Handicap the Dem nomination race

Great Debates
41

I did consider this very point and somewhat rewrote my post to reflect it. Like I said, people who don’t vote don’t count. But as you pointed out, there’s no fixed amount of people who vote. A campaign that appeals to its base strongly enough can conceivably overcome the loss of swing voters.

But realistically, most voters are motivated to vote for a presidential race. The base will usually show up on election day and the contest will end up being decided by the swing voters.

And appeals to the base have an inherent limit - people can only vote once. So it doesn’t matter if they dislike Edwards and hate Obama and really really despise Clinton - it all comes out to a single vote. Once you’ve convinced a person to vote the way you want, there’s no point in convincing them more because they can’t vote more no matter how much you fire them up.

Which goes back to my original point. The fact that some people might not vote for Clinton because she’s a woman is only important to the Democrats if those voters would be willing to vote for a male Democrat instead. And my guess is that people who won’t vote for a woman just because she’s a woman are a lost cause for the Democrats. The Democrats are likely to pick up more swing votes from people who will vote for Clinton because she’s a woman than the ones they’ll lose.

42

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Cite?
[/QUOTE]

Surely this is not what the one the poster you asked had in mind – but it is the most recent:

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research As 2007 Ends, Most Americans Oppose Iraq War

Question remains, what are you (Americans) going to about it? Surely electing Billary is no solution. Liked Edwards (after million to one underdog, Kucinich) and as of late, Obama has been growing on me.

Of course, my opinion is worth a hill of beans when it comes to my non-citizen non-vote.

43

It’s Hillary’s to lose.

44

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
It’s Hillary’s to lose.
[/QUOTE]
It used to be, but I don’t see that anymore.

She’s in a 3-way dead heat in Iowa, and she and Obama are tied in NH, with Edwards not too far behind. If she loses Iowa, it’s not going to help her in NH; the only question is whether it will hurt her a little bit or a lot.

Obama’s situation in NH (and SC, and beyond) is going to be improved if Hillary loses in Iowa, regardless of whether he or Edwards wins. At this point, I’d say it’s debatable as to whether he or Hillary has a better chance of winning this thing.

45

I’m wondering if the BCS championship game being on the same night will affect Iowa caucus attendance. And if so, which candidate might be most harmed by that. I’m guessing Obama has a lot of young supporters, who might be the most likely to have football parties to attend that night.

46

Winning the nomination is a two-part process. A candidate has to show that they can get to the top of the pile and show that they can survive the heat of being on top of the pile. Obama and Edwards might become the front-runner but we’ll have to wait and see what happens to them in that position. Either of them might crash and burn like Dean or Hart did.

47

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Winning the nomination is a two-part process. A candidate has to show that they can get to the top of the pile and show that they can survive the heat of being on top of the pile. Obama and Edwards might become the front-runner but we’ll have to wait and see what happens to them in that position. Either of them might crash and burn like Dean or Hart did.
[/QUOTE]
Be that as it may, I don’t see that Hillary’s a clear frontrunner now.

48

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
There are three new polls from Iowa, and one from NH. And while Edwards is still a longshot, I’m starting to be guardedly optimistic about his chances.
[/QUOTE]

How much weight are you guys willing to give polls, though? I saw a straw poll this week that shows that Ron Paul is going to get the republican nom because he’s ahead in nearly every state, including NH. To me that says a lot of people who take polls are simply batshit crazy or screwing with the pollers, not that it’s something that should be taken at all seriously. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Edwards chances are far better than polls indicate, though that’s mostly because I have trouble believing even enlightened dems are ready to back someone black or female.

49

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
It used to be, but I don’t see that anymore.

She’s in a 3-way dead heat in Iowa, and she and Obama are tied in NH, with Edwards not too far behind. If she loses Iowa, it’s not going to help her in NH; the only question is whether it will hurt her a little bit or a lot.

Obama’s situation in NH (and SC, and beyond) is going to be improved if Hillary loses in Iowa, regardless of whether he or Edwards wins. At this point, I’d say it’s debatable as to whether he or Hillary has a better chance of winning this thing.
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Odd, when she was the complete front-runner in all the polls, all the Hillary-haters said “Polls mean nothing.”.

But still, currently RealClear shows Clinton ahead in Iowa (45) , pretty much across the board, and by an overall 3.3%

In NH (22), she’s still ahead overall by 2.6%.

In Michigan (128) she’s ahead by 23%, in NV (25) by 20%, in Fla (185) by 25%, and in CA (370!) by 19%.

Note the number of delegates.

Hillary constinues to be the frontrunner. Eeven telling yourself over and over, with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears “Hillary is a loser, everyone hates her” doesn’t change the fact she’s ahead and by a lot.

50

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Odd, when she was the complete front-runner in all the polls, all the Hillary-haters said “Polls mean nothing.”.
[/quote]
I’m sure some idiots somewhere, sometime, must have said this. So?

I have been taking polls pretty seriously throughout the ‘handicap the races’ thread, although I’m not keen on a couple of particular pollsters (ARG, Zogby), nor am I a fan of placing too much reliance on one single poll.

And I’ve been saying for a long time that good support in the *national *polls is of limited value if s/he can’t win an early primary.

Hmmm. Right now, RCP’s average shows Hillary ahead of Obama and Edwards by a whopping 1.5% in Iowa. And her advantage in that stat is entirely due to the ARG poll that shows her leading both rivals by 7%. I have been very explicit about ARG’s tendency to see things no one else sees, and my thoughts about their credibility.

True. And again, she has that lead only because a two-week-old ARG poll had her ahead by 14. The other four polls in their average show her and Obama either tied, or separated by 2-3%.

And, more important, NH won’t take place in a vacuum. It will take place five days after Iowa, and Iowa’s results will change the game in NH considerably.

The Dems aren’t having a primary in either Michigan or Florida, despite what the governments of those respective states think. And again, polls of later states are subject to the effects of the results from earlier states. Her 19% lead in California won’t exist on Jan. 31 if, say, Edwards wins Iowa, and Obama wins NH and SC.

The effect of the early primaries has nothing to do with their delegate counts. And since the end of the era when someone could win the nomination without even competing in the primaries, nobody has succeeded in making up for a string of early-primary losses with a succession of wins in the larger (but later) delegate-rich states.

There’s always a first time, and I suppose Rudy or Hillary or Obama could be the first to pull off that trick. But this thread’s about handicapping the race, and that’s not the way to bet.

Look, I’m no Hillary-hater, although I certainly have reservations about her. In the “who’s your second choice” thread, I put her down as my second choice.

I’m trying to present factual arguments about the relative chances of the candidates to win their party’s nominations based on the polls, the pollsters’ track records, how things are changing over time, and the long track record of how the results of earlier states change the game in the later states.

I’m certainly amenable to an argument that Hillary is still a narrow favorite to win the nomination, especially because I tend to think that’s still the case.

But is she the ‘clear frontrunner’ anymore? No. She won’t be the frontrunner at all if she goes 0-for-2 in Iowa and NH, and she’s in a 3-way dead heat in one, and a 2-way dead heat in the other. End of story.

51

[QUOTE=elfkin477]
How much weight are you guys willing to give polls, though? I saw a straw poll this week that shows that Ron Paul is going to get the republican nom because he’s ahead in nearly every state, including NH.
[/quote]
I think the key words are “a straw poll.” Anyone can conduct a poll; it’s considerably harder to poll a representative sample of the voting population.

A poll on a website that’s skewed one way is going to reflect the skewness of that website: on the monthly DailyKos straw polls, Hillary’s not just outpolled by Edwards and Obama, but by Chris Dodd as well. (To be fair, nobody there tries to pass this poll off as representing the preferences of anything besides the DKos community.) And even the results of polls on news sites like CNN.com will often be tipped heavily one way or another by outside groups trying to ‘freep’ the poll - that is, to mobilize like-minded people who otherwise might not have even known about the poll to participate en masse.

So straw polls, Internet polls, and other polls that get a convenience sample or a self-selecting sample, are basically worthless. The gulf in between such polls and polls conducted by professional pollsters is enormous. Even ARG and Zogby, who I routinely malign, are far more accurate and professional than the sort of poll that shows Ron Paul winning the GOP nomination.

52

Here’s some great graphs on the resources each campaign has committed to Iowa, in terms of advertising money, staff, field offices, and days spent by the candidates in state.

Quick takes: contrary to the storyline that Edwards has lived in Iowa since 2004, he’s spent only 2 more days there than Obama, and 14 more than Clinton.

Obama and Clinton have far outspent Edwards in Iowa on both advertising and staff: on advertising, Obama’s spent $8.3M, Clinton $6.5M, and Edwards $2.7M. Clinton has 400 staffers in state, Obama 300, Edwards 175. Obama’s got 37 field offices, Clinton 34, Edwards 25.

They also include Kerry’s 2004 expenditures in the graph, for comparison purposes. Edwards has basically matched Kerry’s '04 numbers, going beyond them only in staffers (Kerry only had 120 in state).

Hillary and Obama have apparently committed far more resources to winning Iowa than anyone else, ever.

53

I agree. The Democratic race is opening up again. But my point was that Clinton has been in the lead position and the other candidates haven’t. So a direct comparison can’t be made between Clinton and the other candidates because front runners receive a lot more negative attention than the other candidates. If Obama or Edwards or somebody else wins in Iowa and New Hampshire they will become the Democratic front runner. And only then will we see if they can withstand the same kind of negative attention Clinton has and know if they are as viable a candidate as Clinton is.

54

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]

Hmmm. Right now, RCP’s average shows Hillary ahead of Obama and Edwards by a whopping 1.5% in Iowa. And her advantage in that stat is entirely due to the ARG poll that shows her leading both rivals by 7%. I have been very explicit about ARG’s tendency to see things no one else sees, and my thoughts about their credibility.

True. And again, she has that lead only because a two-week-old ARG poll had her ahead by 14. The other four polls in their average show her and Obama either tied, or separated by 2-3%..

The Dems aren’t having a primary in either Michigan or Florida, despite what the governments of those respective states think

But is she the ‘clear frontrunner’ anymore? No. She won’t be the frontrunner at all if she goes 0-for-2 in Iowa and NH, and she’s in a 3-way dead heat in one, and a 2-way dead heat in the other. End of story.
[/QUOTE]

Read the cite again.* Zogby (newest)has her ahead in Iowa by 4%.

The ARG poll shows a date of 12/26- 12/28 which is as new as the other 3 polls. The other three do show a dead heat, true. She’s still ahead overall.

In NH, ARG has a date of 12/27- 12/29, which makes it the most recent poll. She’s still ahead overall.

They are still arguing those primaries in the courts.

And yes, an early lead is important, but winning in Iowa and NH is not decisive.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/30/america/elect.php
*Yet, the two early states are not always reliable predictors.

Since 1980, the Democratic winner in Iowa has gone on to win his party’s nomination five times out of seven. But an Iowa endorsement is not a must: In 1992, Bill Clinton came in a distant fourth - at a mere 3 percent - but used a strong showing in New Hampshire to gain the title of “Comeback Kid” that he carried through to the White House.In elections in which no sitting president or vice president is running - like the coming election - the Iowa winner has won his party’s national nomination roughly half the time.*

In other words, in elections like this upcoming one, they are only indicators half the time. Not so good.

And even so, here’s what they can do for you: “The early contests help candidates with the vital task of fund-raising and can magnify their media profile enormously” Hillary needs no help with either.

And “A cagey management of expectations is part of the game. The Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, a surging front-runner in many Iowa polls, declared Friday that a top-three finish there would be fine. Clinton’s aides, too, have sought to temper expectations that she will win on the Democratic side.” and *"The South Carolina contest on Jan. 19 will be closely watched - as the first Southern state, and the first (other than Michigan) with a sizable black population. Blacks are expected to account for nearly half the votes cast there (in contrast, Iowa and New Hampshire are no more than 2 percent black). South Carolina is probably a must-win state for Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina. It will help show whether Northerners like Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a Republican, have genuinely national appeal.

The whole time, all eyes will be on Feb. 5, or “Super Tuesday,” when 22 states, including three giants - California, New York and Illinois - hold primaries. With that, 30 of the 50 states will have voted.*"

Sure, if Hillary bombs in both NH and Iowa it won’t be good. But a close second is enough- for her or any one of the candidates.

What’s strange to me os that the GoP nom seems to be completely open, but yet everyone here is concentrating on the Dem nomination, which appears to me to be a done deal. The GoP nom is critical, as Hillary will clobber certain Repubs (Huck, Romney); but will have a tough time against others (Rudy and McCain for example).

55

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
II’m certainly amenable to an argument that Hillary is still a narrow favorite to win the nomination, especially because I tend to think that’s still the case.

But is she the ‘clear frontrunner’ anymore? No. She won’t be the frontrunner at all if she goes 0-for-2 in Iowa and NH, and she’s in a 3-way dead heat in one, and a 2-way dead heat in the other. End of story.
[/QUOTE]

I think Obama and Edwards both have a shot at it at this point. If they can beat Clinton solidly enough (and one of them comes out decisively ahead of the other as well, that’s also important), that’s the most likely scenario by which one of them nails the nom.

But there are still more decently-likely scenarios that make it more likely that she’ll be the Democratic Party nominee:

• She does decently well in either Iowa or New Hampshire, thus going on into states where she’s polling very strongly now without having first been eclipsed by lousy performance in those early contests.

• She doesn’t do particularly well in either state but Edwards takes Iowa and Obama takes New Hampshire; the Clinton supporters defect in significant numbers to Obama and Edwards but divide up between them with no clear frontrunner. Her deeper pockets and solid orgs in each state lead to her winning a few of the next handful, she regains enough momentum that former supporters realign behind her.
Clinton would be my first choice, Obama a clear & happy second choice, Edwards totally fails to inspire me in the slightest.

56

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
*
Read the cite again.* Zogby (newest)has her ahead in Iowa by 4%.

The ARG poll shows a date of 12/26- 12/28 which is as new as the other 3 polls. The other three do show a dead heat, true. She’s still ahead overall.

In NH, ARG has a date of 12/27- 12/29, which makes it the most recent poll. She’s still ahead overall.
[/quote]
Oh, wow: Zogby has her ahead, too!

So let’s see: the two major pollsters most likely to see things that aren’t there, pull Hillary out of a three way tie into a 2-point lead in the multi-poll average.

Consider me underwhelmed.

BTW, I’m amused by your emphasis on the most recent poll. That can be important when either the previous most recent polls were getting a bit stale, or when things are clearly changing pretty fast. But it’s always less important than the reliability of the poster, and in this case a 12/26-29 polling period isn’t exactly a huge improvement over a 12/26-28 period, so it’s hardly a big deal any which way.

You’ll have to show that that matters. On what possible grounds can any outside parties tell the Democrats how they should choose their delegates?

Been there, done that, wrote the OP. Taken together, their predictive powers are quite good. Go there, read, come back. It’s a short thread, only 9 posts.

Look, you’re citing opinion. Commentary. You’re not citing a factual source.

Ditto. I’m sure I can dig up some counter-blather, but what’s the point?

Note the thread title. That’s why “everyone here is concentrating on the Dem nomination.” The parallel thread for the GOP is in its fourth page, so even if “here” is the SDMB, it’s hardly the case.

57

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
The GoP nom is critical, as Hillary will clobber certain Repubs (Huck, Romney); but will have a tough time against others (Rudy and McCain for example).
[/QUOTE]

I agree with you in principle, but in the particulars we differ. I think Hillary could defeat Romney or Giuliani (though “clobber” is not the word for it), but would have a tough time with Huckabee or McCain.

I think either Edwards or Obama could defeat any candidate the Republicans have to offer.

58

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]

So let’s see: the two major pollsters most likely to see things that aren’t there, pull Hillary out of a three way tie into a 2-point lead in the multi-poll average.
BTW, I’m amused by your emphasis on the most recent poll. That can be important when either the previous most recent polls were getting a bit stale, or when things are clearly changing pretty fast. But it’s always less important than the reliability of the poster, and in this case a 12/26-29 polling period isn’t exactly a huge improvement over a 12/26-28 period, so it’s hardly a big deal any which way.
Look, you’re citing opinion. Commentary. You’re not citing a factual source.
[/QUOTE]

First, you dismiss ARG as their numbers aren’t what you want. Now you dismiss Zogby. When another pollster shows Hillary ahead, you’ll dismiss them? :dubious: Dismissing one polster is one thing, but then another? That’s a stretch.

And you were the one who made the big deal about the age of the poll, with comments like “And again, she has that lead only because a *two-week-old *ARG poll had her ahead by 14.” (italics mine) You made the point that the poll was out of date, thus invalid. I countered with the most recent polls, and you dismiss them, too. So, if the timeliness isn’t important, why did you bring it up? :confused:

This is GD, so opinion is acceptable. But whats “opinion” about this “*Since 1980, the Democratic winner in Iowa has gone on to win his party’s nomination five times out of seven. But an Iowa endorsement is not a must: In 1992, Bill Clinton came in a distant fourth - at a mere 3 percent - but used a strong showing in New Hampshire to gain the title of “Comeback Kid” that he carried through to the White House.In elections in which no sitting president or vice president is running - like the coming election - the Iowa winner has won his party’s national nomination roughly half the time.”
*

Those are stats. Stats show how important things have been in the past, and historically, in these kinds of elections, Iowa and NH have not been all that decisive.

spoke- the numbers show different. Hil polls very very well against the more conservative GoP dudes.

59

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
First, you dismiss ARG as their numbers aren’t what you want. Now you dismiss Zogby. When another pollster shows Hillary ahead, you’ll dismiss them? :dubious: Dismissing one polster is one thing, but then another? That’s a stretch.
[/quote]
Look, I have been dissing those two pollsters for months on this board, and pretty much all year over at MyDD, where I post as RT.

So don’t give me any of this “you’re just deciding who you don’t like as they give you numbers you don’t like” crap.

I already explained that:

I’d meant to say “pollster” rather than ‘poster’, but you get the idea. On December 30, a poll taken during the 12/26-28 period is hardly out of date. And yeah, yesterday’s poll taken by a crappy pollster is NOT better than a poll from three days ago, taken by a competent one.

Hell, yeah. Just don’t cite somebody’s opinion as authority, that’s all.

60

Check out a thread titled, On the predictive properties of the Iowa & NH primaries. You want to debate the predictive properties of IA and NH, that’s the place. It’s not so old it can’t be bumped; I wrote the OP on December 20.

The quick summary is: if past patterns hold, you’re a lock for the nomination if you win both IA and NH. And you’re a serious longshot if you win neither. But I’m going to argue this issue in one thread, not several.