Monthly Archives: October 2008

Mythology/History In The Making

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There are some significant trends in the current election which may well make for a very interesting, and very different, election night:

  • High Turnout
  • Poll Proliferation
  • Early Voting

The turnout in this election is likely to be the highest in modern times, and possibly the highest in American history.  Bill McInturff, John McCain’s pollster, in a somewhat self-serving analysis, is predicting well over 62% turnout.  It is already “Conventional Wisdom” that black turnout may reach 95% in many states.  Whenever an uncontrolled variable, like gross turnout, veers wildly out of standard deviation the polling models used by most pollsters will start to fall apart.

This separation between the polls and reality is complicated in this race due to many factors, some of which the major polling organizations have already prepared for, such as the proliferation of cellphone only lifestyles by younger voters (Pew already is polling cellphones) and some which they cannot adjust for, such as historical shifts in numbers voting.

Another exacerbating influence this year is the proliferation of polls and polling analysis websites.  A good story in the New York Times today reports on this, and with millions of hits daily spread between four or five sites, you know that there are a lot of people getting daily or even hourly updates on the current state of the race.  With as many as 30 polls a day, spread between national and state, and a surfeit of analytical sites, many people are, get ready for this, deciding the news for themselves, rather than relying upon a select reportariat to feed it to them.  Thus more uncertainty.

Lastly, early voting is happening in more states that ever before, and in many states this will lead to more uncertainty on election night than ever before.  “Why,” you might ask, “if people are voting early then we will know the outcome earlier, right?”  Well, not so fast.

While some states have exercised vote-by-mail or other early voting options for many years, like Oregon, and have built their systems around it, other states, like Wisconsin, do not actually have a dedicated early voting system and simply leverage their existing absentee ballot systems.  This can lead to extended waits on election night as these absentee ballots are sorted and counted and apportioned to their appropriate precincts.  This is a wildcard on many election nights, but with early voting accounting for as much as 40% of the tally in some states, expect it to be much worse this time.

Much has been made this year of the “Bradley Effect,” a much discredited theory which states that polls are skewed in favor of African-American candidates because people being polled may lie about their preference.  While numerous studies have shown this to be an untruth, there is significant reportage and first person accounts telling us that the real “Bradley Effect” — the under polling of Mayor Tom Bradley’s gubernatorial opponent — George Deukmejian was due to the failure of Bradley’s pollsters to take account of the high absentee voting that year.

So, what does this mean for you?

  • Well, for starters, pay no attention to the polls.  There is not a single polling organization which has a model which can account for all of this.
  • Secondly, vote!  Nothing can ally your own concerns about the state of the race like voting for yourself.
  • Next, get everyone you know to vote.  They deserve the same degree of surety as you do.  Besides, if you know them the chances are pretty good that they will vote like you.
  • Lastly, don’t expect an early epiphany on election night.  While we very well may know the next President of the United States a week from me writing these words, it may just as well take a day or more to sort out all of those early ballots.

If you, like me, want to see Barack Obama in the Whitehouse come January 20th, please follow those steps.  Please vote, make those around you vote, and then be patient.  This is truly history in the making.

    Memory Lane II

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    My friend Cindy P just sent me a link to The Beatles “Let It Be” on YouTube (see above) and it really took me back. Cindy was in the UWM Union today, setting up for an event, and overheard a student playing this song on a piano, and it took her back. “it really made me stop. breathe, think… she wrote.

    I know the feeling.  It took me back to the winter of 1970, Christmas time.  I’ll be dating myself here, but I must confess that Let It Be was my very first record album purchase; the original release.  The Beatles were already broken up by the time it came out, but an 8 year old hardly cared about such things.

    My uncle Leon, my father’s older brother, had sent each of us some money, probably $10.  My older brother Steve had spent some of his on a record, I will spare him the embarrassment and not say which one.  I was so jealous!  Well, not to be outdone I got all fitted out in my snow gear (we used to have real winters back then) and made the trek around the corner to Green’s bookstore, where Panther Books is now, on Downer and Hampshire.  My $10 bill creased into the palm of my hand inside my mitten.

    I marched right up to the New Releases rack and waited for my glasses (a childhood curse) to unfog, and then tried to decide what to buy.  There was Johnny Mathis and Bobby Gentry, but the only band that I recognized, other than the records my older siblings had already purchased or received as gifts, was the Beatles.  Abbey Road and Let It Be were both in the rack, but Let It Be had a nicer cover, I thought, and besides it was an album it opened up, that made it automatically better.

    I bought it for $5.59 and took it right home, the spare change jingling in my mitten and the four $1 bills pressed into my palm.  I asked permission to use my mother’s Westinghouse portable record player and settled in to listen to the record and read, I mean really read the liner notes.  I can still remember the first strains of “Two Of Us” coming through the tinny speaker of that phonograph.  I loved it all, though I didn’t really understand some of it (I probably still don’t).

    In a way, listening to it tonight, that thin YouTube sound quality playing on my tinny notebook speakers was very much like listening to that old vinyl on the paper coned speaker in my mother’s old portable Westinghouse record player (with a penny taped to the tonearm).  Paul McCartney’s piano playing on Let It Be still sends a shiver down my spine, and “Long and Winding Road” still makes me sad.  In many ways all of my music purchases since that first one have paled.

    I still have that vinyl, and when my turntable works I will get it out and play it.  All except for “Maggie Mae,” which suffered just a little too much from my tin-can-and-sewing-needle days of homemade phonograph experimentation.  But that’s what makes it genuine; it is older and worn and a little the worse for wear, like I am.

    Thanks for the memory, Cindy.  A long and winding road indeed!