Archives for 2010

In case you missed it, NPR put out a great report on how the for-profit prison industry assisted in getting Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law on the books. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, as it shows how things that appear to be “grassroots” or being driven by the anger of everyday people are actually far more cynical efforts by special interests to boost their own bottom lines.

One aspect of this story, however, really jumped out at me:

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It’s a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

…

“ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group,” said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.

Hough works for ALEC, but he’s also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona’s law.

That’s right. Not only are there state legislators around the country who enact laws that directly benefit private for-profit companies who build and run prisons (whose profits come directly from taxpayers, of course), but these legislators have the nerve to refer to that as “limited-government.”

There are a lot of misused and misunderstood terms in our political discourse – from socialist to libertarian to fascist – but I’m not sure any of that has been anywhere near as cynical as how the term “limited-government” has been used. It’s now been attached to the belief that we need to round up illegal immigrants en masse and house them in prisons (the 4th Amendment be damned!). And this is not an anomaly. I see this sentiment repeatedly on right-wing Tea Party blogs. There’s a weird kind of cognitive dissonance going on where the presence of large numbers of undocumented migrant workers is indicative of “big government” and the effort to arrest them all and put them in prison is “limited government”. The Tea Party movement, which we’re repeatedly told believes in “limited-government”, only believes in it as a slogan, not as an actual coherent political philosophy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ill0rAGcBa4&sns=em[/youtube]

I was going to push back on the PPP poll that Darryl’s already posted on, citing the DSCC poll that shows Murray up 51-44, are the Washington Poll’s Matt Baretto insisting that PPP doesn’t know Washington state from the other one. But Eli’s already done that on Slog, so you might as well read him.

No, instead I’d just like to use this as an opportunity to emphasize that people who don’t vote really, really suck.

If PPP is right, and there is a huge enthusiasm gap because, what, Obama didn’t enact change fast enough or something, well fuck you. You don’t vote, you don’t have a right to complain about the outcome. Simple as that.

So don’t be an asshole. Vote.

Public Policy Polling has released their final poll of the election season in the Washington Senatorial race. The poll, taken from 29-31 October on as sample of 2,055 likely voters (giving a 2% MOE) has Sen. Patty Murray trailing real estate peddler Dino Rossi 48% to 50%.

While this is only the fourth of twenty polls taken over two months that has Rossi ahead, Rossi has led in two of the past four polls, and Murray has only led in one of them.

A Monte Carlo analysis of the PPP poll shows Murray winning 256,364 simulated elections to Rossi’s 738,506 wins. The poll provides evidence that Murray would win with a 25.8% probability to Rossi’s 74.2% probability. Since Rossi’s winning probability is under 95%, the result is, technically, a statistical tie. But don’t be fooled…Rossi has an advantage by this poll, as is clear in the distribution of simulated election outcomes:

A more complete picture of the election outcome comes by examining all polls taken over the past two weeks. There have been six polls conducted since 17 October until 31 October, and it includes all polls taken since ballots were mailed to most Washington state voters. The metapoll includes 5,371 responses, of which 2,583 are for Murray and 2,582 are for Rossi.

No kidding! They are literally tied as they can be, given the odd number of respondents who chose to “vote.” Can you say “recount!” and “paging Judge Bridges”? I think it is fair to say that this race has seen movement over the past month that has favored Rossi in dissolving Murray’s clear lead.

I’ll end this post with the raw polling picture over the past two months. In a race so close, different people will squint at this graph, view it through different ideological or partisan filters, dump polls they don’t “like”, and come to different conclusions. In fact, this race is, based on any individual poll or based on every poll taken in the past two weeks, utterly indistinguishable from a tie.

Yeah, that’s former Reagan budget director David Stockman despairing over his fellow Republicans’ “anti-tax religion,” and watching last night’s 60 Minutes piece on I-1098 has me despairing too. Of course, the anti-tax mantra is a religion, and a fundamentalist one at that.

And apparently, there’s no reasoning with faith.

If only our government operated as efficiently as the private sector, I guess it wouldn’t know the name of its own legislators either.

The hit piece above, mailed to 41st LD voters (click through to see the whole piece), is not only dishonest in its message (far from criticizing her, the Seattle Times actually endorsed Rep. Marcie Maxwell), but it also stupidly names the wrong state senator. Of course that’s 41st LD state Sen. Randy Gordon’s picture, yet the mailer twice names 48th LD state Sen. Rodney Tom.

Adding to the irony is that the hit piece was paid for by Americans for Prosperity, New York billionaire David Koch’s far-right, ultra-conservative, faux-think-tank front group dedicated to privatizing Social Security… because, you know, the private sector is always more efficient than government. Or something.

Yup. These are the kinda folks I want handling my retirement account.

But then that’s just par for the course in this election isn’t it? An out-of-state billionaire funneling money through a secretive front group into a legislative race for chrisakes, against a local Democrat whose name he can’t even bother to learn. That’s American democracy for ya.

Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was the law school at Widener University in Wilmington, DE where Christine O’Donnell recently discovered what the First Amendment to the Constitution says.

This is the fifth Sunday of the month, and what I think I’ll do for fifth Sundays is have it be specific to Washington state. Here’s this week’s, good luck.

Chronicles 15:13
All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.

Discuss.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7n3Y7dgxI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Of all people, Washingtonians should understand the importance of getting out the vote. You may recall a very close state-wide race in 2004 that was won by a 129 vote margin (later judicially adjusted to 133). The loser of that race was Republican Dino Rossi, who is now challenging Sen. Patty Murray for the Senate seat she now holds.

Let’s not have a repeat of that…and you can help.

MoveOn.org is hosting GOTV calling parties to help re-elect Sen. Patty Muray and elect Suzan DelBene. They are looking for volunteers to spend an hour or two doing some good old fashioned voter outreach.

They are particularly interested in volunteers to make calls out of their Bellevue office at three times: Sunday at Noon, Sunday at 4:00 pm, and Monday at 1:00 pm. If you have an hour to spare during these (or even other) times, consider helping out. Start by giving them a call at 425-450-1054.

A new Marist poll has been released in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and real estate wheeler-dealer Dino Rossi (R).

The poll of 638 likely voters (4.0% MOE) taken from 26-28 October has Murray leading Rossi 49% to 48%. Marist polls use live interviews and include a sub-sample of cell phone interviews. As we saw with the Marist poll from two weeks ago that had Murray up by +1%, the current poll is evidence against the otherwise strong trend of live-interview polls showing a modest (or better) lead for Murray.

I ran a Monte Carlo analysis that simulated a million elections using the observed preferences and sample size percentages observed in the new Marist poll. Murray won 567,112 elections and Rossi won 422,059 times. The poll (by itself) offers evidence that Murray would win with an election held over the past two weeks with a probability of 57.3%. Rossi would have a 42.7% probability of winning. Clearly, this result is a statistical tie, even if Murray’s odds are a bit better than Rossi’s.

With today’s poll, we have now had seven polls released that cover the past two weeks. Murray has led in five of the polls, Rossi has led in one, and one was a tie. A combined analysis of all seven polls provides a way to use all the recent evidence to assess this race. The resulting meta-poll had a total of 5,778 “votes” of which 2,797 go to Murray (48.4%) and 2,712 go to Rossi (46.9%). An additional 269 (4.7%) “votes” went to neither candidate.

The Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 789,523 wins to Rossi’s 207,597 times. Thus these seven polls provide evidence that Murray would win an election held over the past two weeks with a probability of 79.2%. Rossi would win with a 20.8% probability.

With only three days to go until the Big Poll is tallied, it is worth a few minutes examining the recent trend in this race. Here is the collection of polls in September and October (I’ve excluded polls released by a candidate or party):

The very recent polling suggests a tightening race. Even so, Rossi has only led in three of 19 polls over the past two months, and all three were conducted by Rasmussen (and Murray has led in two other Rasmussen polls). Beyond that, Murray has led in all other polls conducted by seven other pollsters except for one of three SurveyUSA polls giving a tie.

The bottom line is that Murray looks like she will win this one, but there are some uncertainties that may be distorting the map between polling and actual voting. My hunch is that the uncertainties don’t help Rossi’s chances much and some favor Murray:

• Voter “turnout.” There really isn’t “turnout” in Washington, which has a very high proportion votes cast by mail-in ballots. Voter motivation should be less of an issue in this race than it will be in other states. You may have heard media reports about how a rainy day across the country on Tuesday will negatively affect Democratic candidates. While that may be true in states with poll voting, rain in Washington state can potentially give Democrats a boost by simply keeping inattentive voters in closer proximity to their unspent ballots.
• The “cell phone problem.” There wasn’t much evidence that this problem biased polls in 2008, but there is some more recent evidence to suggest it can now. Some pollsters, like Marist, include a cell phone sub-sample, but it is hard to do. If the phenomenon is real, Murray will do better than many polls suggest.
• The robopoll—live interview difference. I’ve been discussing this for weeks after Stuart Elway first raised it. The phenomena is observed nationally as well as in this race. Here, I suspect it will result in a 3%-4% boost for Murray over the robopolls, but nobody really knows what is causing the phenomenon. We’ll find out soon.

I’m heading to Westlake Center for the Seattle satellite rally of the Restore the Sanity/Keep Fear Alive rally, and as bit of a novelty, I plan to tweet my coverage.

So please follow me on Twitter, and discuss the rally here.

(And there is more good media stuff from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

A lot of passionate, enthusiastic Democrats are manning the phones and knocking on doors this weekend, working hard to get out the vote. But if you’re volunteering for Suzan DelBene, perhaps you’ve backed the wrong candidate, that is, if what really gets you motivated about politics is a $25 gift card.

Really, Dave? Huh. So much for that enthusiasm gap.

Anyway, if you don’t need the money, you can dial against Dave, and for Delbene, at any of these locations.

As I mentioned here and here, we have been treated to two new polls today in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R).

A SurveyUSA was a robopoll taken on 678 likely voters (3.8 MOE) from 24-27 October and has Rossi and Murray tied up at 47% each. The KCTS/KPLU/Washington Poll poll used live interviews of 500 registered voters (4.3 MOE) taken from 18-28 October, and has Murray leading 49% to 45%.

In some sense, both of these polls are older than yesterday’s Rasmussen robopoll of 750 likely voters (4.0 MOE) taken completely on the 26th of October that has Rossi up +1% (48% to 47%). Therefore, the only reasonable thing to do is combine all three polls into one meta-poll and do a Monte Carlo analysis.

The combined 1,928 “votes” are split 916 for Murray (47.5%), 904 for Rossi (46.9%) and 108 (5.6%) for neither candidate. From a million simulated elections at these proportions and sizes, we learn that Murray wins 579,294 times and Rossi wins 414,495 times. In sum, these three most recent polls support a Murray victory with a 58.3% probability and a Rossi win with a 41.7% probability. This is very close to a tie (statistically, it is a tie), but Murray has a slight edge.

My usual near-election practice is to analyze all polls taken in the past two weeks. There are six such polls:

	Start	End			%	%	%
Poll	date	date	Size	MOE	Murray	Rossi	Diff
Rasmussen	26-Oct	26-Oct	750	4.0	47	48	R+1
SurveyUSA	24-Oct	27-Oct	678	3.8	47	47	0
WA Poll	18-Oct	28-Oct	500	4.3	49	45	D+4
Rasmussen	17-Oct	17-Oct	750	4.0	49	46	D+3
Marist	14-Oct	17-Oct	589	4.0	48	47	D+1
PPP	14-Oct	16-Oct	1873	2.3	49	47	D+2

The resulting meta-poll has a total of 5,140 “votes,” of which 2,484 go to Murray (48.3%), 2,406 go to Rossi (46.8%), and 250 go away. From a million simulated elections, Murray wins 785,190 times and Rossi wins 211,969 times. Thus, from the evidence found in polls taken over the past two weeks, we find that Murray has a 78.7% probability of winning and Rossi has a 21.3% probability of winning.

Statistically, the race is a tie because the probability of winning is under 95%, but the odds do favor Murray a little bit.