Posts tagged Florida

Gravis Marketing: A Deeper Analysis

6
6 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

Editor’s note: This is another arti­cle from dawolf, who had pre­vi­ously ana­lyzed some polling data from Gravis Mar­ket­ing. As always, we encour­age our read­ers to con­tribute arti­cles to Log­a­rchism.

On the Octo­ber 14, I exam­ined a poll of Gravis Mar­ket­ing and found some dubi­ous num­bers in the crosstabs. Doug Kaplan, CEO of Gravis Mar­ket­ing, has stated that demo­graphic adjust­ments account for these anom­alous results, and that demo­graphic adjust­ments are being con­tin­u­ously adjusted and may vary between weeks.

Unfor­tu­nately, Kaplan has declined to pro­vide any raw num­bers or weight­ings so it is not pos­si­ble to ver­ify his claim. But we can have a look at what Gravis polls of Florida actu­ally say, and if there is evi­dence of demo­graphic weight­ing. It should be noted that the poll exam­ined does not con­tain the words “Demo­graphic” or “Weight­ing” or indeed any men­tion of any such adjust­ment. How­ever, the most recent poll of Florida (posted since the ear­lier arti­cle) does men­tion this.

The basic con­cept of demo­graphic weight­ing is that a typ­i­cal sam­ple might have too many respon­dents in one cat­e­gory, and not enough in another cat­e­gory. For exam­ple, maybe you esti­mate that His­pan­ics will form ten per­cent of your final vot­ers: but in a poll of 1,000 peo­ple, only 50 His­pan­ics were polled. One way of adjust­ing for this is to weight the His­panic respon­dents to ten per­cent in your final results.  (more…)

Ballot Watch: The South (Part 2, The Swinging South)

164
7 months ago
by Monotreme in

This is Bal­lot Watch. Today is the 15th (and last) in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these cov­ered top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, but the remain­der looked at a state level. With this sec­ond part of our two-​​part arti­cle on the South, our series closes.

Of the ten states in this region, the only com­pet­i­tive states for Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are Florida (29 elec­toral votes, with a state Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index of R+2) and North Car­olina (15 elec­toral votes, with a state PVI of R+4), the sub­jects of today’s arti­cle. Both went for Obama in 2008. Florida and North Car­olina also have one Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor each (Kay Hagen in North Car­olina, Bill Nel­son in Florida). Florida’s gov­er­nor is Repub­li­can Rick Scott, and North Carolina’s retir­ing gov­er­nor is Demo­c­rat Bev Per­due. Her seat is up for elec­tion next month. She declined to run this year in the face of mount­ing crit­i­cism; she has a dis­ap­proval rat­ing of 59 per­cent, the high­est for any gov­er­nor.

Florida’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Rick Scott is also unpop­u­lar, with 38 per­cent approv­ing of his job per­for­mance vs 48 per­cent dis­ap­prov­ing. DC has given us a run­down on Scott’s effort to purge voter rolls: Scott said he expected to remove reg­is­tra­tion for 2,600 ille­gal immi­grant vot­ers. In the event, the Gov­er­nor was only 92 per­cent wrong. The real num­ber was 206, or 0.00184 per­cent of the 11.2 mil­lion reg­is­trants. Iron­i­cally, or per­haps pre­dictably, while Florida Repub­li­can lead­ers beat the bushes look­ing for fraud­u­lent voter reg­is­tra­tion, they’re embroiled in their own voter fraud scan­dal. It might back­fire on them in the gen­eral election.

In con­trast with the states of the Deep South, which have exactly one House seat in play (Georgia’s 12th, cur­rently held by the only white South­ern Demo­c­rat), Florida has eight of 27, and North Car­olina five of 13, seats in play. Those are listed under the indi­vid­ual states after the jump, along with any impor­tant bal­lot ini­tia­tives and North Carolina’s guber­na­to­r­ial election.

(more…)

Shot to the Foot

6
7 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Nathan Sproul

In the face of scares about “voter fraud” lead­ing to restric­tive voter ID laws, a bomb­shell exploded days ago when it was revealed that the com­pany hired by the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee to run voter reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves in vital swing states has been sub­mit­ting fraud­u­lent reg­is­tra­tion forms.

It’s worth look­ing at the back­ground and con­text of what hap­pened, the details of what is hap­pen­ing, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for what might hap­pen. We’ve seen this tale before, but past is not pro­logue. It will turn out dif­fer­ently this time. Per­haps this is what it looks like when a whole national polit­i­cal party shoots itself in its col­lec­tive foot. (more…)

Ballot Watch: Obamacare

22
8 months ago
by dcpetterson in

This is Bal­lot Watch. Today is the fourth in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these will cover top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, while oth­ers will look at a state level.

Pun­dits used to say that Pres­i­dent Obama would not (or, some­times they claimed, “could not”) run for reëlec­tion on his record as Pres­i­dent. They specif­i­cally claimed he could not (or would not) run on his great­est sin­gu­lar leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment, the Afford­able Care Act (ACA), also known as Oba­macare. Of course, most of these pun­dits also claimed this elec­tion would be a “ref­er­en­dum” on the President’s first term, not so much a “choice elec­tion” where the pub­lic was pre­sented with an option between visions for the future.

Con­found­ing these par­tic­u­lar pun­dits, Pres­i­dent Obama is, in fact, run­ning on his record, and is press­ing the case for Oba­macare. Even Repub­li­can Vice Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Paul Ryan has pre­sented the upcom­ing elec­tion as a “choice” (“You are enti­tled to the clear­est pos­si­ble choice, because the time for choos­ing is draw­ing near…”). The Demo­c­ra­tic defense on these issues is hav­ing an effect. Just this last Sun­day, Mitt Rom­ney had to admit there were many things he “liked” in health care reform, after hav­ing repeat­edly promised to “repeal” it, on “day one.”

A num­ber of states, appar­ently in an effort to affect the vote this Novem­ber, have bal­lot ini­tia­tives deal­ing with Oba­macare. What will be the effect of these mea­sures on the upcom­ing elec­tion? What prac­ti­cal effect might they have on the future of health care reform in Amer­ica? (more…)

Dread Scott?

48
11 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Must we now dread Scott?

A lit­tle over a week ago, I wrote about Florida’s impor­tance in the upcom­ing elec­tion, and the efforts of the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor there to dis­en­fran­chise Florid­i­ans who are likely to vote Demo­c­ra­tic. There have been fur­ther devel­op­ments in the story.

The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) has filed a law­suit in an effort to block Gov­er­nor Rick Scott’s attempt to purge minori­ties from the voter rolls. In response, Gov­er­nor Scott announced his intent to sue the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity to gain access to a data­base he says will assist his efforts.

Gov­er­nor Scott’s con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram is intended, he says, to ensure that non-​​citizens in Florida don’t vote. The state is match­ing infor­ma­tion on driver’s licenses (which often includes cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus) against lists of reg­is­tered vot­ers. Over 2,600 let­ters were sent — 87 per­cent to African-​​Americans and His­pan­ics — inform­ing selected vot­ers that they would be dropped from the vot­ing rolls unless they could prove their cit­i­zen­ship within thirty days. Many of the peo­ple indi­cated as non-​​citizens on their licenses have since become cit­i­zens, and sim­ply not altered their records. In Miami-​​Dade County, forty of those receiv­ing notice have been shown to be non-​​citizens. More than five hun­dred have already sup­plied proof of cit­i­zen­ship, pro­vid­ing (so far) more than a ten-​​to-​​one ratio of false pos­i­tives. (more…)

The Battle for Florida

12
11 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Yes­ter­day, Michael Weiss reported on the cur­rent bal­ance of the Elec­toral Col­lege as part of his Elec­tion Watch series. Look­ing at his data, it’s clear that Florida may be an impor­tant fac­tor in the upcom­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, as it was in 2000’s Bush-​​Gore con­test.

This may explain the extra­or­di­nary mea­sures which the cur­rent Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of the state is fol­low­ing to deter­mine who will be able to vote. It also explains the inter­est that var­i­ous minor­ity rights groups have in keep­ing that effort hon­est. (more…)

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