ever vigilant

May I be completely Off Topic: Did not know where to post. I think the woman’s vote/support we should all go begging for is that of First Lady Nancy Reagan. Reportedly, she dislikes McSame alot. I think she is more than bright enough to see that Palin is a farce; plus, son Ron is a Dem., I think. How can we get her to speak out in non support of the Mc/Palin ticket?

Aside from Mc, Ms. Reagan can see the future of Pres. Reagan’s values and legacy in the hands of the hussy Hunter. Who has a direct line? I wonder if Obama has spoken to her? Douglas Brinkley? It is believed she also has had very little love for the Bush clan. So, surely she can be engaged. She could sweetly say how sorry she cannot support McSkirt. I love it. (Sorry, OT)

I love the bleeping in that YouTube! Of course I have a dirty mind and there are so many words that would fit the bleeps.

btw, before anyone views the YouTube, I do want to recommend that you not be drinking anything. You have been warned…

I am assuming that this sort of thing is baked into Obama’s ground game – and that the “Camp Obama” e-mails I’m seeing are about mobilizing well-informed volunteers to be on the ground ready to combat these anti-democratic forces.

One of the things I have been wondering for some time is how valid the polling done be most (if not all) national organizations actually is. I thought that the polling was conducted by phone, and relied on land-line phones as their primary method.

With the advent of cell-phones and folks (like me) who have given up land-lines how valid are the results? Is there some b.s. projection that accounts for cell-phone vs land-line users and their views?

Just wondering….because it seems that Obama’s outreach is toward folks who are less likely to keep their traditional phone servic, but that may be an anecdotal supposition on my part.

We will quickly see if Obama has a ground game. The MSM is gleefully reporting McCain’s ‘lead’ in ac couple of polls. True or not, that’s the kind of thing that needs to be countered now. Your move, Mr. Obama.

damn, I wish edit was back….

how valid the polling done be

how valid the polling done by

preview is my friend… preview is my friend…preview is my friend

Virginia has mailed out new voter registration cards to all registered voters. (I got mine about a month and a half ago.) If you live in VA and you didn’t get one, you should make sure you’re registered at your current address.

Noting your post this AM on this subject…Franklin County Ohio voter confirmation mailings arrived today in the mail. They made it look like a request for an absentee ballot and there is room for confusion with the mailing.

It comes off as though it is encouraging voting by absentee ballot.

Here we go again in Ohio.

Love the part about, “Please check the address on this mailing. If this note arrives and does not match the address at which you reside, please contact the Board of Elections before the November election.

Robert Kennedy Jr. …get thee to OHIO!

Er, that doesn’t have anything to do with the ground game. The ground game is all about identifying your supporters and getting them out to vote, not poll numbers.

McCain is getting a convention bounce. There are plenty of things from the McCain campaign that need to be countered, but chasing blips in polls isn’t an effective way to run a campaign.

It matters as far as the narrative of the campaign.

Palin has a couple of new things going against her as of today..

She made a huge gaffe about Freddie and Fannie.

She asked for $197 million in earmarks…more than any other governor.

Rick Sanchez reporting on CNN about the religious video..the God war plan, etc., and the belief that Alaska is a favored place for “end days”.

So…just because these so-called polls are sensationalizing things every other day…we have loads of time before the election for things to go up and down substantially…either way.

Of course, voter fraud is alive and well and being planned by “somebody”..ahem.

Also, the video is hillarious!!!!

This is OT and I also apologize but I shopped at Publix today (southern food grocery store) and they cover up some magazines at checkout. Both US Weekly and National Enquirer were covered up but so was OK Magazine. This is what was on the cover of OK
BARACK OBAMA: Life with his daughters

Barack Obama made history when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the DNC in Denver. OK! takes a closer look at the man running for office and his special relationship with his two daughters, Malia and
Sasha.
Of course People magazine was not covered. So they cover the pro Obama and negative Palin. I did stop by the customer service desk and express my dismay.

I’ve seen some studies posted at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere that suggest that the cell-phone-only demographic may have a slight effect on the polls, but it isn’t huge like some people are speculating. It is, unsurprisingly, believed to be a plus for Obama, but we shouldn’t expect a lot of help from it. (Expanding the Democratic electorate and the shift in party ID are likely to be much bigger positives.)

Does it also say “please do not forward”? Kinda like the sign that says “illiterate – please write for free help”

If the Obama campaign is using the polls and popular perceptions (that the race is close) to MOBILIZE their ground game, fine, I hope they’re doing that; they better be, especially in battleground states.

But I worry that the other misperceptions in the media go unchallenged (lies in the ads for instance), and it eventually has an impact on undecideds, especially low-information undecideds.

I know the election protection people here in VA, and this is being taken extremely seriously. There will be lawyers on site or on call in every precinct.

OT – might be of interest to those who haven’t heard, Palin’s resemblance to the Bushies grows more apparent all the time.

Sarah Palin’s Secret Emails

Interesting. I know that everyone at my Drinking Liberally have no “land-lines” and all are registered and voting for Obama. Small, biased and completely anecdotal, but there you go…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..24792.html

Palin the butt of Fannie jokes?

Priceless.

The Obama campaign has been building their ground game since the start of the primaries, and it is a fairly formidable and well-organized one in a lot of up-for-grabs states (WV not being one of them as yet). In addition, there are traditional GOTV mechanisms within the Democratic party and allied via common interests as in union groups, interest groups on everything from choice to the environment, and a whole host of others.

The GOP has groups like the NRA and prolife groups, but the bulk of their ground game has been outsourced the last few years to the religious right. Hence, in my opinion, the real catalyst for the Palin pick and why McCain allowed folks like Dobson to veto Lieberman who was reported to be McCain’s leading pick up until the Wednesday before he selected Palin.

If someone is going to do caging, then they should be required to send the information to everyone in a given district or state. It should be all or nothing. And the process should be audited by a third party such as the accounting firms.

Do you think it’s big enough to counter those well-established GOP groups?

Oops, meant to also say that there is a difference in evaluation on national polling overall and electoral math possibilities which can’t be discounted. It’s too early to know how things may or may not shake out given that the Presidential debates generally are what firm up opinions, but Bloomberg had a piece today talking about Obama being either ahead or tied with McCain in the bulk of the battleground states — which is where Bush was sitting in 2004, putting McCain closer to the Kerry position.

Like I said, it’s too early to rely on any of the polling, I think — but it is an intriguing glimpse on how tight things could be, and how tough an uphill battle McCain may have on the electoral map if this holds. Guess we’ll see…

* SPEW! *

McCain didn’t have any of them backing him up, doing any set-up or anything until they got their guarantee on a Veep. Nothing. They are starting flat-footed from here on that, which is a disadvantage in my mind. THink about how much of their mailers and crap you had already been bombarded with in 2004 — and how little you’ve gotten this year. Living in WV as I do, we always end up getting stuck in the middle of the pie fights. And I’ve gotten almost nothing from the GOP-allied groups this year. It’s been odd.

I’m sure it’s coming, but in 2004? I could have filled an entire hefty bag and then some by now. This year? I couldn’t even fill a ziploc snack baggie.

Hi everyone. “Long time listener, first time caller”!

Count? I’ve been saying this for some time, even as a bonafide registered voter, my vote doesn’t count in either the primary or the general president election.

We need to disable the electoral college and elect our president py popular vote, like all other electoral decisions (how many more times can I say electoral?).

And, we should not be restricted from voting in the primary by our political affiliation. I should be able to vote for any candidate, no matter what organization they belong to, or if they don’t.

Those who have declared and are making a wholehearted attempt to run a campaign should be on every ballot in the US despite unsuccessful state efforts to ‘obtain the necessary signatures’.

I have been a disenfranchised voter for many years now. I had to declare myself a Democrat in order to vote in the SD primaries, but my candidate of choice was not on the ballot. Nor did the candidate I voted for ‘win SD’ so I’m not even sure how our delegates voted.

Personally, I don’t want to be a part of any ‘official party’ because they are all pretty much the same. Integrity in politics is woefully low these days, imo. And thus, I will change my officiation back to undeclared because my vote doesn’t count anyway.

So, how’s your day? Thanks for the clip of the count. Priceless!

My view may be distorted because I am in CA.

Those muppets are SO talented, it’s a shame they feel like they have to work “blue.”

Jo,

I’m a statistician by profession. Most (not all) polling is done by landlines. This creates several headaches for people who have to analyze political polling.

(1) There is the non-coverage error that you note. It is known that young adults are more likely to have moved entirely to cellular telephones. I’m not aware of any studies on the party affiliations of cell-exclusive users.

(2) Compounding (1), cellular numbers are now completely portable. Thus, someone with a 505 area code associated with their cell may or may not live in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area. They may live in Fayetteville, North Carolina or Honolulu, Hawaii. This terribly screws up sample allocation efforts.

(3) Attempting to compensate for the non-coverage error is difficult. The current state of the art is to reweight the sample by age (and perhaps party affiliation) to reflect the make-up of the registered voters (or the expected electorate, if you want to use a likely-voter model).

Anybody who claims to have this factor nailed is lying to themselves and to you. The only way I can see to nail this down requires two components. You have to call cells as well as land lines. You have to ask some pretty picky demographic questions for weighting purposes. You need to know where they live, because area code and exchange doesn’t do that any more (even with land lines, thought that particular nightmare is still a few years from striking with full force). And you need to know if they have both a cell and land-line, or only one of the two.

Calling people with political polling on their cells is going to piss them off. Many folks are still paying by the minute, or paying for a relatively limited pool of minutes. Using minutes for something I want to do is one thing, doing it because the RNC is calling me is something entirely different.

The short-answer: this may work somewhat to the advantage of Obama-Biden, but the size of the effect is difficult to quantify, and probably varies substantially from state to state.

BC

silly dakine – our good friend The Count is merely counting McLiar’s policy flip flops in that youtube :D

…61, 62, 63

707

yafkm !

It’s really a tough one to nail down for two reasons: (1) there are no good numbers on how many people this really represents and (2) a large number of folks who only operate with a cell phone tend to be younger, a lot of them college-aged — and traditionally, relying on them to show up to vote after they registered has been far, far from a sure thing.

This may be the year for a huge anomaly, but how can you know in advance on either end of that? There is no way to account for it as a variable that I have ever heard of that was solid. Which makes it nearly impossible to factor in to any polling. It’s a blip.

BC, thanks for the excellent and informative response. I guess that’s way I was always on the brink of my statistics teacher saying, “uh, no” when I turned in my exams. LOL!

I had not even thought about the area code issue, which it seems would be the biggest headache for pollsters… and you are 100% correct, if I were paying by the minute I’d be pissed if McSalin’ called me up to (1)push poll me or (2) ask for my vote. I used to get calls from the DNC, looking for money, but have not gotten one in quite a while.

What is the probability of an overnight swing of 10-13 points especially when nothing of significance has really happened?

And I have to say, I thought there would be more LOL-ing about the YouTube. Must be a mom or dad of the 5 and under set giggle… *g*

Spew Alert! (h/t Balloon Juice)

Having reared kids and grandkids on Sesame Street I am a fan of the Count’s. Thanks for the YouTube – it brought back fond memories and made me laugh.

He has my vote, despite his history of questionable parroting.

Clearly I’m tired and punchy then today, because I’ve watched it three times now and I have laughed until tears were streaming down my face every time. (Of course, it might be because The Peanut use to love the count and made me back him up on our TIVO’ed recordings and DVDs incessantly. *G*)

And that upper class twit of the year award thingy…

Got a GOTV call this morning for our Primary tomorrow — the script was for all DFL candidates, Obama, Franken, and our State Legislator, Kahn. They are calling the list of people who nearly always vote in primaries, (that’s me), and are dependable DFL’ers. Makes me think they know what they are doing these days.

One of the great advantages of Same Day Registration at the polls, which Minnesota has had since 1972 — and over the years, 40% of Minnesotans have used precisely this way, is that you can correct your registration on election day, saving the states and counties considerable money in postage. We have NEVER had a fraud case that stood up as a result of our systems, and I believe last time the Legislature reviewed things, there had only been eleven investigations.

It works like this — if you have moved, or changed names given marriage or divorce, you simply go to the polls with your current ID with your current address, fill out the card that includes a reference to your former place of registration, they can check your name, date and place of birth, and former registration on line, and then they approve the change, and give you a paper ballot that will be scanned in Precinct. Yes, you need a couple of extra trained poll workers in each precinct for this in a heavy election, but that is cheaper than all the postage. And you have to have your voter rolls on line, and in a State Wide File — but we made that change in 1989. And yes, you can check your registration on line.

While we are in the midst of major registration drives, we can help non-registered voters register and vote on General Election Day. If a person meets the requirements, Citizen, Has lived in Minnesota for 20 days before the election — a registered voter in precinct can vouch for the unregistered. The Voucher has to swear they know the person is legal. As someone who long rented apartments to U Students, I have done that many times. Rule of thumb — if they paid October Rent, they are legal.

There are nine states that have Same Day registration at the polls, all successful. It’s time to promote this as a very well tested solution.

Gervaise Brooke-Hamster clearly bribed the judges, the award should have gone to Nigel Incubator-Jones.

CNN reporting on Sarah Palin’s faith…reports that the Pentecostal church she is/was [?] a member of [apparently she has a habit of not stickin’ with colleges or churches very long] has a practice of speaking in tongues.

I’m surprised Team McCain didn’t tout that as part of her foreign policy experience.

Condolences to Jack Cafferty, whose wife Carol died unexpectedly Friday. You can leave condolence messages for Jack at his blog.

Mike,

Polling in this election cycle is really wild. I don’t necessarily agree that nothing has happened, though.

We’re seeing the results of polling that give McCain whatever post-convention bounce he’s going to get. This latest set of polls were conducted Thursday-Saturday or Sunday. Palin has energized the Theocratic wing of the GOoP. Also, national poll numbers are about meaningful for presidential elections as the Wheaties box is nutritious for humans.

For better or worse, we elect Presidents with the electoral college. To determine the EC vote, you must have entity-by-entity (for practical purposes, state-by-state, even though DC, Puerto Rico, etc. have a vote apiece) poll results. The sample sizes for the individual states in the national polls are too small to be useful in anything but a landslide. Even then, places like NM, HI, ND, SD aren’t going to be predictable.

McCain/Palin may do (probably will do) very well from Oklahoma through North Dakota and win even 3:1 there. They still only picks about 20 EV there. I think Iowa is a lost cause to McCain/Palin on the basis of his votes again corn ethanol. That’s too bad, because McCain happens to be on the right side of that one. But I’ll take electoral votes wherever we can get them.

BC

That may be in their next wave of ads.

Bush cancels Russian nuclear deal.

Ruh-roh. The Bush family bunny-boiler is not pleased he is being ignored.

sidebar to BargainCountertenor — on behalf of North Dakota…don’t be puttin’ any money on that. ND is looking bluer and bluer every day.

Meanwhile, our government is run by Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson and the Pirahna Brothers…

Or a bunch of Stooges…

The “oo-ee, oo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla, bing-bang” shtick comes with the territory for Pentecostals.

On a more serious note, the story of how Jack met Carol is quite touching.

How about this for an ad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..newsletter

Now we know, Cheney mistook Harry Whittington for Spiny Norman.

It’s absolutely amazing how much you sound like the Chipmunks. :)

Close.

In big bold letters it says on the envelope, “Change Service Requested.”

Actually I don’t think that was the Chipmunks although it was the same time frame.

High praise indeed!

When I was a baby, (I am told) my mom would suspend my Johnny Jump-Up (if you remember those) in the doorway, put the 45 of “The Alvin Twist” on the turntable with it set to repeat and I would jump up and down happily until they returned from vacation, or finished whatever they were doing, I’m a little fuzzy on the details.

The Chipmunks did a cover.

Slightly off topic; but the closer we get to 4 Nov the more this independent Omaba supporter thinks Steve Jarding (Foxes in the Henhouse), was correct writing that demos do not know how to count electoral votes.

This election cycle also shows the foolishness that is the conventional wisdom that the vice presidential candidate is irrelevant, or that the number two on a ticket has little bearing on the outcome.

The McCain campaign is correct in saying that issues won’t matter in this campaign. In fact until Americans are sleeping in the streets issues will not matter to this electorate.

Demos need to look at how they won their last two presidencies – with southern and middle-American governors. While Obama and Biden are both tremendous and would make tremendous presidential leaders, the fear is they will not have the opportunity. We can still lose this, big time.

Teddy upstairs on McCain and the IVAW

Awwww…those were the days. What fun.

Since the Obama campaign, in the primary, played the game to get delegates rather than just votes, I imagine their plan this time is to go for electoral votes. They are very smart people and I expect they will do the job.