Thinking about polling and prediction

I have a few theories hunches on polling this cycle…and here’s how I see the final electoral map (Montana is the only true toss-up in my opinion)  OBAMA/BIDEN=326; MCCAIN/PALIN=209; UNKNOWN=3

Myles' final prediction for election night

1.)  Obama is overperforming on some polls because the people who support him are proud to say “Yes, I’m voting for Obama”; McCain supporters probably are less likely to respond at all to pollsters

2.)  Obama is underperforming on some polls because they don’t take in account cell-only voters. I have a detailed post on this subject on my personal blog.

3.)  Obama is underperforming on some polls because they don’t contact newly registered voters and there are numerous data points that indicate the Obama campaign and Democrats have registered millions of voters across the country.

4.)  The “Undecideds” are mostly McCain supporters who don’t want to admit they support McCain.  Therefore, McCain’s numbers will close on election day.

5.)  Obama will win any state he is currently up by +5% (and polling over 50%)

6.)  Mason-Dixon is given too much credit for accurate polling

7.)  Anytime a pundit says, “A democrat hasn’t won here since…” expect Obama to win that state.

Make your own map at Real Clear Politics.

Cellphone-only people strongly support Obama

Much debate has been made about Cellphone “only” people and their support for presidential candidates.  Those who live in the Politics 1.0 world tend to believe themes like “Young people don’t vote…cell phone users don’t answer polling questions…cell phone people are the same as land-line users…” Some are even stuck in 2004 and claim that cellphone users and young people were supposed to support Kerry–but they didn’t.

Obama on Cellphone

Perhaps the cynics and naysayers are correct about 2004.  Meanwhile, the use of cellphones and Web 2.0 has exploded and voters under 30 are far more likely to be in the Cellphone “only” crowd.

New Pew Polling shows Obama leads by 20% among Cellphone “only” voters. According to the Federal Government 15% of U.S. Households are cellphone “only” as of December 2007.  That number certainly has increased by now.  Just think…there are more high school grads; the iPhone, Centro and other phones have made cellphones more popular and in order to save money for the new gadgets people would likely drop the landlines.  Also cellphone coverage in rural areas has significantly increased in the past four years (thanks to all the “deregulators” out there!!).

My Social Media Sensei, Garrett Graff, has an article up this week on the influence of Millennials and the election. A passage:

The 85 million or so “millennials”—those Americans born between 1977 and 1997—are the largest generation in American history, and they’re just beginning to flex their muscle at the voting booth. In 2006, they proved decisive in the Democratic victories of Jim Webb in Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana. It’s a diverse and socially tolerant generation—one out of three millennials is nonwhite, and their views on stem-cell research and gay marriage are nearly the inverse of their conservative “greatest generation” grandparents.

Seeing that polls released on (9/23) indicate that Obama is tied in battleground Virginia, can you see now that his path to victory is a bit more clear?  (especially, when you consider voter registration has increased 200,000 and cell-only voters aren’t usually polled)  Bottomline:  On election night, watch Virginia’s returns…if Obama wins VA, he wins the entire election.

A few interesting blog posts on this topic here, here, and here.  Now do you understand why the Obama campaign used the text message to announce Senator Biden as VP choice??? This link has a detailed analysis of the Obama campaign’s text message strategy.

Pew Poll on Cellphone "only" voters (Sep '08)