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A Glimmer of Hope

17 October 2006

Over the last several weeks I have struggled with the likely results of the upcoming election. I have endeavored to remain optimistic in the face of what appears to be increasingly bad news for conservatives. Every poll, every news cast, virtually everything you see or hear today indicates that Democrats will take control of the House and may well take control of the Senate as well. That to me is totally disheartening.

Throughout all this I have had a nagging feeling that so called “values voters” contrary to conventional wisdom, will not stay home on election day. I have tended to believe that, like me, they understand what is at stake and they will “do the right thing” so to speak and go vote for Republicans. But I’ve also wondered if that isn’t just the typical tendency to believe that others think like I do.

If there is one thing I’ve endeavored to do, both personally and in this blog, it is to be as honest as I can be. I recall a political science project I had to do for a class on campaigns and public opinion during the 2004 elections. My assignment was to follow all 34 Senate races. I had to know who the candidates were, what the issues in each race were, what the polls were showing and, in the end, I had to make predictions. Another student in the class was doing the same project I was. When it came time for our predictions I predicted that Republicans would pick up seats in the Senate. The other student predicted a Democrat take over of the Senate. My question for him at the time was, “do you really believe that or is your prediction just wishful thinking?”

Of course my predictions turned out to be accurate and his were wildly off base. Both he and I had looked at the same races, the same polling data and the same issues and we had reach wildly different conclusions. I ended up missing only one prediction in all 34 races and that was Colorado, which ended up surprising me. But my goal throughout the project was to try to be as objective as I could manage. Of course I am not objective in terms of desired outcome but if my opinions are to be worth anything to others, my analysis of the races needed to be objective.

My goal in this blog is no different. While I am distinctly partisan and unashamedly so, I have to be able to look at the facts and reach conclusions that are, not simply justifiable, but ultimately accurate, if I am to be taken seriously.

In light of all I’ve just said, I hope my readers will pay attention to what I am about to say. It may appear to some to be wishful thinking. In the end, I suppose it may turn out to be just that but I don’t think so. I think I’ve stumbled on some very good news for conservatives.

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I’ve been a Rush fan for years but I’ve found myself listening to him very little of late. There are a number of reasons for that, none of which have much to do with him. But yesterday I found myself tuned in to his show. He was talking about a podcast from Advertising Age entitled Opinion Fatigue: Inside The Marketing-Research Crisis, in which the author, Jack Neff, was lamenting the declining ability of companies to do effective product research. The author was concerned because it was becoming increasingly difficult to reach enough households to get a sufficient polling sample so the results can be considered reliable. There are, apparently, several reasons for this. Among them are people who use caller ID to screen phone calls, those who simply won’t talk to polling companies and those who have moved exclusively to cell phones so they are not reachable by pollster at all. This makes it almost impossible for pollsters to get accurate samples. And then there are those who, for what ever reason, simply lie to pollsters.

While the article dealt specifically will product research, the pollsters refereed to are no different from political pollsters. Both face the same difficulties. So if product research firms can’t get accurate samples, there is no reason to believe the political pollsters fare any better. And who are the people least likely to answer the phone or to be off the grid entirely by virtue of having gone totally cellular? I submit that they are, by and large, conservatives. Of course we never hear any talk that pollsters can’t get accurate samples. But according to the Ad Age article, the base for an accurate sample is at least 30% call acceptance rate and what they are typically getting is closer to 20%.

If I am right, that means that the current crop of polls are from inaccurate samples and they will be strongly biased to the left. There can be little doubt that, if this is correct, the pollsters are aware of it. And since many of the pollsters are in the media, they are also aware of it, yet they continue to report the polls as if they are accurate. I think that is by design.

There are two reasons for conducting a poll. The first is to find out where the public stands on an issue or issues. The second is to attempt to influence public opinion. We are all familiar with push polls, polls designed to illicit a particular response. This is similar except the poll itself is designed to influence wider public opinion. So if the public at large can be convinced that most of their neighbors have given up on the Republican party, perhaps they’ll give up to! We saw this in the 2004 presidential election where the Democrats managed to slant exit polls, knowing full well that the results would be leaked before the polls closed. The desired result was to suppress Republican turnout by implying that Kerry had already won so there was no reason to waste time going to vote. Thankfully, it didn’t work.

The second piece of information I gleaned from Rush was from an op-ed in the Boston Globe entitled Cleaning up the Mess by Robert Kuttner. The premise of the article is that for Democrats, winning the mid-term elections might not be such a good thing! Kuttner goes on a totally partisan rant about budget deficits, the war in Iraq and his view that Bush has so screwed up everything that it will be a tough road for Democrats to clean up the mess. Kuttner opens with this paragraph:

I’ve heard smart people argue that George W. Bush has left such a mess that maybe the Democrats would be better off just letting the mess fall on the Republicans in 2008.

After all, there seems to be no good way out of Iraq. The administration dithered for nearly six years on Korea, and now we have Pyongyang with nukes, not to mention Iran’s nuclear challenge. And the budget and trade deficits continue to be time bombs. Why should the opposition party want to share responsibility for these serial disasters?

He goes on to list all the failures he perceives in the Bush administration and why they would be difficult at best for a Democrat controlled Congress to deal with before the 2008 presidential election. Beginning with budget deficits, Kuttner claims Republicans have caused the country to bleed red ink.

Begin with the budget deficit. As recent elections have shown, there is little political profit in being the fiscally responsible party. Democrats, once known as the Keynesian party of deficits, have led two thankless rounds of fiscal stewardship, cleaning up after Ronald Reagan’s tax-cutting orgy in 1982-83, and then mopping up the red ink of Reagan’s second term and that of Bush I with the heroic Budget Act of 1993, passed in both houses by a single vote.

Ignore, for the moment, Kuttner’s completely ignorant view of tax cuts and deficits (Bush has cut the deficit in half three years sooner than projected. The Bush tax cuts, just like the Reagan tax cuts, dramatically increased revenue to the federal government). What is the point of Kuttner’s op-ed? Why, just three weeks before the mid-term election, does Kuttner come out with this piece? Rush opines, and I tend to agree, that he is setting the stage for a Democrat loss. Remember, Democrats are infamous for taking defeat and calling it victory.

The fact is, Democrat pollsters and those in the know in the Democrat party are well aware of what the polls show. They know what the shortcoming of the polls are, even if they are unwilling to share those shortcomings with the public.

Then, also from Rush, there is the Republican irritation with Bush for not having a plan for the eventuality that the Democrats may take control of Congress. Bush seems strangely optimistic. In his interview last night on O’Reilly, Bush stated flat out that he is convinced Republicans will prevail come November.

Now, the left has attempted to paint Bush as a moron for more than six years but honest pundits admit that Bush is no moron. He has repeatedly painted Democrats into a corner and he’s pulled off some amazing feats in foreign policy and in his legislative efforts. No, Bush is no moron. He is a Harvard MBA who had better grades that did John Kerry! So it is fair to ask whether Bush knows something the rest of us don’t know.

Liberal pundits will think what Bush knows is some sort of late October surprise but I think it is more about the polling data. Bush knows just what the Liberal pollsters know, that their polls are wildly skewed to the left. And I suspect that the object of liberal hatred, Karl Rove, has polling units that are more effective than the liberal pollsters. Who really knows? The bottom line is, Bush is planning for victory, not failure.

Admittedly, there is a lot of conjecture in my analysis. I may be guilty of what I am striving to avoid, wishful thinking. But I don’t think so. Each of these items, taken individually, doesn’t add up to much. But collectively they seem to me to form a trend. Combined with outstanding economic performance, a dramatically shrinking budget deficit and the fact that, despite the best efforts of Democrats, most people are still fearful that this country will be less safe if Democrats are in control, I find it difficult to accept the idea that Democrats will win in November.

I could be wrong but I’m going out on a limb. I predict that Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress.