Let us be clear. If the Republicans are able to retake Congress on November 2nd, it will likely be a bloodless coup of our government. It would be a coup that was attained by corporate dollars. It would be a coup whose main weapon was the corporate purchase of guided misinformation that makes it plausible that those that have destroyed the economy of the country warrant an opportunity to fix it. Of course those in the know are absolutely sure that the goal is but the continued pilfering of the country.
I believe the Gallup poll is but a tool being used to discourage the progressive majority from voting. It is an affront to our Democracy. Make no mistake, irrespective of what is heard on most media, a media that must toe a corporate line, the election results are not cooked. You will decide on November 2nd if you want the country to move forward or maintain the status quo, in effect the continued transfer of wealth to the top 2%.
America, go vote and vote your family’s, financial, and country’s interest.
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My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://books.egbertowillies.com – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
Gallup Poll Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport posted an online response this morning to the critical analysis of the Gallup likely voter model by Emory University Professor Alan Abramowitz that appeared on the Huffington Post earlier this week. Newport argues that Abramowitz misinterpreted Gallup’s data and simply "did not like" the "double-digit Republican lead among likely voters" in the Gallup’s recent poll. For the past two weeks, Gallup has released results showing a huge advantage for Republicans among likely voters on the generic ballot for Congress, the question that asks voters whether they will support the Democrat or the Republican candidate in their own congressional district. They have released results for two scenarios: When they assume a turnout level of 55% of adults nationwide, Gallup’s most recent release (based on interviews conducted between September 30 and October 10) gave Republicans a 12-point lead (53% to 41%). When they assume a turnout of 40%, which is consistent with typical off-year voting, they show an even wider, 17-point Republican lead (56% to 39%).
Abramowitz considers the results "wildly implausible" in comparison to findings from previous exit polls. In particular, he focused on results that Gallup shared with him among the non-white voters that show the Republican candidate leading by a 10-point margin (52% to 42%). Drawing on exit polls, he infers that this subgroup is likely two-thirds Latino and concludes that, as such, the apparent shift to Republicans is the "most implausible result" in the Gallup Poll.
Some Democrats have seized on the Abramowitz analysis, including Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network (NDN), who concluded that the poll "is so statistically flawed that Gallup should revise the model and its results or take it down from its website immediately."
In response, Newport addresses Abramowitz’ subgroup analysis:
Having the in-depth Gallup tabs in hand, Alan took issue with various voting patterns among subgroups, mainly saying that they were "too Republican". But of course, in a situation in which the Republicans have a historically high lead on the generic ballot, Republicans will mathematically have a historically high lead in many of the subgroups within the overall pools of voters. That point should, for most observers, go without saying.
One of the specifics of Alan’s micro-analysis of estimated votes among smaller subgroups focused on "nonblack, nonwhites." That’s actually a group not represented in the cross-tabular data we typically use and was not in the data provided Alan, but one Alan apparently attempted to identify by performing his own calculations. (Typically a scholar would contact us or inquire about aspects of the data they are unsure of, but I don’t believe we heard from Alan on this one.) In this particular case, we would have told Alan that nonwhites in our usual procedures is a broad, mixed group of respondents, including blacks, Hispanics, Asians, other races, and a significant number of respondents who chose not to identify their race. Alan attempted to make guesses or assumptions about the composition of this group, and made an assumption as a result that Hispanics in the likely voter sample must be too Republican in voting orientation.
