anyway. We have a pretty strong bench now. Palin, Jindahl, Romney, Pawlenty etc. I’m keeping my powder dry for now.
petunia on November 5, 2008 at 11:53 AM
On the subject of polls, does Ed or anyone else have information on whether the networks calling Ohio for Obama on the basis of the exit polls might have suppressed turnout in states that were still voting, and where the outcome was close?
EnglishMike on November 5, 2008 at 11:53 AM
Exactly. And also me. I kid…
But for real people, the level of denial was STAGGERING here. Just staggering. You can pin a little blame on the exit polls of 2004 and the incredible bias by the media I guess, but it was still utter denial.
I can see giving Mac a shot at winning in a miracle, but we had more than one ManlyRash here saying Mac was going to win it. And frankly, the little “tightening” posts and outliers wasnt helpful either. Give me reality please. I learned my lesson after 2006 where certain people were trying to convince me the Republicans werent going to get bent over.
Wake up. Deal in reality so we can get back to winning.
Dash on November 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
The reason so many people here ridiculed the Obama is leading polls is that they couldnt understand how so many Americans would be taken in by the puffery and the media bias and not see that the emperor had no clothes.
Folks here believed that Americans would wake up and see the light and believed the polls were intentionally misleading us to think Obama had mesmerized the sheeple.
Well he did, and we all here were wrong.
In defense, the polls WERE incredibly wrong in ‘04, expecially the day-of exits. This time around there were all kinds of methodological shenanigans… counting dems more than repubs, making assumptions about turnout…etc.
What we can say is that we got out butts thumped nationwide. It was a failure not just of the top of the ticket but of many layers below. This problem needs a MAJOR FIX and not just a band-aid and more of the same.
Always Right on November 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
That’s how it was during the 2006 midterms, too. And that’s how it’ll be two years from now, however well or badly the GOP’s faring at the time. If we’re on pace to pick up 20 House seats, people will predict 100. I don’t understand it.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:36 AM
I understand the desire to “root” for your team and to try to spread optimism. Part of me does believe that Republican turnout was suppressed this year because of a feeling of inevitability, and I understand that this kind of “rooting” is designed to counteract that effect and stop the poll from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But I have to wonder the degree to which the suspension of disbelief I saw among some commenters here and among party folk hurt us. The RNC spent a ton of money and airtime in the last 3 weeks of the campaign running goofy ads in Ohio, PA, etc. saying “ooga booga! Scary Obama!” Had they spent the money instead on House and Senate races, might we have contained some of the damage? (And I’m thinking of the Senate seats in NC, NH, and the failure to unseat Landrieu in LA))
Outlander on November 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Thank you Allah for being the objective voice of reason through all of this. I didn’t enjoy reading your posts all of the time, just out of fear of what was coming. And you took a lot of heat. But you did your job.
I hope the Republicans can reform themselves into a true conservative party. And it could be worse, I think it was in the 1990’s that Canada’s Conservative party went from a majority government to 2 seats. They could hold meetings in a Volvo. It took about 12 years for them to reform a party, but now they’re in charge.
Thanks.
Canadian Infidel on November 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Yes, they are, people who are hoping for the best possible outcome (optimism) aren’t being unrealistic.
clearbluesky on November 5, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Palin is not a formidiable challenger now or in four years from now. 12 years is the soonest that she could run again.
Palin needed to be a succesful governor first, let her children grow up (yeah I said it) and make a play for the Senate. That was her best path to the Presidency.
Her image is toast. The media is aware of Palin and they will not let her repair her image. Remeber the ruminations at KOS over how to deal with Patraeus should he run a a Republican? The media is playing chess with Palin’s image not checkers. They fear her now and will in no way allow her positive press. They’ll stimie her legislation and highlight any percieved weakness or failures for the next four years.
Theworldisnotenough on November 5, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Which is why 80 percent of our readers predicted he’d win the electoral college five days ago.
After endless months of screeching at me about how stupid and unreliable the polls are, they turn out to be right — and you don’t think that warrants so much as a single post?
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Congrats.
Jim Treacher on November 5, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Thank you for the kind words.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Thing’s I’ve learned from this election: Debates are kind of useless as they are so scripted and we’ve all heard the same things already.
And it’s good to study in-depth before any interview (job, school, media), rather than just memorize canned responses.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 11:58 AM
The election was still close so I dont condem anyone for hiolding out hope we could pull it out. . The polls were very wrong in 2004 and could have been wrong again this time.
In september McCain was actually in the lead
Then the Dems ground game kicked in and it was all over. The “72″ hour plan that the GOP planned to use was too little too late to counter 2 years of democratic leg work.
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 11:58 AM
About media bias…. yes, it’s certainly there, but the media was suuuuuuurely biased against Dubya back in ‘04 yet according to the most recent numbers I’ve seen, he managed to get almost as many votes as the media’s beloved messiah.
Media bias may have hurt Mccain, but it seems to me that it wasn’t just a matter of the media not telling the whole story — the people didn’t want the story. Too many Americans were so in love with the hopenchange that even when the media reported negatives they were eager to brush them off as false or meaningless.
We’re talking about blind adoration and “hope” here, mere facts are useless against it.
dead-duck on November 5, 2008 at 11:58 AM
One thing is for certain: Voters in Pennsylvania have an IQ below room temperature.
Mike Honcho on November 5, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Ok, allah, you are enjoying your victory lap about how you were right about the polls being right.
For those of us suffering on the day after, the key question is not: why didnt we believe the polls…
the key question is: WHY WERE THE POLLS RIGHT… meaning, why did so many Americans reject McCain and the Republican undercard as well.
That is the question we all need to be addressing in the weeks and months to come. NOT why didnt more of us believe in the polls.
Always Right on November 5, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Hey you weren’t so much right as SANE. And that must have been a hard thing to be in all this. I found myself going to Hillbuzz and Ace and even some even more radical places to feel better about the reality of the race.
What I really wonder this morning is how much propaganda have I internalzed from those less sane people. I mean do I have a true picture of Obama?
petunia on November 5, 2008 at 11:59 AM
It’s not a matter of congrats, it’s a matter of settling a running debate on the site for months about whether polls are inherently untrustworthy. Answer: No, not inherently. Although I realize, we’ll all have the exact same running debate all over again circa June 2010.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 11:59 AM
No – the argument of those of us who thought there was something wrong with the polls was that there is no universe in which, for example, multiple polls approximately the final Battleground projection and the final Gallup and big media polls should co-exist. Furthermore, the RCP average was “too Democratic,” and by a margin that might have been very significant in a close race, and was pevented from being far out of whack by the inclusion of a a couple of relatively low profile polls. The biggest names and most widely advertised and discussed polls – the one from big media organizations or famous names – were for the most part way off.
All of these polls come with a supposed Margin of Error. It is absolutely clear from the performance of the polls throughout the campaign season that this number is in many cases fraudulent, and that the big media polls consistently exaggerate urban liberal bias. It would have taken a super-close race or a McCain-Palin victory to have dramatized this fact, but the fact remains that the next time you read a CBS/NYT or WaPo or Newsweek or Gallup or Pew Research poll that claims a clear majority of Americans favor one or another controversial position or individual, the odds are good that you’re looking at the work of the same people who had M-P down 15%.
CK MacLeod on November 5, 2008 at 12:01 PM
What did I win in my “victory”? A far-left president? Yay for me.
Great question. We’ll know soon.
Allahpundit on November 5, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Always Right on November 5, 2008 at 11:59 AM
McCain’s support for shamnesty was the number one reason he was rejected in my opinion. I almost didn’t vote for him (Ohio) on that basis alone until Palin was selected.
Canadian Infidel on November 5, 2008 at 12:02 PM
I don’t care about polls.
Polls cannot, and do not, reflect turnout. They are used to surpress turnout.
It is the party’s job to promote a candidate that will, among other things, encourage turnout.
McCain failed miserably at this. Too little, too late. 55M is pathetic. Whether, 3.5M switched and 3M stayed home, or however you slice it, they were not engaged.
Starlink on November 5, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Maybe I am a fool for being optimistic, but when you see the corruption, lies, fraud, questionable associations, MSM, etc. etc., ad nauseum, what else do you have to get you through the day?
If I didn’t have that optimism that maybe the electorate could wake up and see through the mask – I probably would not have been able to get out of bed for the past six months.
I’m now officially done with any MSM and that includes Fox. Enough is enough.
tru2tx on November 5, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Nonetheless. Congratulations.
Jim Treacher on November 5, 2008 at 12:04 PM
Short of Carter-like failures of the Obama administration and beyond, I fear the future of the Republican Party if it doesn’t start courting minorities soon.
And we need to win the professionals back too. 5:1 lawyers for Obama, 2:1 doctors for Obama, 2:1 bankers for Obama. I’ve always believed a national party cannot survive without a professional class.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 12:05 PM
Please, Obama ran a lousy campaign. Inefficient, corrupt, and even criminal. He was saved by the networks and a stupid huge money advantage with which he spread misinformation.
Count to 10 on November 5, 2008 at 12:05 PM
Say what you will but the democratic party knows how to buy votes.
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 12:06 PM
Too many Republican partisans have let the “media bias”/”polls are rigged” attitude infect their political thinking. The problem is that such an attitude is nothing like a strategy for victory in an election. From time to time, you’ll see a laughably biased account of an event or a poll that is way outside the expected range of support for a candidate, but complaining about those things isn’t going to change minds (although it does make the complainers sound like crazy conspiracy theorists when they are off the mark.)
Big S on November 5, 2008 at 12:07 PM
I understand that completely. Just the same, you took all the crap in the world for facing the fact that McCain was a weak candidate, and that he made a lot of mistakes. We saw a good deal of people who were just as fanatical in their love of McCain or hatred of Obama as many of the Obama supporters were fanatical in their worship of “the one”.
A lot of us appreciate someone who’s not going to sugar coat the truth about the state of politics. Thank you for not shying away from what needed to be known, and what will hopefully be thought about as we go down the road to 2010.
MadisonConservative on November 5, 2008 at 12:07 PM
I’ll admit I didn’t believe the polls.
I don’t think I wanted to believe that the Democrats could be so rewarded by a problem they caused.
Count to 10 on November 5, 2008 at 12:10 PM
Maybe if the McCain campaign had had a strategy of their own and did not just react to the Obama campaign they would have done better. You can’t win being on the defensive all the time.
dpierson on November 5, 2008 at 12:11 PM
I blame Drudge too. He became a bit off-kilter the last couple of weeks. And red headlines using Zogby Interactive polls is just lame. The lipstick on a pig thing was overblown too, and was right before McCain’s decline.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 12:11 PM
Actually, I’ve kind of liked during this campaign that there was an upside/downside between you and Ed on Hot Air. Even when it made me feel sick. Keep it up, and sorry I didn’t mention it before.
Count to 10 on November 5, 2008 at 12:12 PM
For what? Doing his job to keep the traffic up at Hot Air?
Please. He has to keep people frothed up to keep the traffic up. That is why the registration was opened the day before the election. The influx of leftist whack jobs kept tempers up and thereby the hit count went up.
csdeven on November 5, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Well, there was this nice stretch after the convention where Obama seamed to be reacting to McCain. The polls looked really good then…
Count to 10 on November 5, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Unless pollsters made John McCain into a hunched old man who supported amnesty for thieving invaders, I doubt polls had much to do with low turnout.
TMK on November 5, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Drudge’s overblown lipstick on a pig thing + the economic meltdown shortly after made the McCain campaign look petty and off-message.
He should have anticipated the economic problem in the summer (look at the gas prices and ratings cuts then) and worked to immunize himself from it.
haner on November 5, 2008 at 12:15 PM
The persistent dispersion in the polls may have made them seem unreliable (there’s only so much dispersion you would expect with everything sampled from the same objective reality), but certainly were never cause to chuck them out entirely, as some people did. I thought the best we could hope for was retaining the filibuster, as much as I wanted Mac to win. Looks like that’s all we got.
The “they didn’t poll me so I don’t believe in polls”/”how can 1000 people represent 120 million” arguments were just stupid, btw. That’s what gets conservatives tarred as anti-intellectual. Grab a prob-stat book, people.
Humble prediction: In 2010 and 2012 you’ll see a different pattern of rights and wrongs in the set of polls you listed, all because of different election-specific dynamics the study designs won’t have taken into account.
DrSteve on November 5, 2008 at 12:15 PM
That’s what happens when you leave comment registration open too long. Hot Air is becoming an LGF-type cesspool.
RayinVA on November 5, 2008 at 12:15 PM
I disagree that that’s what AP was doing, but even if it was then God bless him for being a good capitalist and doing right by the people who invested into HotAir (namely Michelle Malkin.) AP and Ed aren’t triangulating the blog towards the left to get more readers (that wouldn’t work anyways), they’re simply reporting the news. If you can’t handle bad news then though! Don’t shoot the messenger.
Tacitus_SGL on November 5, 2008 at 12:16 PM
The polls were wrong. A plurality of Americans intended to vote for McCain, but were scared away by the members of the New Black Panther Party stationed outside of every polling place in America.
Also, ACORN.
YYZ on November 5, 2008 at 12:16 PM
…this coming from the guy who was struck with rabies every time a Fred! post came around?
MadisonConservative on November 5, 2008 at 12:17 PM
Exactly. I live in Colorado (tons of East Coast and West Coast transplants). My cousin lives in Virginia (tons of liberals from the North).
danjrussell on November 5, 2008 at 12:18 PM
Well, maybe one….as long as you were truly offended by the personal attacks.
In my view, your threads were pragmatic in nature and not an entirely accurate indication of your political beliefs.
csdeven on November 5, 2008 at 12:18 PM
Fred needed to be destroyed and I was happy to do my part in that effort.
csdeven on November 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM
Eh, McCain was the media’s choice for a reason.
Return to Buckley (the real one). Fight for smaller government. Fight against pork. Fight for transparency.
Return to Mises and Friedman. Fight for free markets. Fight for private property. Fight for the right to keep the fruits of your labor and pass it on to your descendants.
It’s time to return to orthodoxy, not chase some phantom new way.
spmat on November 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM
Right. That’s what I said.
MadisonConservative on November 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM
Defeat is bad enough, but drawing the wrong conclusions from it can make it worse. I repeat: The polls were not trustworthy. Several were ridiculous. Others turned out to be less so.
Furthermore, it is no great feat to have been accurately pessimistic about events: Life on Earth is a losing proposition, after all. Everyone who’s ever fought to achieve something against the odds has had to err on the side of optimism. There are very few winners in any realm of life who go into the battle and sustain themselves through it by dwelling on the hopelessness of their cause.
CK MacLeod on November 5, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Because you backed a guy that was as much an empty suit as Obama is. His only selling point was that he had millions of dollars.
Mitt would have lost the south to us if we had been dumb enough to nominate him. Carrying Utah and few other states is no consolation.
William Amos on November 5, 2008 at 12:22 PM
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