Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

There are a couple of events today that will fuel our conversation. First, a double-header debate takes place this afternoon between Washington state attorney general candidates Bob Ferguson (D) and Reagan Dunn (R). That debate takes place at 2:00 pm. At 3:30 pm, gubernatorial candidates Jay Inslee (D) and Rob McKenna (R) go at it. The event takes place in Spokane, but you can watch (or stream) the debates on TVW, and KUOW will carry the audio.

Tonight there is a special election for AZ-08, the seat formerly held by Rep. Gabby Giffords (D). The only poll in the election, from Public Policy Polling has Democrat Ron Barber leading Republican Jesse Kelly, 53% to 41%.

Drinking Liberally Seattle meets every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities, Bellingham, and Vancouver, WA chapters meet, and Thursday night Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets. Next Monday there are meetings of the Olympia, Yakima, and Shelton chapters.

With 228 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and four more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

White House: West Wing Week.

Purging Florida:

• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 1
• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 2
• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 3
• Thom: Voter purge…Rick Scott gives the finger to Washington.

Maddow: Someone might go to jail in the John Ensign scandal.

Darcy Burner’s keynote at the Friday mid-day Netroots Nation plenary:

Lilly Ledbetter on Paycheck Fairness.

Slatester: Michelle Obama does David Letterman.

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: Paycheck Fairness Act fails in Senate.

Obama’s message for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mark Fiore: Dogboy and Mr. Dan with Who’s on Second.

Mitt Romney criticizes Obama for wanting to hire more police, firemen and teachers?!?

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Obama for America: Jobs.

Maddow on the bitter and best thing about the former Sonics.

Roy Zimmerman: Song of Mitt Romney:

We’ve heard it all before….

Sen. Cantwell (D-WA): Working for Washington.

Recalling the Wisconsin Recall Election:

• Sam Seder: Looking into WI recall election.
• Pap: Mitt will get spanked in Wisconsin.
• Thom and Pap: About Wisconsin.
• Young Turks: Big $$$ wins in Wisconsin.
• Alyona: How to buy an election.
• Sam Seder: Wisconsin and the demonization of public workers
• Stephanie Miller: Lessons from Wisconsin.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Mitt Romney penchant for impersonating a police officer.

Stephanie Miller with Dr. Jill Biden on troop support and the 2012 campaign.

Pap: You can’t make nice with the Tea Party.

Actual audio: Mitt’s campaign Day 1, part II.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock for Barack.

Thom: LA GOP spiral into chaos.

Slatester: Supreme Court now has it’s very own bad approval rating.

Alyona’s Happy Hour: Did Obama make a blow job joke?

Maddow: Going after Hillary Clinton.

Jen: Mitt’s donut gaffe.

Ann Telnaes: Whittling away health-care costs.

Why have Romney’s favorability numbers rebounded so fast? (Via TalkingPointsMemo.)

Greenman: Among the deniers at Denia-Palooza:

Slatester: Jeb Bush isn’t sticking to the script.

Maddow: One caught, Romney has no interest in correcting lies.

It’s up to you.

Thom: Organized Money beats Organized Labor.

Ann Telnaes: GOP solutions for health-care reform.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

It happens almost every election season: the return of the Poll Analysis Concern Trolls. Well…they’re baaaaaaaak!!!

This season we have HA’s newest amateur right-wing propagandist, “Bob”, who is vewy, vewy concerned about the methods and polls I use for the election analyses. And we have the return our most esteemed amateur right-wing propagandist (to put it kindly), currently under the name, “Smilin'” (before that, ironically self-named, “GetFactsFirst”) . If you are interested, you can follow some of their election analysis concern trolling here, here and here.

I don’t want to totally belittle our Concern Trolls. The do play some useful roles here, like contributing to the raucous back-and-forth in the comment threads. And, for me, providing new opportunities to pontificate about polls, probabilities, statistics, simulations, bias, etc—topics that I enjoy in my professional life as well as in my hobby of collecting and analyzing electoral polls.

I also want to acknowledge them for inspiring a new occasional feature for this election season: The Electoral Pundit Contest. It is sort of like Lee’s Birds Eye View contest, but dealing with polls and stuff. The challenge is given below, but first allow me to pontificate….

This first contest was inspired by Bob and Smilin’s discussion of “outliers” in polls. It really bothers them that I don’t assess whether polls are “outliers.” And their latest “target” is a new Pennsylvania poll from Franklin and Marshall college (also known as The Keystone Poll). It shows Obama leading Romney 48% to 36% with 17% selecting neither.

What triggers their “concern” is the partisan make-up of the poll: “Respondents 50% D, 37% R, 10% I.”

Smilin’ puts it:

Why would Darryl include a poll that uses 50% Dems? Seems like there are several “outlier” polls like this that have zero credibility because of their underlying assumptions.

Is this poll an outlier? We could approach this from a probabilistic point of view by asking the question: if the sample of 412 registered voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as 50% Ds and 37% Rs and 10% I?

To make this easier, let’s ignore the “I” category, so the question becomes: if the sample of [207 Ds + 154 Rs =] 361 registered “partisan” voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as [50%/(50% + 37%) =] 57.5% Ds and [37%/(50% + 37%) =] 42.5% Rs?

A proper test would require us to know the “truth” about the probability of drawing a D versus an R in the population. Suppose the “true” probability is 54% for drawing a Democrat and 46% for drawing a Republican (ignoring folks who are Independent). We could then ask: for a sample of 361 partisans and a true probability of 54%, how probable is it to draw at least 207 Ds?

There is an exact answer to this question that can be found from the Binomial Distribution. The answer is about 11%.

In other words, if we did a bunch of polls with truly random samples of 361 registered voters each (assuming truthful answers, etc.) and with the true proportion of Democrats of 54%, we would, just by chance, draw a Democratic sample of 57.5% or greater about one out of every nine such polls. Hence, this particular evidence is not very strong, under our assumptions, that the poll is an outlier.

Whether partisan make-up or whether we look at the percentage “voting” for each candidate, there isn’t usually strong evidence for outliers. For example, let’s look at all polls for PA in the 2012 Obama—Romney race:

The vertical lines show the plausible range of “true” proportions, given the poll proportion and the sample size.

Two points. First, the plausible range of the most recent Franklin and Marshall poll largely overlaps all recent polls. The best evidence of an outlier comes from the previous Franklin and Marshall poll that just barely overlaps a Susquehanna poll (yellow). But both polls plausibly overlap their neighbors. So…which one should go? Or are they both perfectly valid, but happened to legitimately draw samples at each end of the spectrum? The rule for my analysis is to assume the difference is sampling variability, and include both polls. Since the election analyses typically have 60 or more polls, this sampling variability will, more or less, cancel out.

The second point is that the most variable polls are the smallest polls. The most current Franklin and Marshall poll is tiny. (In fact, you can get a rough idea of the sample sizes of polls from the plausible range—the Quinnipiac polls (cyan) all have samples over 1,100.) Because of the mechanics of the simulation analyses, larger polls (with smaller sampling error) have greater influence on the analysis.

Contest: There are three parts.

(1) In the above discussion, I had used 54% as an example for the “true” proportion of Ds versus Rs in Pennsylvania. Your task is to provide your best estimate of the true proportion of Democratic, Republican and “independent” (or other) voters in Pennsylvania. Use any resource and estimation technique you wish. Since partisan composition could change daily, let’s pin it down to June 4th (the last day of the Franklin and Marshall poll) as our target day.

(2) Assess the difference between your best estimate (part 1) and the partisan composition of the Franklin and Marshall poll (this is simple subtraction). The difference may be surprising.

(3) What is the cause for the “surprising” difference?

Good luck!

The constellation of elections taking place tonight make this Tuesday, arguably, far more important than SuperTuesday. In the previous post, I mentioned many of the elections going on today. There are even more recall elections going on…for a total of 17:

• Six in Wisconsin
• Three in Fullerton, California (with at least superficial relevance to Seattle)
• Three in Greenfield, California
• Five in Hermiston, Oregon

We’ll mostly focus on Wisconsin, but recall elections frequently have high drama and close votes tagging along. So grab a beer and popcorn, tune in to your media source of choice, and try to be entertained….

6:00: This page has a couple of sites livestreaming results tonight. However, I’m hearing something about the moon….

6:06: Dead heat in the exit polls…

6:18: With almost no precincts reporting…Walker leads Barrett 54% to 45%.

7:01: CNN projects a Walker victory.

7:20: Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch keeps her job. Which means, of course, that when Walker is indicted, Wisconsin will be left in the shitty hands….

7:29: On the bright side, it seems possible that Birfer-queen Orly Taitz will get the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D)

Please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Tonight, of course, is recall night in Wisconsin, a race that could make Gov. Scott Walker (R) the third governor in U.S. history to be recalled.

The latest polls showing Walker leading Mayor Tom Barrett (D-Milwaukee) with a small to modest lead. There are five other recall races going on in Wisconsin, as well.

Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) faces a challenge from Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin President Mahlon Mitchell (D). The latest poll show Kleefisch with a small lead.

Three Republican state Senators are facing recall elections, and Democrats need to win a single seat to take control of the Senate. State Sen. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls) is being challenged by Rep. Kristin Dexter (D). State Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) is being challenged by former state Sen. John Lehman. Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Clyman) is being challenged by Lori Compas (D). The first two of these races are considered competitive.

Finally, an open Senate seat is up for grabs after state Sen. Pam Galloway (R-Wausau) resigned in the face of a recall election. The contest for the seat is between state Rep. Donna Seidel (D) and state Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R).

Wisconsin polls close at 6 pm (PT).

There are also elections tonight in New Jersey (5 pm PT), South Dakota (6 pm PT), New Mexico (6 pm PT), Montana (7 pm PT) and California (8 pm PT).

Drinking Liberally Seattle meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, but show up early to watch the returns….

I’ll be live-blogging the elections from DL.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? There are other DL meetings this week. The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night. Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday.

With 230 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and three more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

Ann Telnaes: SuperPAC influence.

Thom with The Good, the Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Darcy Burner and Gen. Paul Eaton (ret): Responsible plan to end the war in Afghanistan:

Ann Telnaes: Memorial Day, 2012.

Illinois Rep. has a hissy fit over something or another.

Thom: Anti-Obama ad written and produced by FAUX “GOP TV” News?

Mr. Romney’s Run:

• Liberal Viewer: Should Romney’s irrational religion be a campaign issue?
• Mitt Romney: Little to like.
• Jen’s Roundtable: Talking Mitt
• Two Republican nominees.
• Actual Audio: Romney’s first day in office.
• Young Turks: Romney surrogate Donald Trump’s crazy birfer rant
• Romney’s economic record.
• Sam Seder: Amercia’s sinking ship.
• Buzz60: Mitt Romney’s app typo
• Bain Capital: We’re not so bad.
• Thom: Is Romney a unicorn?
• Steny Hoyer: Romney’s business record is fair game in campaign.
• Romney’s Massachusetts “record”.

Obama celebrates Pride Month.

Maddow: Boehner playing politics instead of working on jobs.

WA State Republicans: “We’ve been Pfluged!

Stephanie Miller with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA): Checking in on the Affordable Health Care Act:

Baby Congress.

Wisconsin:

• Maddow: Will stars align for Wisconsin unions?
• Newsy: Clinton heads to Wisconsin.
• Stephanie Miller: WI Recall political litmus test.
• Young Turks: Win or lose, good chance Gov. Walker will be indicted in the next couple of months.
• Maddow: Republicans see success in War on Unions.

Jon does First Lady Michelle Obama.

President Obama honors Robert Allen Zimmerman (a.k.a. Bob Dylan) and some other folks.

Pulling out of Iraq.

Liberal Viewer: Sheriff scams Sacramento out of jail money.

Mark Fiore: Too big to fail.

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: MO Rep. Todd Akkin says voters shouldn’t pick Senators.

Sam Seder: Rush’s clueless food rant.

DOMA

• Stephanie Miller: Boston DOMA ruling’s future impact
• Thom: Pastor Knapp, get your bedroom and virginity police.
• Newsy: Court strikes down key parts of DOMA
• Young Turks: Pastor Curtis Knapp wants to kill gays.
• Thom: DOMA is unconstitutional II.
• Sam Seder: DOMA ruled unconstitutional.
• Young Turks: Pastor wants to kill teh gays!

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: Will GOP let NC Sink?

Ann Telnaes: Protecting U.S. babies.

Music Video: Obama was Foreign Born:

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Bizarre Republican violence.

Thom: Something rotten in Michigan.

Jon on NY soda ban.

Newsy: George Zimmerman’s bond revoked.

Florida is Up to Its Tricks Again:

• Alyona: Florida could keep thousands from voting.
• Sam Seder: The voter suppression begins in Florida.
• Ed and Pap: Eric Holder should prosecute Rick Scott over voter purge.
• Thom: The Florida election fix is happening.
• Sam Seder: Rick Scott slapped by DOJ and federal courts.
• Ed and Pap: DOJ stops FL
• Alyona’s Fireside Chat: Flordia’s war on voters.

Maddow: Montana is the best chance of saving US democracy from ‘Citizens United’.

Young Turks: Teabagger Rep. Joe Walsh says crazy, racist things.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Survey USA released a new poll for the new WA first congressional district today. The poll of 456 voters likely to vote in the August primary, and 661 registered voters (for a general election match-up), was taken on the 29th and 30th of May, surveys the open congressional seat and more.

For the Washington primary, the top two winners are Republican John Koster and Democrat Darcy Burner. Burner leads the crowded Democratic field by +10%:

• John Koster (R) 46%
• Darcy Burner (D) 19%
• Undecided 16%
• Laura Ruderman (D) 6%
• Suzan DelBene (D) 4%
• Steve Hobbs (D) 4%
• Larry Ishmael (I) 4%
• Darshan Rauniyar (D) 1%

The sample size for the primary poll is rather small. Nevertheless, we can make some inference about who will be Koster’s opponent in November. Darcy Burner has a little over 1/2 the “votes” (88 of 173) among those who chose someone other than Koster. A Monte Carlo analyses gives Burner a 56.3% probability of advancing to the general election. There is a 43.7% chance that Ruderman, DelBene, Hobbs, Ishmael or Rauniyar will advance instead of Burner.

The not-so-good news for Democrats comes from the head-to-head results of each Democrat against Koster:

• Koster leads Burner 48% to 37%
• Koster leads DelBene 49% to 32%
• Koster leads Ruderman 49% to 32%
• Koster leads Hobbs 47% to 31%
• Koster leads Rauniyar 50% to 28%

In all cases, the poll results suggest that Koster has something over a 95% probability of winning. And that is not good news for Democrats.

There were a couple of other races that shed light on this poll. Mitt Romney leads President Obama in the district 45% to 44%. And Rob McKenna leads Jay Inslee in the district 52% to 38%. Wow…this is the same 1st district that I live in?!?

In fact, these numbers are so surprising that the election sleuths at Kos Elections (formerly Swing State Project) find the poll results implausible:

If you read a little further down, though, the poll’s credibility takes a major hit, when you see the presidential numbers: Romney leads Obama 45-44. This is a district that, adjusted for the new boundaries, went for Obama 56-42 over McCain. This is also the state’s median district (Obama went 57% in all of Washington in ’08), so Rob McKenna should probably be leading by a couple points in the gubernatorial race, but instead he’s up 52-38 over Jay Inslee. Either this sample is way off, or else Obama and Inslee are finding some way to get, say, 120% of the vote in WA-07 in statewide polls to compensate for such a steep falloff in Dem fortunes in the new 1st.

These are all good points. But I’d sure like to see some more independent polling for the district before I chalk this one up to being an outlier….

Via Slog:

Tim Eyman’s 2/3 majority requirement for raising new state revenue is unconstitutional, according to King County Superior Court Judge Bruce E. Heller.

The law enacted through Initiative 1053 is ruled unconstitutional; it directly contradicts the Washington State Constitution, Article II, Section 22:

No bill shall become a law unless on its final passage the vote be taken by yeas and nays, the names of the members voting for and against the same be entered on the journal of each house, and a majority of the members elected to each house be recorded thereon as voting in its favor.

Of course, the ruling will be appealed and, ultimately, settled by the Supreme Court. With any luck, the Supreme Court won’t be able to weasel its way out of a substantive ruling this time….

The next question: If I-1053 is unconstitutional, what should be the fate of its latest incarnation, I-1185, should it get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot? Will AG Rob McKenna sue Eyman to keep an unconstitutional initiative off the ballot?

You know, like AG Christine Gregoire did with Goldy’s Horses’ Ass initiative.

Rob McKenna is being sued by some 90 women. The reason is his participation in the Attorneys General lawsuit against the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care act (i.e. “Obamacare”). The group argues that:

[…] McKenna violated his ethical duties as an attorney by pushing for the entire health-care law to be overturned; that McKenna should be forced to file a corrective pleading with the US Supreme Court saying that he only opposes the individual mandate aspect of the health care law, which requires every US citizen to get insurance; and that the court should find McKenna guilty of issuing “false and misleading statements” about the health care law because he claimed that his lawsuit was aimed not at overturning the entire act, but only at eliminating the individual mandate.

McKenna has been lying to Washingtonians. He has repeatedly claimed that he supports some aspects of the law, all the while participating in the effort to overturn the entire law.

Today we learn that King County Superior Court judge Sharon Armstrong will not issue preliminary injunction directing McKenna to fix the inconsistencies between his public and legal positions by amending his Supreme Court briefings.

The meme in the mainstream media seems to chalk the ruling up as a perliminary victory for McKenna. But Publicola political uberwonks Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit (now at Crosscut) catch the more nuanced meaning of the ruling—the courts won’t judge McKenna for his political lies:

Although King County Superior Court Judge Sharon Armstrong’s rejection of a request to enjoin McKenna from arguing against the federal health care law certainly looks like a win for McKenna, the ruling effectively finds that, contrary to his public statements, he has in his legal motions consistently opposed the entire Affordable Care Act, not just the requirement that every American buy health insurance. The judge specifically said that McKenna’s public statements were “political statements” that had to be judged in the political realm rather than the courtroom. As to McKenna’s going along with other states’ attorneys general in seeking to have the law overturned in its entirety, Armstrong said the court lacked authority to second-guess whether it was a wise legal strategy.

In other words, Judge Armstrong leaves it to the voters of Washington to judge McKenna for his political lies.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics, conversation and birth certificate scrutiny over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, but some folks show up earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night as well. Also next Monday, the Olympia, Yakima, and South Bellevue chapters of Drinking Liberally meet.

With 232 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and three more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.