As polls evolve, can they maintain credibility?

Nate Silver, the guru of all polling, has some insights.

There is no shortage of reasons to worry about the state of the polling industry. Response rates to political polls are dismal. Even polls that make every effort to contact a representative sample of voters now get no more than 10 percent to complete their surveys — down from about 35 percent in the 1990s.

And there are fewer high-quality polls than there used to be. The cost to commission one can run well into five figures, and it has increased as response rates have declined.¹ Under budgetary pressure, many news organizations have understandably preferred to trim their polling budgets rather than lay off newsroom staff.

Cheaper polling alternatives exist, but they come with plenty of problems. “Robopolls,” which use automated scripts rather than live interviewers, often get response rates in the low to mid-single digits. Most are also prohibited by law from calling cell phones, which means huge numbers of people are excluded from their surveys.

If you click on any one link up there, make it the footnotes listing (the tiny '1' that offsets the rest of the line). Silver also explains how demographic weighting is used to improve the model to compensate for fewer poll respondents, and how it can also damage the credibility of the pollster.

How can a poll come close to the outcome when so few people respond to it? One way is through extremely heavy demographic weighting. Some of these polls are more like polling-flavored statistical models than true surveys of public opinion. But when the assumptions in the model are wrong, the results can turn bad in a hurry. (To take one example, the automated polling firm Rasmussen Reports got fairly good results from 2004 through 2008, but has been extremely inaccurate since.) Furthermore, demographic weighting is an insufficient remedy for the failure to include cellphone-only voters, who differ from landline respondents in ways that go beyond easily identified demographic categories.

Texas suffers from all of these developments because, as one of the most extreme non-voting states as well as an expensive set of media markets that scares away all but the most wealthy and/or most craven and corrupt, we are left with poor ballot options and the associated 'inexorable' meme.  And that's when we aren't getting random results, like the fellow with the most common name winning the primary.

Just no way to run a democracy, is it?

I and others have spent many millions of pixels decrying the development of online polling, but the truth is that it's all we have left.  But it's also not all that bad, either.

Internet-based polling has been a comparative bright spot. In fact, the average online poll was more accurate than the average telephone poll in the 2012 presidential election. However, there is not yet a consensus in the industry about best practices for online polls. Some online methods do not use probability sampling, traditionally the bedrock of polling theory and practice. This has worked well enough in some cases but not so well in others.

But all of this must be weighed against a stubborn fact: We have seen no widespread decline in the accuracy of election polls, at least not yet. Despite their challenges, the polls have reflected the outcome of recent presidential, Senate and gubernatorial general elections reasonably well. If anything, the accuracy of election polls has continued to improve.

My excerpts aren't doing justice to Silver's full piece here.  Go read it. He continues where I left off with some very meaty analysis of why polling of primary elections gets it wrong so often compared to general elections.  Good stuff.  I'll skip to the end, picking back up on the explanation of demo-weight.

Demographic weighting is a legitimate and necessary practice. The past decade or so has seen stronger and stronger partisanship, stronger and stronger alignment of voting in different states, stronger correlations between up- and down-ballot voting (there are fewer split tickets than there used to be), and stronger predictability of voting behavior on the basis of demographics. All of that makes demographic weighting more powerful. It has become easier to project election outcomes on the basis of informed priors — without conducting polls.

If my hypothesis is right — the relatively steady accuracy of the polls is the result of the increasing demographic predictability of elections helping to offset lower response rates — we could see a disastrous year for the polls if and when political coalitions are realigned. A black or Hispanic Republican presidential candidate could scramble the demographic coalitions that prevailed between 2000 and 2012, as might a moderate blue-collar Democratic nominee, or a certain type of third-party candidate. None of these things is especially likely to happen in the near term, but the current political coalitions won’t hold forever. The 2012 presidential map looks fairly similar to the one in 2008, or 2004, or 2000, for instance, but rather different from the one in 1996 or in years before that, when states now seen as locks for one party or the other were considered swing states instead.

Disapproval of Congress results in higher voter turnout, according to Gallup... who whiffed badly in their 2012 presidential results.  That might be something interesting to note in late October, as we start to get early-voting numbers from the Harris County Clerk's office (and elsewhere).

Here's where I'm going to plug the onliners in which I participate: YouGov -- which is the outfit that the Texas Tribune/University of Texas use -- and which is polling right now for governor, US Senate, and Congressman.  Head on over and sign up to participate.  And Politix, which is national but woeful in its obvious conservative bias.  (Nobody actually cites them as something approaching reputable, FWIW.  They don't even call what they do a poll, but a debate.)

Real Clear Politics does something similar to Silver, which is aggregate and average several polls to produce a "poll of polls", as CNN refers to it.  Note in the Texas group of polling conducted so far in the race between Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis, Rasmussen -- with its bright red flavoring -- showed Davis closing the gap between them to 8 points.  This suggests that the contest is even closer than the most recent poll reveals.  Nobody in the media has dared to say that, though.

We go into the homestretch of the 2014 midterm elections with the polling we have, not the polls we wish we had or might have at some future time, as Donald Rumsfeld said (paraphrasing).  They're still better than paying attention to what the Talking Heads on teevee say.

But if we should be skeptical of the polls, we should also be rooting for them to succeed. One of the reasons news organizations bother to conduct expensive surveys is to serve as a check on the misrepresentative opinions of elites, including those of their own reporters. Even a deeply flawed poll may be a truer reflection of public opinion than the “vibrations” felt by a columnist situated in Georgetown or Manhattan.

Click on that last link there.  And LYAO.

The Back to School Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance cautions you to drive carefully through school zones as it brings you this week's roundup of the best lefty blog posts from across the state.

Off the Kuff has had many things to say about the Rick Perry's indictments, while Harold Cook sounded some cautionary notes about them.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos notes that a little ol' indictment is not stopping Rick Perry from a POTUS run in 2016. Swaggering through New Hampshire to kiss the Koch ring, Rick Perry portrays W 2.0 in Cowboy Diplomacy Redux: Rick Perry Plays the Fear Card.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson sees the media and the Texas GOP trying to make Republicans look reasonable when it comes to expanding Medicaid. Don't fall for it: Texas Is A Wasteland For Public Support.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to remember that damn fence is just a monument to racism and fear. What else does it do except cause trouble?

Why can't Obama be more like LBJ and just get some things done, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs wondered. But just in a facetious way; if we ever had another president half as badass as LBJ, we'd come to regret it.

Neil at All People Have Value went to the Texas City Buc-ee's. Neil wishes that trendy restaurants in Houston had a sign up like at the Buc-ee's saying that their staff earned a wage higher than the minimum. All People Have Value is one page of many at NeilAquino.com.

With students and teachers going back to school this week, Texas Leftist has an assignment for everyone. Is your school district one of 600 suing Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP-led legislature? Consult the list and map to see. Here's a hint... It's not just the schools in blue counties.

Egberto Willies again warns Democrats of Rand Paul's triangulation.

======================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Texas Vox points out the nuclear reactors that are costing Texans money without generating any electricity.

Socratic Gadfly's Greg-Abbott-movie-trailer text of the week is #CPRIT.

Beyond Bones has a problem with "Shark Week".

Lone Star Ma is still writing about National Breastfeeding Month.

The Rivard Report is not writing about gun control.

Grading Texas responds to TAB's Bill Hammond about school ratings.

Very Very Urban has a photo that's worth at least a thousand words.

Newsdesk looks at the effort to kick Eden Foods out of the Wheatsville Co-Op.

The Texas Election Law Blog has a historical analysis of the Voting Rights Act, pre-clearance, and redistricting.

Lone Star Q notes that some companies that have strong LGBT equality policies nonetheless have no problem contributing financially to candidates that oppose such equality.

'stina puts the Ice Bucket Challenge into some context.

And finally, kudos to Media Matters For America for recognizing the difference between how the Texas press covered the Rick Perry indictment and how the national press covered it. To help some of those national pundits understand what the indictments are about, Craig McDonald and Andrew Wheat of Texans for Public Justice wrote a piece for Politico explaining why they filed their complaint in the first place.

Sunday Funnies

Oops! Rick Perry does it again, can’t remember his two felony charges

"I’ve been indicted by that same body now for I think two counts, one of bribery, which I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t really understand the details here," Perry said of the grand jury that indicted him.

Of restaurants and closings

Some melancholy Friday reading, as we consider which Restaurant Week esablishments we'll visit this weekend.

One day, the light was streaming in, the air smelled like coffee and garlic, people were lunching and brunching and bonding over warm arepas.

The next day, black shades were drawn low. The outdoor menu case displayed only a few loops of Scotch tape. A sign in the window said simply "sorry, we're closed." The only remnant of the restaurant that had operated there for several years was its name, on a faded oblong sign, hovering outside, crooked and ghostly high.

It's a familiar phenomenon in downtown Houston, where high rents and slow weekends seem to shutter restaurants almost as fast as new high rises and loft space can lure new ones.

It's the nature of things, I know, where capitalism is concerned. The owners don't die. They move on. Maybe they find a cheaper place to rent, maybe they buy a food truck. We learn more from our failures than our successes and all that jazz.

But it never gets easier to watch the very slow, very public demise of somebody's dream.

It's hard to watch the pattern play out, and the first signs - sometimes, quite literally - of trouble. Large, banner-like signs may appear announcing a new happy hour special or breakfast deal. The quality of the food and the service drops off. There may be changes in the menu or the name of the place, or both.

The worst part is the eyes. The all-too-eager eyes of Mom or Pop, or the manager, or the waiter-slash-cashier-slash-busboy, who is pitifully overjoyed to see the first customer in hours. I've reluctantly avoided places because I can no longer bear the eyes, like those of ushers passing out bulletins at a dying church.

After they close, it's hard to get past the fact that there was something there yesterday that is gone today. A concrete manifestation of somebody's sweat and tears that is now a soulless shell awaiting the next tenant.

It's my nostalgia speaking, I suppose. Or maybe it's the former busgirl in me who once watched her parents' dream vanish with the water from the steam table in that cafeteria-style place they used to own in Seguin.

I've been that busboy, that waiter (but it was someone else's parents, not my own).  The best thing I learned from the experience was that I never wanted to own a restaurant.   I have much admiration for those who do, even just a food truck, and certainly know that a few of those who have made comfortable livings in the business -- locals named Pappas or Laurenzo or Cordua -- have to be as lucky as they are good.

I'll pick back up with Lisa Falkenberg in a minute.  I just wanted to relate what pulled this post together: the microbrewery in downtown Houston that had its lease cancelled after it was discovered that they had sponsored a game of Naked Twister, and the closing, after almost 85 years, of a little downtown Beaumont cafe.

One of those tales is funny sad, the other is just nostalgic.  Back to Lisa F and her story.

My parents had already begun to struggle with the place. They were hurting, but they were happy - it was the first time in their married life when they could be together, work together, all day long.

The food was great. The biscuits were tall, the cobbler addictive, the brisket melted in your mouth. But my parents weren't natural business people. They probably spent too much time getting to know customers and too little time strategizing. It didn't help that the restaurant was in a slow part of town and its cafeteria-style ambiance wasn't designed for a nighttime crowd.

One night, my parents decided to open late for a fish fry. They spread the word. They advertised. I'm sure there was a banner or a sign of some kind outside.

They brought me along to help with tables in case the crowd grew too large. After a long day, Mom and Oma stood in the kitchen frying piles of catfish filets battered in cornmeal.

The doors opened. The clock began to tick. I remember looking through the double glass doors, at first expecting a passing car to slow down, and then praying for one.

An hour passed. Then another. My parents' eyes took on that desperate weight. I retreated to a back room to start a book. When I finished it, I came out to find my folks emptying the silver steam table containers.

Not one filet had been bought. They hadn't had one customer the whole night.

I remember thinking that the only thing more painful than the thought of someday losing my parents was standing there, watching them lose.

Greasy spoon diners tucked into shoestore-size crannies of downtown -- or hipster brewpubs, as the case may be -- have been around since there were downtowns.  Every one I've ever spent time in has had one.  In Midland, it was called The Spot.  These places always have a colorful history.  But when they aren't downtown, they have an even tougher go of it, of course.

They tried and failed many more times before finally selling the place for a fraction of what they put into it. My dad turned to long-haul trucking. I never saw another smile on his face like the one he wore daily at that little barbecue place, cutting down a ring of sausage for somebody that he had dried in his own smokehouse.

That experience left me with sadness but also respect for all the Moms and Pops out there who put their hearts and their savings into a dream and then muddle through the daily struggle of keeping it alive.

It's risky, it's scary, it's lonely, it's stressful. And people do it every day. Everywhere.

I make a point to eat local and shop local when I can. But I don't stop nearly enough and say "thanks." Thanks for this food, for this place, for this tired smile.

Franchise fast food is for the birds, y'all. (It's not all that good for them, either.)

Why can't Obama be more like LBJ?

In context with what I wrote yesterday, this is a great piece by Matt Bai.  I don't agree with all of it -- especially the familiar dismissal by non-Texas pundits of Rick Perry's felony indictments -- but some other points are salient.

The problem with Barack Obama, people are always telling me these days, is that he just doesn't love the full contact sport of politics. He has no capacity for the inside machinations or tactical brutality we associate with a more sophisticated and celebrated president like Lyndon Johnson.

What we really need, I guess, is an executive in the mold of a Chris Christie or an Andrew Cuomo or a Rick Perry, all of whom are more extroverted and more brazen about wielding their power as governors than Obama is — and all of whom, not incidentally, are now fending off prosecutors and investigations while scrambling to keep their national ambitions afloat.

And this illustrates an interesting paradox of modern politics: We love this idea of the ruthless and effective political operator, right up until the moment we're confronted by the reality.

Is this really what "we" want?  I just want an effective progressive manager.  I don't want any coolly detached, above-the-fray, aloof executives any more than I want a war-mongering bully/asshole like those three mentioned.  In fact, Hillary Clinton seems to strike the right balance between those two spots -- without enough of the 'progressive' part I would like.  But I digress.

But there's a common theme in all of this, which is that all three governors were doing exactly the thing Obama's Democratic detractors and sympathetic commentators so often pound him for not doing — stretching the boundaries of your authority in order to outmaneuver adversaries and ultimately get your way. (Ironically, it's also the thing Republicans insist Obama actually does too often, which is why they're suing him, but that's another story.)

And there's my point: Republicans want this sort of jerk.  They like jerks.  Nobody else does.

You want the kind of elected executive who's going to make the machine work the way he wants it to, even if he has to grab a sledgehammer and bang a few parts into place? Well, this is what it looks like. It's not especially ennobling, and it never was.

Lately there's a lot of admiration for Johnson, who's often portrayed, in this age of entrenched dysfunction and colorless politicians, as a charismatic, needy rogue who knew how to make Washington work. The truth is that the things Johnson did for the purpose of amassing power would make Rick Perry quiver like a little girl.

No, not the sledgehammer, thanks.  Not even a rubber mallet.

Bai goes on to share a recent conversation he had with LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who is working on a fifth installment of the mercurial '60's-era Texan and CIC.  Caro's volumes are the definitive interpretation of the man, his presidency, and his effects on the nation.

Yet somehow Johnson is the president we'd like Obama to be. And Perry is just a perp.

[...]

Today's embattled governors, too, have done their share of intimidating in the service of significant accomplishments; Christie won bipartisan compromise of a controversial plan to reform public pensions, and Cuomo did the same on gay marriage. But what gets the most attention are the petty transgressions that come with no higher purpose.

What we want, apparently, is a swaggering politician who can be maniacally manipulative when it comes to the big and noble stuff, but who can simply switch it off when the stakes aren't as grand. Good luck with that.

Nope, still don't want that.  An effective negotiator -- the kind of horse-trading that most people at the fringes despise, as manifested in the ritualistic purge of the least conservative Republican in their primary elections.  But Bai is right that we'll never get that sort of person elected anyway... his, or mine.

At this point, 40 years after Nixon resigned, our distrust for politicians and our political institutions is so profound and ingrained in the culture that it's hard to imagine our giving any elected leader the license to scheme that Johnson enjoyed. And in this moment of the 60-second news cycle, when every backroom confrontation seems to spill into public view instantaneously, the sordid means of politics almost always overwhelm the end.

If our idealized version of Johnson himself suddenly came back to life and reappeared on the scene today, we wouldn't admire him as roguishly competent. We'd probably refer him to a grand jury.

It may be, as Caro suggests, that lesser politicians simply get less latitude. "Real political genius doesn't come along very often," he told me. "How long has it been since we had a leader who not only enunciated what government should do and laid our specific ends that people could unite behind, but also had the tactics and the determination to achieve those ends?"

But it might also be that if Obama really were this type of political genius, we'd reject and revile him. Such is the contradiction in our politics. We pine for leaders who strong-arm the system, just as long as they don't get caught.

I don't think we -- and by 'we', I mean the people who will elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- pine for that at all, Matt.  And I also don't mean to suggest that I will be helping Hillary Clinton get elected, because I won't.

Obama, like Bush before him, has coalesced power and authority in the executive branch.  It's not quite unitary executive stuff, but it's close, especially as it relates to his drone kill list.  What he does most effectively is manage around the intransigence of the legislative branch by utilizing executive orders.  He will do so shortly with regard to the unyielding Congressional obstinance of necessary and long-overdue immigration reform.  This should be a good thing, from a policy perspective as well as a political one.

If that action gets received well -- the hardest part will be enduring the conservative caterwauling about 'amnesty' -- it could lift the fortunes of Democrats in the midterms by enthusing the long-awaited Latino turnout.  That would also be a good thing, and just in the nick of time.

Update: Carla Seaquist has more good advice for the president in this regard.

See?  I don't hate Obama completely.  I just want him to be a better president.

The disintegrating relationship between Obama and Congressional Dems

Thank goodness there's something to blog about besides Rick Perry or Ferguson.

It was perhaps only a matter of time before Democrats, in the midst of a challenging midterm election campaign, began distancing themselves from an unpopular president. President Barack Obama's average approval rating sits at 41.6%, according to Real Clear Politics, and he has been under fire recently for the way he has handled crises both at home and abroad.

A New York Times story published Tuesday lays out the overall deteriorating relationship between Obama and congressional Democrats. One anecdote involving Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stemming from a late-June meeting with congressional leaders to discuss the deteriorating situation in Iraq, tells it best.

With Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, sitting a few feet away, Mr. Reid complained that Senate Republicans were spitefully blocking the confirmation of dozens of Mr. Obama’s nominees to serve as ambassadors. He expected that the president would back him up and urge Mr. McConnell to relent.

Mr. Obama quickly dismissed the matter.

"You and Mitch work it out," Mr. Obama said coolly, cutting off any discussion.

Mr. Reid seethed quietly for the rest of the meeting, according to four separate accounts provided by people who spoke with him about it. After his return to the Capitol that afternoon, Mr. Reid told other senators and his staff members that he was astonished by how disengaged the president seemed. After all, these were Mr. Obama’s own ambassadors who were being blocked by Mr. McConnell, and Secretary of State John Kerry had been arguing for months that getting them installed was an urgent necessity for the administration.

Long-time readers know that this is the sort of thing that made me step away from Obama years ago; his refusal to engage -- either as aggressor or as mediator -- in any meaningful way.  It has cost his supporters and the Democratic Party a lot, it's even cost the American people quite a bit (universal single payer  public option is what I mean)... and now his insouciance may finally be costing him.

The exchange between Obama and Reid, considering that Reid is Obama's staunchest congressional ally, was the most striking anecdote in a Times story that portrayed a president with dwindling friends on Capitol Hill. The article contains criticism from a wide array of Democrats, including from the red-state Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), one of the Senate's most left-leaning members.

Manchin, quote unquote, speaking about his relationship with the president: "It's fairly nonexistent, really. There's not much of (one)."

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) compared "schmoozing with elected officials" to "eating his spinach" for Obama, but Democrats told the paper that Obama's lack of reaching out harmed congressional relationships.

We could go on a bit more here, but I think you get the point.

As for Democrats in close elections in red states, they're not waiting around for the president to warm up.  Mark Begich in Alaska is running against Obama.  Alison Grimes in Kentucky is running against Obama.  Wendy Davis has given him a stiff arm or two to some criticism, including my own.  That's right; I am flip-flopping.  I no longer think that there are very many Blue Teamers in tight races that have more to gain than lose by standing with the president.

Contrary to what I advised here, it's time for every Democrat not in a safe district or a blue state to do what they have to do in order to get elected.  And if that means speaking out against Obama's slow response to the appalling civil rights travesties in Ferguson, or his lack of assertiveness in more forcefully coalescing international support against the gathering menace of ISIS, or addressing the First Amendment perils -- to say nothing of the threats to their lives -- to members of the US media at home and abroad... then do it.

When Rick Perry is drawing sympathy from Latinos (Dave Jimenez, about halfway down the page) who oppose his border surge but attended the governor's mugshot pep rally yesterday as a supporter, you know it's time for the rest of us to turn the page.

It's going to be a little too late for Obama to help Senate Democrats carry out his agenda if the upper chamber flips red in November.  By that time, it will be all they can do to prevent him from being impeached.

He'd better start making friends and mending fences.  Fast.  Likewise for the rest of you blue partisans; it's every man for himself.

Update: More on this from Ezra Klein at Vox, who says this is no big deal.  It doesn't seem like Ezra is looking far enough ahead -- as in beyond November.

Update II: At least one endangered Senate Democrat, David Pryor of Arkansas, is running hard on support of Obamacare, a topic Wayne at Texas Leftist has covered.