Who Can Really Say?

Mystery Pollster continues to follow-up on the election tracking polls (here, here, and here only for example), and it's always good stuff. Since the election if there's been a polling story in the news, or a new theory/rumor floating around, MP's pretty much covered it, explained it, or exposed it. More than any other blog I read, his is like a seminar unfolding in real time. You might miss sessions 4 and 5, but you'll eventually want to go back and read them after getting to session 10. That sounds like it could be a criticism but in fact, that's why the blog is so good.

Beldar is more cynical about polling:

I've stated before my view that pollsters, from the right or the left, are witch doctors practicing a pernicious brand of quackery; but politicians and would-be political savants from both the right and the left, and especially from the left, still take them seriously.

He excerpts from a New Yorker article that's not yet online:

The really salient demographic statistic from the election is one that most Democrats probably don't even want to think about: If white men could not vote, Kerry would have defeated Bush by seven million votes.

and hilariously responds:

To which Beldar says: "Piffle and balderdash." Or in the unabridged West Texas translation, "Ain't none o' yew boys got the sense to pee yer pants iff'n yer leg's on fire."

He finishes with a point counter-point involving the concluding paragraph of the New Yorker piece, which I'm not quoting because it would be too much of a pain to format in html -- so just scroll down and look for the paragraph with the alternating standard, bold, and blue colored text.

I have a problem with this stuff about how whether the Dems did well because Kerry increased Gore's vote total by X million, or Bush because he beat his earlier vote total by Y million. (Kerry did five million better, Bush 9 million better). Beldar seems to think Bush's increase is impressive in a defining electoral sense -- that it holds tidings for future elections. I'm not so sure.

But I think it's silly to measure these vote totals only against the last election's totals because there were so many more voters this year. The size of the pie increased, and to a large degree we're arguing about how that slice was split between the two. We'd been averaging a turnout of around 50% or lower in recent elections -- in this election we got really close to 60% (and my numbers are rough here -- maybe we beat that). I think it's been an old saw of the Democrats that increasing turnout would always favor their party and that notion took a real beating in this election. That's important, no doubt, but the real question for each party in the next election is "How do we get that extra 10% (or our portion of it) to come back and vote again this year?" Because if they don't, then aren't we back to square one?

And while I share Beldar's frustrations with poll interpretation, Mystery Pollster remains a credible voice for the profession. Remember -- statistics don't lie -- people do.

[Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam.]