Pre-Thanksgiving Odds & Ends

Initiative and Referenda Legacy blog posts Polls in the News The 2005 Race

Just enough time today to pass on a few odds and ends before taking a few days off for the holiday:   

A New Poll – We have another national public to watch.   It is a partnership of The Cook Political Report and a new a new "bi-partisan" polling and strategic consulting firm called RT Strategies.   The first poll takes a closer look at perceptions of the two "presumptive frontrunners" for each party’s presidential nomination:  Hillary Clinton and John McCain.   Charlie Cook reviews the results in his weekly column and the full results are available at the Political Report website.

A New Take on Fraud in Ohio – Hamilton College Political Science Professor Phillip Klinker has posted a "quick and dirty" regression analysis of the Ohio’s county level vote on the blog "PolySigh."  Once Klinker controlled for county level variables like race, Kerry’s 2004 vote and 2005 turnout, the statistical impact of different types of voting equipment on the level of support for Ohio Issues 2 through 5 was tiny.   If anything, the electronic counting equipment that the fraud theorists argue was used to rig the outcome correlated with higher vote for Issues 3, 4 and 5.   These results imply that if "fraud" occurred anywhere in Ohio, it occurred everywhere, including ballots cast on punch cards or optically scanned paper ballots.  See my last post for why that’s important.

[Clarification – I’ll agree with commenter Nash on one thing.  My second to last sentence above was poorly written.  Here’s a second try:  The results of the regression imply that if a fraud explains the discrepancy between the Dispatch poll and the results, it occurred everywhere at roughly the same level.   That would include counties that used punch cards or paper ballots].

A Thanksgiving break – I’m taking a few days off to rest up and enjoy the holiday with my family.  Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving and see you next week!

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.