Next Big Elections are Primaries     Permalink

While the midterm general elections are nearly a year away, there is plenty of election activity on tap before them. In particular, many states will hold primaries before next November. Below is a quick rundown of some of the most contentious ones. See here for the full list. As candidates announce for Congress and other offices in next few months, other contentious primaries may develop (e.g., David Paterson vs. Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York).

The 50 Richest Members of Congress     Permalink

Ever wonder why members of Congress have so little interest in the concerns of ordinary Americans? Well, they are not ordinary Americans. On the whole, they are extremely wealthy. Having a net worth of $5 million won't even get you in the top 50. If you want to see who are top 50 richest members, here is a link. Below is a table with the 15 richest members of the Senate and the House based on their published financial statements. These statements show ranges and the numbers used are the minimums (assets minus liabilities) so the members are probably worth more than these numbers. All are in millions of dollars. Contrary to popular opinion, the list is not completely dominated by Republicans. In fact, the five richest senators are Democrats.

Democrats Attack Pollster Rasmussen     Permalink

Pollster Scott Rasmussen has come under fire from Democrats for systematically releasing polls that are more favorable to Republicans than are those of his competitors. Rasmussen originally started out as a freelancer pollster, but now frequently works for Fox News. Although specific polls are often attacked, it is relatively rare for a party to attack a pollster in general claiming that he is biased. Rasmussen's polls are all conducted by computer, so interviewer bias is very unlikely. The problem comes from the fact that all pollsters normalize their samples. For example, if a pollster believes that 53% of the voters in some election are likely to be women, but in today's poll only 49% of the respondents were women, he will weight the women's votes by 53/49 to correct for the undersampling.

Weighting is also done for education, income, race, and partisan identification to get the correct number of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and this is where the rub is. Democrats are essentially accusing him of having a model that favors Republicans and Republican constituencies too heavily.

Another hot issue is likely voter models. Many pollsters ask a few questions to determine is someone is likely to vote, such as "Did you vote in the last election?, "Do you think it is every citizen's duty to vote?," "Do you think your vote will count?" Based on the answers, the pollster only counts the answers of people he believes likely to vote. Each pollster has his own formula and keeps the questions used a carefully guarded secret. Both the model and the screen are fairly arcane material and few people understand it, but by tweaking a few parameters, one can change the results quite a bit. For example, Rasmussen's take on Obama's approval typically is 5 points below that of other polling outfits.

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