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I was surprised at how hard the loss in Wisconsin hit me. I mean, it wasn’t like the Democrats nominated someone other than a corporate shill (just less of one than Walker). I’ve never even been there. Still, the loss. The stripping away of union rights. The fact that money got to dictate the agenda even more than usual. That this somehow became more of a process story rather than a story about Walker until election day when it was a reformation of his agenda.

But still, a win would have turned back something. It would have signaled that enough is enough. That at our best we’re in it together. That corporate money doesn’t trump decency and hard work. I don’t know what to say, except keep working.

Corporate money and obfuscation won the day. And it sucks. But as much as powerful interests want to drown out your voice, you still have a voice. As much as organizing lost to big money this time, there will be a next time. As much as this is a setback, as much as people’s lives are going to be hurt by his policies, it’s not the end. There is no end.

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!

So, I know I only got 1/3 of the way through Lou Guzzo’s book if that (and it’s tiny). But I was walking through Elliott Bay Books the other day and I passed Mitt Romney’s book. Torn between buying it and trying to slog through it here on the one hand or not doing that, I eventually put it down. But if you guys are interested, I might pick it up next time.

Greetings, HA readers, from Providence, Rhode Island! Until Sunday, I’ll be here with a couple thousand other bloggers, activists, and media, attending the annual Netroots Nation meeting.

As I write, I’m in a session called “Winning Smarter: Using Data to Transform Elections”. Mega-wonky, with discussion of polling and focus groups, targeted advertising, GOTV for primaries, and more. It’s moderated by an avid local consumer of this sort of data. You many have heard of her … one Darcy Burner, candidate for Congress in WA-01. She’s actually the organizer if this panel.

Also in the audience is one of Darcy’s arch-nemeses, covering the event even though (as he’s told me and other HA bloggers) he’s disappointed that the Right Online idiots aren’t stalking NN meeting in the same town at the same time, as they had been doing for several years. Last year in Minneapolis, the late Andrew Breitbart — film crew tagging along, of course — tried to disrupt Netroots Nation by antagonizing attendees. Instead, the security people at the convention center escorted him away, after he’d tried to bully his way into the exhibit hall without an NN nametag. Parenthetically, several years ago in Austin, Bob Barr (running for President at the time, as a Libertarian) paid for NN registration, attended a few sessions, and was treated civilly in all respects.

I predict that Joel’s first Netroots Nation piece will include, if not focus on, several snarky (he thinks) digs at Darcy. You know the type:

…more popular here among the goofy Left than she is in Washington state…

…campaigning nationally instead of shaking hands in Sedro-Woolley or Ferndale…

I expect to file at least a few more reports from the conference (or maybe from the parties surrounding it), so stay tuned for more of Netroots Nation.

– Goldy lays out the costs of an arena to SoDo.

– Europe is working how Europe was designed to work.

– Why was the reaction among liberals to Wisconsin so different from the reaction to North Carolina?

– This investigation is not about wayward US nuns. It is the last gasp for control by a dying breed, wrapped in its own self-importance.

– Charges dropped against 16 occupiers of abandoned Capitol Hill building

– I think there is something to mourn as newspapers switch from paper to online only.

– Checkmate, Pro-Choicers

– I would totally like to read baby names for bad parents.

I like Joel Connelly, but in his coverage this back and forth between the Association of Washington Business and the Inslee campaign, he misses the larger point.

“As you can imagine, accepting $100,000 from a major oil company openly supporting Mr. McKenna leaves the impression that the money is intended for eventual use on behalf of Mr. McKenna against Jay Inslee,” Shimomura wrote to the AWB.

“This raises serious concerns for us, and we imagine it will raise concerns for many viewers and voters as well.” Shimomura urged the Association of Washington Business to “return Tesoro’s contribution.”

One problem: Tesoro and Equilon (Shell) were using the AWB PAC not to support McKenna, but to pass through money to Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1185. Seattlepi.com and Northwest Progressive Institute both posted stories May 11 on the pass-through. Eyman, too, explained the arrangement in a letter to his followers.

Four big oil companies, BP ($100,000), ConocoPhillips ($100,000) Tesoro ($100,000) and Equilon ($50,000) are underwriting the I-1185 signature campaign while Eyman delivers populist sound bites. BP and ConocoPhillips gave directly to the campaign.

Maybe. But I think the larger point is still holy shit, the global warming industry is throwing around how much money, again? The fact that these companies — and they are anti-Inslee companies — freely spend this much money is a huge problem. For huge companies to spend more than what most people make in a year like it’s Monopoly money is a disgrace. I realize Joel covered it before, but for that to be an aside is taking your eye off the ball.

I don’t want to be too cynical about Operation Blade Runner (except the name, insert replicant joke here). I mean obviously, it’s the job of the police to go after street dealers. And I’m certainly one of the people who has complained about the open air drug markets.

Still, as long as there’s a demand and it’s illegal, I don’t see the problem going away. New people will take over these places or there will be new places where people buy and sell drugs downtown.

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.

– Oh good, I can add sewage overflow to my list of worries.

– Even the sportswriters are acting like Politico.

– Shiny objects.

– I like the idea of the price per parking spot of the Northgate parking garage. [h/t]

– Why do 13% of NRO readers hate America?

– I keep forgetting to post this, but I didn’t realize that dragon flies had a migration.

Free markets are often times the best policy. But so far (and yes, it’s early days) with liquor privatization, prices have gone up. Now if you think that markets are inherently good philosophically in all cases (or in this case) then the prices being up may be fine. And in the long run, maybe they start high but eventually go down or in the long run they won’t go up as much as if the state controlled distribution.

But I think if you’d told people a bottle of Jameson will go up couple bucks, and that’s generally true the initiative would have a lot less support. I mean whenever I was in Costco during the signature gathering and the campaign there were signs saying how much cheaper alcohol was in California. And attributing all of that to market forces over the big bad state government.

But market forces haven’t worked that way, at least not yet. And so while Costco will probably make a profit, the people who supported it at the ballot box may rightly be upset that they didn’t get the result they wanted. It may feel like more freedom to ideologues and people who make a greater profit. But for people who pay more, it’s just paying more.

We were told capitalism would bring down prices, and so far capitalism failed at that. I hope the next time we have a discussion of how to have markets in Washington, the proponents of more market solutions (and I may be one of them) will have the decency to use better logic than trust the market.

– Jamie Kilstein challenges Jonah Goldberg to a fight. [h/t]

– Bain Capital Owns and Controls Clear Chanel

– Thomas Jefferson famously defended religious liberty by saying, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But what happens when your neighbor says that his 20 gods or God or no God requires him to pick pockets and break legs?

– There are upcoming campaign kickoffs for Rob Holland and Hans Dunshee

– The Westboro Baptist Church is going to be in Olympia.

– It may be that President Obama’s evolution on gay marriage upsets fundamentalists more because they don’t believe in evolution than they don’t want gay people to have rights.

Number two in the series is another Seattle-area LD with an open seat. Two of them, actually, thought one of these will assuredly be filled by the incumbent whose seat will be open in this election. Confused yet? We’re talking, of course, about the 11th District.

NOTE: click on the “Click to continue” link below to view a key that defines what the various colors and other symbols on the maps actually mean.

Location — Tukwila, South Seattle, Renton, Kent
   Senate: Margarita Prentice (D), 2012, retiring
   House 1: Zack Hudgins (D)
   House 2: Bob Hasegawa (D), running for Senate

The 11th District is one of the most oddly-shaped LDs in the state, seeming to wrap around the southern shores of Lake Washington without ever actually reaching the lake itself. It’s an industrial and commercial district, thrusting into the port-oriented southwest portion of Seattle in addition to Tukwila, parts of Kent, and some of Renton. Under the 2001 Legislative District map, the bulk of its land area was in that Duwamish River portion of the 11th District. The LD reached almost to the center of Burien. Perhaps your imagination is better than mine, because I can’t think of a metaphor that describes the shape of 11th Legislative District. Its 2001 borders, at the scale of 1:80,000, are shown below:

Viewed by itself, the new version of the 11th LD doesn’t seem all that different from the 2001 map. It remains misshapen, so much so that it (like the 2001 version) might remind you of this infamous image from a Massachusetts newspaper cartoon:

Looking at the new 11th LD more carefully, though, we observe that it no longer approaches Burien. Also, its border has been “notched” to exclude central Renton, and the 11th extends farther to the east than had the 2001 iteration of the district.

The bulk of the 11th District falls within the 9th Congressional District, and it contributes appreciably to the fiction that the new WA-09 is a majority–minority district. A small portion of the 11th, mostly warehouses between I-5 and SR-99, is in the 7th Congressional District. The suburban-to-rural easternmost part of the new 11th LD falls within WA-08.

When the 2001 and 2011 versions of the 11th Legislative District are superimposed on one another, the locational shift is readily apparent. Some of the changes are fairly small (a precinct here, a precinct there). The loss of Highline and Burien is easy to see, as is the large swath of suburbia, perhaps even exurbia, that is now part of the LD. Industrial grit meets tract houses and strip malls.

While it is correct to say that Senator Prentice is retiring, I wonder whether she would have stayed on if she hadn’t been redistricted out of the 11th LD. One might almost suspect that the Renton “notch” I mentioned earlier was created so as to remove her from the district. Unlike Representative Kagi of the 32nd LD (who moved back into her district), Senator Prentice chose to retire rather than try to win office in her new LD, the 37th. Then again, the Senate seat in the 37th isn’t up in this election cycle, so unless she wanted to run for the House she would have had to sit out for a couple of years anyway. Might she unretire and take on Adam Kline in 2014? I have my doubts, as she would be 73 by then.

There’s no doubt that Bob Hasegawa will win the 11th LD Senate seat in November. Even with the addition of a lot of less-than-urban territory, this remains a solidly Democratic district. Hasegawa is well known as a leader in labor and social justice issues, fitting very well with the nature of the 11th. I would have called him a perfect fit if the 11th had retained its previous borders, but this isn’t quite the same district as before. His opponent is a token Republican who didn’t even name the correct office on her C1 form (it says “State Representative”).

Zack Hudgins briefly flirted with a run for Secretary of State this cycle, but decided against it a couple of months ago. So he’s running for reelecion to the House 1 seat. He’s opposed by a Democrat who got into the race when it looked like an open seat. Jim Flynn appears to be a serious candidate — his campaign treasurer is Phil Lloyd, whose other clients include Jim McDermott — but I don’t think Hudgins has all that much to worry about.

The big action in the 11th is in the House 2 seat, currently occupied by Hasegawa. Four Democrats are vying for the position, as well as a lone (irrelevant) Republican. All of the Dems have raised decent money so far; the one with the most name recognition, Port Commissioner Rob Holland, has taken in the least. Far ahead of the others, at nearly $250,000(!), is Bobby Virk. As I write this, only one Legislature candidate in the entire state (a self-funding Democrat running for the open Senate seat in the 27th LD) has taken in more money than Virk, who is definitely not trying to buy himself a place in Olympia. His personal contribution to his campaign is negligible.

Clearly, although there are nominally two open seats in the 11th Legislative District, one of those is already spoken for. In the House 2 position, I can’t imagine that Bobby Virk will finish third or lower in the primary. He has, after all, taken in more than three times what his opponents have … combined. Who will join him on the general election ballot? I have no idea. Perhaps someone more familiar with the 11th Legislative District can edify HA readers.

[Read more…]

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina, where a crazyperson told his flock of brain-dead followers that gays and lesbians should be rounded up behind electric fences.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!