News from the Votemaster

Robert Samulenson wrote a really good column about why politicans love to talk about making tough choices but once in office never make them. The voters would never stand for it. People want better health care but lower health care costs. They want independence from foreign oil but lower gas prices. They want more government services but lower taxes. They want a solvent social security system but without cutting benefits or raising social security taxes. The list goes on. So nothing happens. On that score, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has stuck his neck out on any of the really big problems coming down the pike in the next couple of decades. It's easier to talk about whether Obama is patriotic enough or whether McCain is too old. The old world of bipartisan consensus where both parties would agree, say, to raise the retirement age, cut social security benefits, and raise the $102,000 cap on social security taxes is gone. Each party hides in the bushes waiting for the other one to say something first and then jumps on it. This is why a recent Rasmussen poll showed that only 9% of Americans think Congress is doing an excellent or good job.

Zogby released interactive polls for 32 states yesterday. These are polls taken by people who volunteered to take them over the Internet. There is no random sampling involved, so their value is questionable. They are not useless, however, since month-to-month changes may be significant. For what they are worth, here are the results. The mere fact that Barr does so well is certainly a red herring since the Internet has far more libertarians than the population as a whole. The rows are sorted on the last column, Obama minus McCain.

The AP had a story earlier this week that Pet owners prefer McCain to Obama. Now pollster.com has looked at the crosstabs on that poll carefully and demolished the idea. It turns out pet owners tend to be older married white people--and they favor McCain. Minorities and voters under 30 have fewer pets--and they favor Obama. In other words, the demographics of the petted and the petless are different. If somebody ran a poll on who false teeth wearers prefer it would probably be McCain, not due to his excellent plans for dental health insurance, but due to those people belonging to a distinct demographic group (old people). When analyzing polling data you have to be very careful not to confuse correlation with causation, a subject statisticians have been wrestling with for 50 years.

For people who want to play "What if?" experiments with the polling data, the "Downloadable polling data" link to the right of the map has been updated. Click on that link and then go to the bottom of the page and follow the instructions under "Spreadsheet Beautification." Then you can get an Excel spreadsheet with the current data and change poll numbers and watch the states flip, colors change, and totals recalculated. You can then try out scenarios like "What if McCain wins New Hampshire or Obama wins Missouri." As an example of what it looks like, here is today's spreadsheet.

We have two presidential polls today. In New Jersey, Obama is slipping a bit, but will almost assuredly carry New Jersey in November. More important is Missouri, a key swing state. It is a must-win state for McCain and he is ahead here by 5 points.

We also have two Senate polls. The poll in Maine shows Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) 25 points ahead of Rep. Tom Allen (D). This pollster is unknown and the value of the poll is suspect, but since there is no a priori reason to reject it, it counts. In New Jersey. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) will cruise to an easy victory.