Sep 19 2010
The Silent Tsunami
What do the VA & NJ Governor races in 2009, the MA Senate special election in January 2010, the Alaska GOP senate primary race, the NY GOP governor primary and the DE GOP senate primary race all seem to have in common?
Answer: The trends of these races only became evident to the public very late in the calendar, and only to pollsters which ‘opened up’ their screening to detect the intensity behind these come-from-behind-winners. I remembered that when I was reading this article from Der Spiegel:
Even a few weeks ago, it was considered impossible that the Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell would win the primary in Delaware. She was long seen as being too far to the right to woo enough votes. On Tuesday, such predictions were consigned to the trash when O’Donnell beat a veteran congressman to secure the Republican nomination in the Delaware race for the US Senate.
As I have said before, the wave heading for November is massive. And nothing is predictable in this kind of climate since pollsters rely heavily on turnout reflecting their turnout models. But when you get conditions like this you can easily be off 5-10%, and that would be a difference between a very bad year for the Dems and a historic blow out. To adjust the turnout models towards reality requires pollsters to make such dramatic changes they just don’t feel professionally comfortable doing that – at least not until much closer to the actual vote.
Newer organizations, less rigid with decades of established process, tend to see the wave coming. I would rank Rassmussen and PPP in that category (PPP called the two upsets in DE and AK by adjusting their turnout models). So we should expect to see more and more Dems go by the wayside as we get closer and closer to November – and we have. Russ Feingold is about to be the next toss-up seat to go “leans GOP“. The RCP map has lost all but a few spots of blue, and the gray states are turning the light pink of leans GOP. And those elections that began leans GOP a few months ago are turning dark brown as the wave keeps rising and people begin engaging pollsters again.
The Democrats really did not comprehend the voter backlash they would engender by forcing unwanted socialist approaches down the throats of Americans. They really do think they are God’s gift to humankind, though all their grand schemes always end up in ruin.
Just one example is needed to underscore the depth of their incompetence:
The Los Angeles City Controller said on Thursday the city’s use of its share of the $800 billion federal stimulus fund has been disappointing.
The city received $111 million in stimulus under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) approved by the Congress more than year ago.
“I’m disappointed that we’ve only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million,” says Wendy Greuel, the city’s controller, while releasing an audit report.
As the link at Drudge notes, that is $2 million per job, and I bet they aren’t even that good of jobs. How could anyone produce this result and not be marched out of town as a complete failure. When an investor takes $2 million dollars and turns it into $550,000 (assuming average pay is $100K per year) they are fired for incompetence. Is it any wonder America is firing the Political Industrial Complex – and will be for a few cycles to come?
Democrats worked hard for this result. They bribed hard, propagandized hard and deluded themselves to never before seen heights to reap their rewards. And in November, the stealthy, silent tsunami will arrive and bestow upon them the gratitude of the American people.
Awesome catch, AJ – great way to tie all of those together. It’s been amazing that there’s been almost no official attention at all paid to the most fascinating part of these elections – how come almost all the polls were useless, and the only the supposed “outliers” came close to catching the outcome?
I suspect that no news outlet wants to touch this because it would mean that no one, especially themselves and their high paid polling outfits, can do any better at predicting anything than you or I can right now. And that would mean they are irrelevant.
Can’t have that idea floating out there, so they’re just not going to talk about it.
And I want to be clear about something in the same way that I think you were clear – this fact doesn’t tell me anything about which way any particular race will go, it just means that things are now more unpredictable than they have ever been in our lives. Anything can happen.
One more thing – as you say, it’s going to depend on turnout, and because of that, the Democrats are going to delude themselves up until the last minute. Just yesterday I was reading some DNC party functionary saying turnout was no problem at all, since Obama was going to inspire black and youth voters to show up and vote for dems in the same numbers as they did in 2008.
So let it be written, so let it be done. Or at least that’s how he thinks the world works.
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Yeah, here in the former Democrat People’s Republic of Corzania (NJ), most of the polls had union puppet Jon Corzine making a late comeback after being down big early in the year. By election day, he was either ahead or within the MOE in most polls but ended up LOSING (yeah!) by 5. A big vote for an independent candidate was predicted but it vanished like a trillion dollars in Washingon – in a blink of an eye.
I’m still holding out for 100 seat turnover in the house