CA-52: Poll finds controversy hurts DeMaio

KGTV and UT San Diego have done a Survey USA poll on the DeMaio controversy. Strangely, they only surveyed adults and never ask the election question. That'd make sense if DeMaio were a current elected official because we'd want to know if it's hurt his approval ratings. DeMaio isn't. He's a candidate. The only people who matter now are the voters. We're less than three weeks from an election and the question most want to know is whether this hurts DeMaio with the voters. Unfortunately, they don't ask anyone who they'll vote for. Obviously the controversy does hurt his image with some people, but the question is whether it hurts it with voters and whether they'll vote for him. DeMaio has a 34%/38% favorable/unfavorable rating with adults. I wonder how that is with voters and how it compares to Scott Peters. Someone should do a poll.

The Ground Game

I'm intimately familiar with the ground game. Over the last 6 years I've participated in phone calls or door knocking with more than 10 campaigns. Democrats believe the ground game is something being underestimated in polls. The first question is why do they think that? Pollsters weight their polls based on the expected electorate. Do the polls not contain enough young people? Single women? Blacks? They might not, but no one has presented evidence of this. Pollsters should be accounting for ground game.

Pollsters often use the respondent's answer whether they're likely to vote as a factor in including them in the survey. Usually more people say they'll vote/think they'll vote than will actually vote. I've talked to people on election day who tell me they'll vote and they don't end up voting. Are Democrats going to convince people who have decided not to vote to go to the ballot box? What will they say or do in the last three weeks they haven't been doing for the rest of the cycle?

The Democrats have let it be known that they're spending a lot on turnout, with a lot of paid operatives and that they have a lot of data. No matter how many operatives you have or how much you know about someone you aren't going to make them be home when you knock or answer the phone when you call. Anyone who has done the ground game knows that the vast majority of people aren't NH or you get VM.

I know that having information on voters can help but it'll help more with party faithful, who are high turn-out voters anyway. Knowing that someone is pro-choice is great but anyone who's been out there knows that most people you do get at home don't want to chat with you. If they don't, it's smart to just move on.

Democrats may win the ground game. Or they might not. In San Diego they twice as many walkers as we did and walked Republican neighborhoods while we didn't walk Democratic neighborhoods. We still beat them by more than people expected. I don't know that the Democratic ground game isn't accounted for in polls, but if it isn't I'm skeptical it'll mean enough to make up for the deficits we're seeing.

California VBM Ballot Returns

PDI is an incredible source for California voter data and they once again hit it out of the park. They are providing a daily count of VBM returns broken down many ways (e.g. congressional district, county) and by age and ethnic group. They also provide VBM and totals for 2010 and 2012 for comparison. If you want to follow California elections, check this site every morning.

I'm not going to get into an analysis of the VBM returns at this point. You have about 2% of the 2010 VBM totals right now and that's not representative enough to tell us anything. What's more, some counties are quick to report while others are slow. So a Republican part of a district might've reported, while a Democratic part might not. That'd skew results. Sacramento is usually not quick and they've reported 13 VBM ballots returned for CA-7. Yes, 13.

Once the returns start becoming significant the numbers to watch are VBM party breakdown for 2012 and 2014. I don't have any evidence there'll be a strong correlation between VBM party breakdown and results across years and we saw earlier this year that increased Democratic VBM cannibalized some of their election day voting. Still, if a party is doing better with VBM than 2012, they are likely to do better in the final vote.

Do polls overestimate Republican peformance?

While I was on Twitter I read a Tweet by Nate Cohn saying how the polls are looking good for Republicans. One of the Democratic replies had two reasons to discount that. I’ll get into one of them here and save the other one for a later post. The person said that Democrats beat the RCP average in every 2010 and 2012 poll. Was that true?

I figured I’d check, starting with 2012 Senate and Gubernatorial polls. I decided not to look at Presidential polls because 1) I wanted to go apples to apples running for the same position 2) Those polls all have the same two candidates and may be heavily influenced by that 3) We know Barack Obama beat the polls in 2012.

I only used states that had three polls in the last 10 days of the campaign, excluding those with one or two. This dropped a few states but I didn’t feel one or two polls provided enough data. I only used polls in the last 10 days. We know that in 2010 Republicans gained in the polls and that they beat most every poll taken more than two months before the election. So a Republican up 3 in the poll now might be up 7 later and could still not beat the poll and win.

I found 15 states that fell into the criteria in 2012. Eleven had Senate elections and 4 had gubernatorial elections. Democrats beat the polling averages in every contest, by an average of 4.5 points. That isn’t too surprising, since we know the polls showed Republicans stronger than they actually were based on Obama. While Republicans can come up with reasons it won’t be representative of 2014, (e.g. turnout, Obama not running), we can’t dismiss these ominous results. If pollsters have learned nothing from 2012, then the actual results might be better for Democrats than the polls show.

What about 2010? That’d seem to be better representative with similar turnout, no Presidential election, and the polls skewing Republican. Democrats also did better than polls indicated in 2010, but this time it was only in 21 of the 32 contests. I say “only” because it wasn’t the 2012 sweep. The percentage is still impressive. It includes three races Democrats won where they polled behind (IL-Gov, NV-Sen, Co-Sen) and one the GOP won where they polled behind (FL-Gov).

There’s nothing definitive about these results. Some of these pollsters aren’t active this year and Rasmussen was included in most of the races. So that one pollster skewed the polling average toward the GOP. We should still keep this in mind when looking at polls. The GOP might, once again, fall short.

Edit: Nate Silver tackles this very issue on 538.

CA-52: Could allegations derail DeMaio?

Carl DeMaio is a powerhouse of a candidate. He's an excellent fundraiser, knows everyone, has a vast campaign network, and ran an excellent 2012 mayoral campaign. The primary results were eye popping. Republican candidates beat congressman Peters by 15.4%. While Democrats won a few seats with larger margins in 2012, that edge looked fairly insurmountable. The polling has been better for Peters, but the pollster uses questionable samples. The conservative/Tea Party backlash against DeMaio may turn out to benefit him because Peters #1 campaign theme is that DeMaio is a Tea Party extremist.

Last week an October surprise came out that threatens DeMaio's bid. A former staffer that DeMaio claims was fired for plagiarism has alleged DeMaio sexually harassed him. DeMaio vehemently denies the claim and says the staffer was the one responsible for vandalism at DeMaio's campaign HQ. Right now it's a he said he said situation, with both parties having a reason to lie. DeMaio has faced allegations of lewd acts before. That either makes him likely to do this or someone who people will believe any false allegation against. There's also the underlying message that gay men just can't keep it in their pants. "We know how they are." If DeMaio were a Democrat, the LGBT community would be rallying behind him to dispel that awful stereotype. Since he's a Republican, there's silence. Shame on them for that.

I have no idea what happened and without any corroborating information, there's no way to prove DeMaio did anything inappropriate. Of course there's no way he can prove he didn't. Allegations like this, however, could tarnish DeMaio's image with swing voters and give Peters the win. Whether they're true or not. If stories on the web and his Twitter feed are any indication, DeMaio is going about campaigning as if this allegation never happened. That can work and really there's not much DeMaio can do other than deny it. Ignoring it won't make the story go away. And it could blow up even more with some new piece of evidence. Perhaps the best news for DeMaio is that no one else has leveled any sexual harassment allegations at him. Once one woman came out with a harassment claim against former San Diego mayor Bob Filner, 17 others did. If DeMaio is the type who harasses people he works with, he surely didn't start this year.

CA-52: Pastor opposes DeMaio

I hadn't mentioned this before, but I spoke with someone at the CA Republican convention who had worked for Carl DeMaio's congressional campaign. He told me some social conservatives said they wouldn't vote for DeMaio because he was gay. They reasoned that DeMaio winning or losing wouldn't change whether the GOP had the majority. So the party wouldn't be losing anything by DeMaio losing. Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church, a Republican, has decided to not only not support DeMaio, but endorse his Democratic opponent Congressman Scott Peters.

This operative didn't indicate that any of those people would endorse Peters, but that endorsement puts Peters in an odd situation. Peters can't exactly embrace the homophobe vote. He'd look like a homophobe himself and that's not going to help him at all. This pastor's public endorsement of Peters cuts both ways for DeMaio. On the one hand, it could inform some social conservatives that DeMaio is gay and that they should oppose him. DeMaio could lose some votes, although I think they sort of people who would oppose DeMaio for being gay aren't going to vote for a Democrat. They are likely to leave the race blank.

On the other hand, this public opposition really undercuts Peters' big criticism of Carl DeMaio, that DeMaio is a "Tea Party extremist." Peters has been using this line of attack for the last year. If DeMaio is the focus of homophobia, Peters will look like he's lying with this attack. While this rhetoric may hurt DeMaio with social conservatives, he might win more of the LGBT vote. Nothing says "you're one of us" quite like people hating you for being gay. Supporting DeMaio, even if they might disagree with him on some issues, is a way to stand against homophobia. Likewise criticism from the far right could help DeMaio with moderates who feel he's being unfairly attacked.

While this pastor is endorsing Peters, right wing social conservatives are far more likely to vote for no one than jump to Peters. On the other hand, every moderate or LGBT vote DeMaio gets is one less Peters gets. Thus, the votes DeMaio gains in the middle are worth double the ones he loses on the right.

I've said all along that the anti-gay sentiment wouldn't sink DeMaio, as it didn't sink his mayoral bid. I could be wrong and this could be a difference maker. I do, however, think announcements like this might help DeMaio more than hurt him.

Pollsters survey too many non-voters

I’ve noticed that a couple of pollsters (SurveyUSA and CNN/ORC) get their likely voter pool by randomly calling registered voters and asking them if they’re likely to vote. Others may use the same criteria. Using this criteria SurveyUSA indicated over 90% of San Diego’s registered voters would vote in mayoral race. The actual number was less than half that. Asking people if they’re likely to vote includes people who will vote along with many who won’t. These non-voters showed the San Diego mayoral race to be much closer than it actually was.

What pollsters need to do is to use a percentage similar to those that’ll actually vote. The linked chart shows the percentage of registered voters who actually vote.

2008 average state: 71% turnout
2010 average state: 50% turnout
2012 average state: 69% turnout

Notes: I couldn’t find accurate registration numbers for New Hampshire or Rhode Island. Thus, I excluded them from the chart. The 2014 registration numbers reflect the most recent report the state has on their website. In some cases this could a year old. Wyoming allows same day registration and voting. Other states due also, but Wyoming doesn’t make them permanently registered voters in their number registered. So their turnout in Presidential years is above 100%. Many states separate active voters and inactive voters. Most of these include all these voters in their registered tallies. Colorado and Nevada do not. So their turnout rate is relatively high. It’s worth noting that Washington and Oregon, which have all VBM elections have a higher percentage of registered voters voting than other states.

As the chart shows, on average half of registered voters voted in the last mid-term. Some pollsters pre-qualify voters based on their voting history. Those that just choose registered voters randomly, regardless of whether they’ve voted or haven’t, need to find a way to exclude nearly half the voters who answer their surveys. That SUSA survey in CA-52 used 83% of registered voters. This SUSA Florida survey uses 86% of registered voters. In 2010, 49% of Florida’s registered voters voted. The inclusion of non-voters mean that you just can’t know how accurate the poll is.