Even More On GOTV... And Push Polling

Kos earlier blogged the NY Times story on the Dem GOTV (better, in some places much better, but still needs work). In fact, we've been following this important aspect of the 2006 vote here, here and here. When talking about the benefit, keep in mind we want to focus on the GOTV differential (i.e. how much better is the 72 hour project than the corresponding Dem effort?) since GOTV for competitive races isn't done in a vacuum (except maybe in odd situations like CT Sen, where Lieberman's GOTV structure is unclear).

To add to the mix, the WaPo on Sunday posted this piece (reviewed on pollster.com) by

Professor Michael P. McDonald, a nationally renowned authority on voter turnout

The title is intriguing enough but take a look at point # 4.

   If you're an upstanding U.S. citizen, you'll stand up and be counted this Election Day, right? Well, maybe not. Just because Americans can vote doesn't mean they do. But who shows up is what decides the tight races, which makes turnout one of the most closely watched aspects of every election -- and one that has fostered a number of myths. Here are five, debunked:

5 Myths About Turning Out The Vote

1. Thanks to increasing voter apathy, turnout keeps dwindling.

2. Other countries' higher turnout indicates more vibrant democracies.

3. Negative ads turn off voters and reduce turnout.

4. The Republican "72-hour campaign" will win the election.

5. Making voter registration easier would dramatically increase turnout.

The entire article should be read... shortening it the way I did does Prof. McDonald an injustice, so click the link and read it. Here's one point especially of interest:

The Republican "72-hour campaign" will win the election.

Not necessarily. You can lead citizens to the ballot, but you can't make them vote.

Republicans supposedly have a super-sophisticated last-minute get-out-the-vote effort that identifies voters who'll be pivotal in electing their candidates. Studies of a campaign's personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates' likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don't know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail.

Republican get-out-the-vote efforts could make a difference in close elections if Democrats simply sat on the sidelines. But this year Democrats have vowed to match the GOP mobilization voter for voter. So it'll take more than just knowing whether a prospective voter owns a Volvo or a BMW for Republicans to eke out victory in a competitive race.

Other authorities use more of a 1-2% differential in terms of what GOTV is worth.

But there's another aspect to GOTV that sometimes flies under the radar. That's when push polling or other borderline unethical practices intervene, sometimes issue-based rather than candidate-based. For example, this Daily Kos diary documents a poll by Tarrance Group that asks, among other questions

Do you support medical experiments on unborn babies?

Match that with the MD push poll thread question (reported from TPM), catalogued at pollster.com

do you support medical research experiments on unborn babies?

That was done by a different firm than Tarrance, but similar question. I ran this by a Dem consultant familiar with campaigns to review and he told me

What's interesting is that the diarist's call looks like a Tarrance tracking survey rather than a classic push poll, yet seems to ask similar "questions," especially with regard to "medical experiments on unborn babies."    That particular bit of rhetoric crosses an ethical line for me, whether it qualifies as push polling or not. But regardless, what's really interesting is the commonality in message.  It certainly suggests some central coordination -- the other side has finally figured out how to talk to their base about stem cells.

Is there a coordinated message filtering down from GOP Sleaze Central? Is this a "values voter" thang? Is it an anti-stem cell campaign? And if this is a moderate/centrist election, will it matter in the end?

If you receive one of these, write pollster.com or Josh Marshall and let's collect the data. Record it on your answering machine, if handy, and get the firm's name and the question asked. Some lines simply shouldn't be crossed - it, among other things, gives polling and GOTV a bad rep.

Comments

[Jodi]

To pick one question out of a group doesn't really give the flavor of the poll.

What are the other questions?

I personally don't get phone polls because they can't get through my phone firewall.

essentially -
1. If this is solicitation, or a poll, please hang up and don't call again
2. If this call is important please press 3 on your touchpad.
3. Have a nice day.

[[People that know me, press 3 right away to get through.]]

[rat bastahd]

I got one from Polling Point this weekend via email. They certainly knew who all my candidates were, asking about specific races, and the issues were definitely written with an obvious rightward bias. Lots of abortion questions. I figured, fine, I'll mess with you right back. I went hard left with all my answers, unless the choices were horrendous then I simply checked "Don't know." I refuse to be cornered into an answer they want me to give.

Anyone know the deal with Polling Point? I searched on blogger.com and didn't see anything about them.

[DemFromCT]

What William Ockham said, plus the question as phrased is inappropriate any time, anywhere.

[Jodi]

Thanks for the prompts. Sorry to ruffle the feathers the wrong way.

Ok, I see.
I have no excuse except expecting to see everything
right away.

:)

I am glad I have a phone firewall.

It keeps out the computer calls also.

[William Ockham]

For folks who know how to use their browser,

Click on the links in the post and you'll see a list the questions asked by the pollsters in question and some very good discussion of the various techniques involved. If you can't be bothered to follow the links, don't criticize the post.

[William Ockham]

DemFromCT,

I realize that the way the question as phrased conjures up all sorts of awful imagery, but is the average person so ignorant of reality as to not realize that medical research on pregnant women and their fetuses happens every single day (and all medical research is "experimental" in one form or another). This sort of research is completely non-controversial and has added immensely to our understanding of biology, disease, and the dangers of all sorts of different drugs taken during pregnancy. The forces of ignorance baffle me.

[Mimikatz]

One thing that the GOP's GOTV may not be taking into account is the disatisfaction on the part of many people who voted for Bush in 2004. Either the polls are wrong, or there is a fair amount of dissatisfaction among moderate Pubs and Independents who must have voted for Bush or he wouldn't have won. These people may be contacted and the contact will remind them to vote against the GOP candidates. This used to be the Dems' problem, in that there were registered Dems who had swung over to voting GOP but didn't change their registraton, and who would be contacted by Dems and vote for the GOP.

It will bew very interesting to see how this plays out in the Midwest and West, in particualr, although most of the attention is in the Northeast.

[DemFromCT]

Charlie Cook was just on MSNBC after visiting us yesterday on Daily Kos, reiterating there's absolutely no change in the landscape, and is not pretty for the GOP.

[demtom]

I just want to say how pleased I am Charlie Cook made an appearance at Kos. He could just as easily have taken the standard, Joe Klein approach (highlight the dumbest anonymous post you can find, use it to discredit the entire site and call the whole group whackos); instead, he engaged, and was treated with due respect. Great stuff.

I think this is the point in the election cycle where meta-narratives, like what Cook offers, matter far more than individual-race polls -- whether positive- or negative-moving. This is easier said than done for all of us, but, unless you're personally involved in a given race, it does little good to glance at the latest up-to-the-moment polling sample (Menendez up by 8! No -- he's down by 3!). There will be an encompassing trend in the last week/days that pushes races one way or another...possibly a slight return home for GOPers, pulling some of their not-quite-lost candidates back from the fire; or, a final "we've been mad all year and we really mean" tilt to Dems, in which case, as both Cook and Rothenberg suggest, we could see even more GOP defeats than moderately optimistic Dem forecasters envision. The overall gestalt suggests the latter, and we here will all root for that. But, my main point: don't take the latest Rasmussen/McClatchy/Quinnipiac as necessarily the ultimate harbinger. At this point, we simply have to wait for the vote tabulation.

[William Ockham]

Just a note for posterity's sake, Typepad went a bit hinky today and the comments to this post are not appearing in the right order.

[DemFromCT]

demtom, I couldn't have been more pleased, and I couldn't agree with you more. As someone observed, it was like Phil Jackson or Pat Reilly dropping by to chat about basketball with us.

[DemFromCT]

William Ockham, I haven't a clue as to why it happened.

[Jodi]

Personally I think that it was because he was speaking to me in a rude manner.