I Was Wrong

I was wrong. In my Fearless Forecast of October 30 I predicted that the polls were underestimating the enthusiasm of the Tea Party movement. The November 2 elections included some truly historic wins for the Tea Party movement, but the public opinion polling overestimated rather than underestimated the enthusiasm.

The best and most telling example of this was Sharon Angle's loss to Harry Reid in Nevada. The polls right up until election day had Angle ahead by several points, but when all the votes were counted Reid won by 50.6 to 44.2. The same sort of thing happened in Pennsylvania where the last polls showed Pat Toomey ahead by five points and he only won by two.

Just like they say about real estate where the three most important things are location, location, location, in politics the three most important things are turnout, turnout, turnout.

I fear that I got so caught up in my enthusiasm for the Tea Party movement that I let it cloud my judgment. I suspect that the idea that my favorite candidates would do even better than the polls predicted was a bad case of wishful thinking.

This isn't the first time I've been wrong. I recall once back in 1957..., but then that's another story.

Elections 2010 - A Fearless Forecast

Here it is just three days before the 2010 general elections and I feel as if I have some sort of insight into the results. If I wait until after the election to write about this, it might seem like 20-20 hindsight, so I'll put it out there now.

I believe that there are going to be some big surprises in the November 2, elections. I say that because I don't believe that the polling companies are capable of dealing with the intensity of mood. When I studied this years ago we referred to it as "salience." The idea at the time was that some people would agree or disagree on an issue or candidate, but the strength of their conviction was what really mattered.

It is my sense of things that the uprising Tea Party rebellion has a great deal more intensity than is being measured in the polls so that if a Tea Party candidate is behind by five, or even slightly more than five, percent in the polls going into election day they have an excellent chance of winning. By the same token, Tea Party candidates that are running even will win by about five percent and those that are in the lead will win by even greater numbers.

I plan to look carefully at this after election day and will report the success or failure of this analysis.