Jan 30 2012
Tomorrow We Determine: Are Voters Engaged or Enraged?
Major Update: Looks like PPP also detected a late Gingrich Surge:
Meanwhile, a Public Policy Polling survey, conducted Saturday and Sunday, has Mr. Gingrich with a manageable-looking 7 points deficit. And he was down just 4 points in interviews conducted on Sunday alone, according to a cross-tabulation provided to FiveThirtyEight.
Well, well, well. I saw one poll claiming Romney is winning Evangelicals and the Tea Party. Sounds fishy to me. I would say tomorrow is going to be very surprising – end update.
The other day I noted that primary polls this year were not to be trusted, especially in Florida since the turnout modes used by pollsters has little prayer of being right given this cycle is like none other – so there is no historic basis to any turnout model. The factors I listed that made this year so unique in Florida primary history:
First off, we still have the 2010 insurgent voter out there. This can be seen in the fact that the current GOP voters in Florida are not the same ones from 4 years ago:
Republicans have narrowed the Democrats’ registration edge in Florida since November 2008, when Barack Obama carried the state. And with the Jan. 31 primary still nearly two weeks away, more than 446,000 Florida Republicans have requested absentee ballots — far exceeding the 307,744 absentee requests for the 2008 GOP primary.
Figures released by the Division of Elections today show Florida has 11.2 million voters, with 40.5 percent registered as Democrats and about 36.2 percent as Republicans. The gap of 4.3 percentage points between Democratic and Republican registrations compares to a 5.8-point gap that favored Democrats heading into the 2008 presidential election.
Assuming the number of voters has not changed in Florida (still 11.2 million), the number of new GOP voters is euqal to the change in the gap between registered GOP and Democrat voters. This change is 1.5% or 168,000 new GOP voters, out of a total number 4, 054,400. This represents 4% of the total GOP voters.
4% is a large number when candidates are even 8% apart. A 4% shift moves a blow-out to a tie.
Another factor I noted was how Florida is actually in the kingmaker position this cycle, something they are never really in since they were historically one of the many Super Tuesday contests. This new pivotal position in the GOP selection process is going to really change the turnout models:
Florida moved their primary date up again this cycle (cutting their delegates from 99 to 50, with no super delegates) to move off of one of the Super Tuesdays. One thing is true, if voters don’t feel their vote counts, they don’t take the time to vote. Florida has never been in this position, where their vote will make a huge difference in who takes on Obama. So voters are going to come out in historic numbers (like they did in SC).
Just to be clear, this prediction has already come true in the early, absentee voting. This is a record voter turnout year already:
Early voting began statewide nine days ago, and according to figures released Monday afternoon by the Florida Department of State, which runs the division of elections, 293,760 people have already cast ballots.
But wait, there’s more. According to the state, more than 531,000 people have requested and were sent absentee ballots, and 338,753 have been returned and received by Florida officials.
Add it all together and more than 632,000 votes have already been cast before primary day.
The story goes on to claim this will help Romney because he has the better GOTV organization. But if his GOTV is activating 2010 insurgent voters, he is turning out his own opposition. Romney is now the establishment candidate after his brutal campaigning.
But something else may be in play right now, and that is Team Romney’s over the top negative campaign against the Tea Party insurgents. In the 2010 GOP landslide, a whopping 41% of the voters were Tea Parry supporters.
Exit poll data indicate that 41 percent of those voting in House races Tuesday said they support the Tea Party. Thirty-one percent of voters said they oppose the Tea Party. And a quarter of voters take no position on the Tea Party one way or the other.
I was about to concede the state to Romney, but I was hesitant to understand why polls moved so quickly. There is no policy reason for the move. Yes, there was a lot of Romney mud-slinging, but that tends to smear both candidates in the mud pit.
One thing I noticed in 2010 and in 2011/20012 was that America is still enraged and fed up with the status quo and the party/political establishment. This anger and frustration resulted in these voters tuning out politics until action could be taken. This showed up in SC in spades, as the polls picked up the shift to Newt in the last week. I think these voters are not engaging until the last minute.
BTW, SC is accustomed to being a pivotal and early primary state. While they had a record turnout, the turnout models would hold up fairly well there since the SC role was not unusual.
A late poll coming out today lends credence to the possibility that Mitt Romney could be heading for a Dewey Moment:
The Sunday results of 646 likely GOP voters are as follows:
- Romney 36 percent
- Gingrich 31 percent
- Santorum 12 percent
- Paul 12 percent
- Other/Undecided 9 percent
“The race will be tighter than expected,” Matt Towery, chief pollster of InsiderAdvantage told Newsmax.
As is noted in the accompanying story, Insider advantage was the first to detect the SC shift to Gingrich.
My rose-colored theory is that the insurgent voters of 2010 are still out there, but running silent and deep. They are spurning the pollsters, becoming undetectable. Also, as I noted in the previous post, even if the insurgent centrist voter is answering the poll, they could easily be thrown out of the ‘likely voter’ pool because of the simple fact Tea Party insurgents are new to the political process, many voting for the first time in a long time in 2010. And very few participating in the primary process. No previous voting in primaries gets you punted out of the ‘likely’ voter pool.
What if this key voting block is being missed by pollsters?
Does it really make sense the 2012 voter is that much different from the 2010 insurgent voter? Did the 2010 insurgent voter all of sudden decide to go milquetoast and support Romney? I see no reason for them to shift from angry backlash to pragmatic lambs. What happened in 2011 or 2012 to make them passive supporters of more of the same in DC?
I would expect if their support for Romney was real, Obama would be sinking in the polls, not rising as he is. Even Democrats are showing a come back against the GOP in the congressional ballot. Seeing the backlash against Obama and the Dems drop off over the last three weeks just as Romney is rising has me questioning if the rise is real support, or the 2010 tsunami voter has just gone silent until they hit the voting booth tomorrow.
My guess is a large turn out tomorrow helps Newt. I see nothing for the 2010 insurgents to all of a sudden become passive establishment followers. In fact, given how lame the GOP House has been since 2010, I only see rising frustration.
Which is why maybe tomorrow will not be as the polls say. The only problem with this theory is the fact that so many polls show a Romney cake walk. Hard to believe they are all wrong – unless the voters are not cooperating and indicating the truth out there.
Needless to say, tomorrow evening will set the path for this nation for the next 4 years. In terms of stopping the out of control federal government, there are few options left. Romney and Obama will fight all bold changes. They are so similar is hard to believe its worth having an election. But we shall see….
Good News and Bad News for Gingrich in Florida —
He’s probably going to lose Tuesday, but he could emerge a stronger contender
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/good-news-and-bad-news-for-gingrich-in-florida-20120130?mrefid=mostViewed
Time will tell.
Frogg1
It seems to be good news.
See:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/01/30/poll-romney-slips-in-michigan/?mod=google_news_blog
Don’t know if this matters; but, keep it in mind when comparisons are made between 2008 voter turnout and 2012 turnout in south Florida counties.
—————-
A note about predicting turnout in Fla prez primary
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/note-about-predicting-turnout-fla-prez-primary
How much of the GOP primary vote has already been banked? Based on 2008’s GOP primary of 1.94-million, the 592,000 early and absentee votes already cast would be about 30 percent of the primary vote.
But in predicting turnout for 2012, keep in mind that also on the ballot on Jan. 29, 2008 was the “Save Our Homes” Amendment One ballot initiative capping home values for property tax purposes.
That ballot initiative drove up turnout significantly, particularly in south Florida counties like Miami-Dade. Charlie Crist campaigned hard for that initiative, and his political team led by Rich Heffley targeted Republicans not expected to vote in the primary otherwise. That was bad news for Romney – then the main conservative alternative to John McCain – because it meant a much higher number of moderate Republicans showed up for that primary.
By the time the votes are tallied tomorrow night, turnout is likely to be closer to 1.6-million than the nearly 2 million who voted in 2008, which means the early and absentee votes could approach 40 percent of all votes cast.
PPP is a strange outfit. The Daily KOS provides their funding and because of that they do a lot of agenda polls. Plus with automated calling they are very sensetive to changes in the electorate. Newt was surging on the weekend but the Bella story blunted that surge on Monday. Santorum polled in the high teens because of his daughter in Monday’s polling.
For the three day tracking poll, Romney came out plus 8 (39-31). On monday Romney came out plus 10 as Santorum took voters away from Newt. Now that the Bella story has calmed down and Santorum is in MO, the voters may migrate back to Newt today and he could be down only four with 4% undecided.
We shall see when the votes are counted. But Fox better not call the race until 7pm Central (when the polls close in the panhandle).
I forgot the point of the second sentence. Although they do agenda polls when it comes close to an election they are very accurate. It is a running joke of how PPP can have a 10 point swing in a week before an election as they drop there partisan agenda and take up an accuracy agenda.
looking and listening around the web and the news today, and I realize that there is no way the GOP unites around Romney – sadly, there is also no way the GOP unites around Gingrich.
We’ve screwed the pooch. Get ready for 4 more years of Obama, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Who do you mean we???? The establishment is the one to blame, the lesson from 2010 is to have a candidate that is acceptable to the grassroots without the baggage of Newt. The DC fellas couldn’t come up with someone better that Mittens???
“Never, never, never, never, never give up”. In honor of Margaret and Ronnie we WILL PREVAIL in November. Wws, don’t let the turkeys get you down! We are going to all vote in November for the republican candidate. There will be tremendous turnout by republicans because that will be WHAT WE ALL CHOOSE TO DO.
It’s only January…
MarkN, BINGO!!! However, we still vote to determine the delegate votes so it’s really both of our responsibility.
I have to wonder how come someone like Marco Rubio would endorse Mitt Romney. Somebody must have approached Marco with some information that convinced him to endorse Mitt.
I don’t know what it is…anyone know?
WWS, we should work on a message that will convince people to come out and vote just to kick Obama out of the office.
I saw an ad icon at Doug Ross’s site showing Michelle’s face begging us to click on a button that says, “You’re in!”.
Why not do an opposite ad with the “You’re NOT in!” Vote Obama out of the Office!
see Mark, your attitude is the epitome of why the GOP are losers now and will be losers in November.
You couldn’t care less about finding a way to win, you just want to find someone to blame. That’s how losers think, and that’s why losers lose.
For the first time I’m starting to realize that this country probably deserves Obama.
Well we’re going to get what we deserve, and we’re going to get it good and hard.
The democrats love reading all this…really we should stop. Post in code,lol!
Just watched Special Report on Fox News. Brit Hume had a great line, I paraphrase: When you have to resort to calling your opponent a Nazi i.e. Romney wanted to take kosher food away from Holocost victims, – you sound desperate. Desperation is not inviting to most GOP voters (although there are a couple on this site who probably love it). 🙂
If Romney can get under Newt’s skin this easily imagime what Obama, the libs, and the MSM will do to him.
Rubio’s staff is full of people who worked on Romney’s 2008 campaign. Some of Rubio’s staff left to work Romney’s campaign this year. The people for both Romney and Rubio know each other well. This seems to be a pyrrhic victory for Mittens, as Santorum is running well in MO but because it is advisory, you won’t hear that much about it.
Newt could do well in southern states March 6th if he has the funds. We will see if this translates into Romney sweeping super Tuesday? I’m not sure as Ohio is currently a three way tie. Five weeks is a long time in politics.
Hi Mark:
Does calling Romney “Mittens” make you feel superior? Enlightened? Intellectual?
I support Romney, but if Gingrich wins then I’ll gladly support him against Obama. If I want to argue Newt’s weaknesses I can do so without acting like a 6th grader on the playground. I’d like to see the dame from the Gingrich supporters – a little more on substance and a little less on diatribe.
same not dame
Mrs. Romney is lovely, it is a shame we will have Obama for another 4 years. All I can say is that Marco Rubio had better be ready, because this country will be a terrible mess when Obama leaves.
Layman1,
“Mittens” given name is Willard.
Does that make you feel better?
MarkN, thanks for the explanation. It makes sense.
So the reporting on the Florida primary is essentially over almost as soon as the polls closed…declaring Mitt a winner. That was quick.
And now twitter is indicating attacks against Romney….it’s gonna get vicious.
first impressions of the night – some Gingrich surge, huh? Obviously the polls that showed that were garbage.
“The race will be tighter than expected,” Matt Towery, chief pollster of InsiderAdvantage told Newsmax.”
Sure looks like Towery blew it big time, doesn’t it? Everyone who trusted him has egg on their face now – when a pollster blows it this totally, he deserves to be ignored (maybe even openly ridiculed) for the rest of the cycle.
Matt Towery, find another job. Or at least be honest and admit that you don’t do polls, you just take money to tell desperate people what they want to hear.
One other conclusion that can be made: obviously Gingrich did NOT get 80% of the Tea Party’s support, as Redteam had suggested. My guess is that tea party supporters are split evenly between Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney, and that Gingrich didn’t even get half of them. I’m sure there will be more accurate data on this in the coming days.
I’m starting to think Santorum is the only one left who can restore order to the GOP. There is too much bad blood from the grassroots towards Robamaney (I can type that in honor of our host) for him to win the GE. Newt couldn’t even pull 7% at the September straw poll in FL (Cain won), so he has no chance.
New entrant in February seems our only hope.