The Vote is On

When I asked my question, "Are Elections Like Sports?" 2 days ago, I am not sure I understood the full implication of the question. This morning at 6.15 a.m. I arrived at my voting location. There was great activity and the usual nice group of older ladies "manning" the desks. It was busier than normal as far as I remember. I asked them, "do you think it is going to be busy today?" "Oh yes, when we arrived this morning we already had a crowd outside. It looks like this will be busier than 2004".

So the sports analogy extends itself beyond pollsters as participants and the mental state of the candidates. Elections are really "played" by the voters. It is the candidates who are the fans, if my analogy is really going to work. I had it absolutely backwards. Elections are absolutely like sports in the sense they are a competition, predominantly between 2 groups, one for Candidate A and one for Candidate B. It looks like one of those election years where neither side is willing to yield the field. This may be the "turnout" to end all "turnouts". The 2 highest turnouts in US History were 1908 (Bryan versus Taft--also in the midst of the great Financial Panic of 1907-08. The more things change.....) and 1960 (Kennedy versus Nixon), 66% and 64% respectively. It is projected we will reach that level this year.

I studied politics as an undergraduate and a graduate student. There have been certain "rules of thumb" that always stuck with me. One in particular was about voter turnout. When voter turnout is low, generally it is an indication people are relatively pleased about the state of affairs. They are more indifferent to the outcome because they see both candidates sharing the important views. Countries in great states of actual or perceived turmoil are those with great voter turnout. Our percentage of voters will not reach the level that indicates great turmoil (75-95%), but can reach the mid-60s as it did 48 and 100 years ago.

The polls probably have meaning, but considerably less so than normal. Both parties have unprecedented "get out the vote drives". The bottom line on "poll uncertainty" is not very complicated. The polls project Democratic turn out to be 3-6% higher than the normal spread versus Republicans. But there is no polling data which supports this assumption itself. It is just an "input" into the model. It appears arbitrary. If they are correct, this will be a landslide Obama victory.

McCain must win enough states among the following battleground group to win; Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana, and Missouri. Karl Rove has Obama winning the first 6 of these States and McCain the last 2. Obama wins the electoral college 338-200 according to Rove. For this to shift the other way, McCain needs to win 70 electoral votes among the first 6 of these states. They total 27, 13, 20, 21, 5, 9 (95 total). RealClearPolitics has the national polls accelerating for Obama. But have McCain ahead in Florida and tied in Ohio. This has him losing 298-240.

I believe the pollsters have missed the intensity of the pro-McCain/anti-Obama reaction. To some degree, the polls themselves have contributed to that intensity. Higher turnout of the unexpected McCain supporter could make this night a long one. It is hard to believe that after the great error in the exit polls of '04, that the media will let that happen again. But I think they will not be able to contain themselves. There was an expectation of a Kerry blowout in '04 and I am sure we will again see Obama winning the "exit poll" contest. Like '04, it probably is a good idea to ignore the exit polls.

Given the margin of victory Obama will get in California, New York and other large liberal states, where he ran unopposed for all practical purposes, he will win the national vote and but still could lose the election. That is how McCain wins, if he wins. That would make the losing team go wild, particularly since so few people are educated in American History. You can graduate Magna or Summa from any Ivy League school and maybe heard of, but never read, James Madison.

Turnout is everything. Yesterday, Sarah Palin drew 18,000 people to a rally in Jefferson City Missouri. This was the largest political rally ever in the city. Biden meanwhile was drawing 400 in Summit, Missouri just outside of Kansas City. As if on cue, CNN headlines a story that Palin is a "drag" on the Republican ticket. The obvious cognitive dissonance between the reality of Palin and the CNN view of Palin tells the story of why the polls could be very wrong.

But after today we do not have to guess anymore. I can write "see, I told you", or "well, the reason I was wrong was....". The final exit poll occurs tonight. We will have a new president, we will have learned something about media and polling accuracy, and American politics will just keep on truckin' to the next set of issues, the next debates on taxes, energy policy etc., and the next election.