Why The Polls Under State Romney Vote
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com
Republicans are getting depressed under an avalanche
of polling suggesting that an Obama victory is in the offing. They, in
fact, suggest no such thing! Here's why:
1. All of the polling out there
uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for
weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge
margin.
In English, this means that when you do a poll you
ask people if they are likely to vote. But any telephone survey always
has too few blacks, Latinos, and young people and too many elderly in
its sample. That's because some don't have landlines or are rarely at
home or don't speak English well enough to be interviewed or don't have
time to talk. Elderly are overstated because they tend to be home and
to have time. So you need to increase the weight given to interviews
with young people, blacks and Latinos and count those with seniors a bit
less.
Normally, this task is not difficult. Over the
years, the black, Latino, young, and elderly proportion of the
electorate has been fairly constant from election to election, except
for a gradual increase in the Hispanic vote. You just need to look back
at the last election to weight your polling numbers for this one.
But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for
example, usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up
14% of the vote. Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and
college kids almost doubled their vote share. Almost all pollsters are
using the 2008 turnout models in weighting their samples. Rasmussen,
more accurately, uses a mixture of 2008 and 2004 turnouts in determining
his sample. That's why his data usually is better for Romney.
But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm
among Obama's core demographic support due to high unemployment,
disappointment with his policies and performance, and the lack of
novelty in voting for a black candidate now that he has already served
as president.
If you adjust virtually any of the published polls to
reflect the 2004 vote, not the 2008 vote, they show the race either
tied or Romney ahead, a view much closer to reality.
2. Almost all of the published
polls show Obama getting less than 50% of the vote and less than 50% job
approval. A majority of the voters either support Romney or are
undecided in almost every poll.
But the fact is that the undecided vote always goes
against the incumbent. In 1980 (the last time an incumbent Democrat was
beaten), for example, the Gallup Poll of October 27th had Carter ahead
by 45-39. Their survey on November 2nd showed Reagan catching up and
leading by three points. In the actual voting, the Republican won by
nine. The undecided vote broke sharply -- and unanimously -- for the
challenger.
An undecided voter has really decided not to back the
incumbent. He just won't focus on the race until later in the game.
So, when the published poll shows Obama ahead by, say, 48-45, he's really probably losing by 52-48!
Add these two factors together and the polls that are
out there are all misleading. Any professional pollster (those
consultants hired by candidates not by media outlets) would publish two
findings for each poll -- one using 2004 turnout modeling and the other
using 2008 modeling. This would indicate just how dependent on an
unusually high turnout of his base the Obama camp really is.
.
"2016:Obama's America" will be released on DVD on Oct. 16.
We were running a little late when my wife and I headed to the movie theater last month to see the documentary “2016: Obama’s America.” But I told her not to worry, since there would be 10 to 15 minutes of commercials and previews before the show started.
“And besides, we’ll probably have our choice of seats,” I added. “No way will this one be full.”
Boy! Was I ever wrong! Even though it was a lovely Saturday afternoon, the theater was packed. And the sentiment of the crowd was more like a Tea Party rally than any movie audience I’d ever seen.
If you haven’t seen this explosive documentary, please make plans to do so. Encourage all of your concerned family and friends to join you. Even better, take a few undecided voters with you — or even some liberals whose minds haven’t been sealed shut. The impact on them could be phenomenal.
“2016: Obama’s America” opened in mid-July in one movie theater in Houston. By August, it was playing on more than 1,200 screens across the country. This month it is showing in more than 2,000 theaters in all 50 States. And by this time next month, it should be available on DVD, so you’ll be able to see it at home and lend it to others.
The movie is based the bestselling book The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza, who served as narrator and co-director of the film. I’ve had the pleasure of introducing Dinesh at several conferences, and I arranged an exclusive interview with him for Personal Liberty Digest™.
During our conversation, D’Souza told me that both liberals and conservatives make a big mistake when they think Barack Obama has failed to achieve his goals. High unemployment, crippling debt, a weak foreign policy and fading military power are not accidents, according to D’Souza. They are actually the results of the bigger objectives that Obama seeks: the decline of American prosperity and power in the world.
Of course, no politician in America could ever admit that those are his real goals. D’Souza said that as a result: “Obama has to camouflage what he wants to do. Now that he’s in campaign mode, he presents himself as a budget cutter, as a friend of Israel, and so on. He’s depending on the ignorance of the American people not to see through what he says.”
All that will change if Obama gets re-elected.
“In the second term, if he gets one, the real Obama will emerge. It will not be a pretty sight,” Dinesh told me.
I asked him to explain a warning he included near the end of his new book Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream: “The most dangerous man in America currently lives in the White House.”
Dinesh said: “Obama is dangerous because he subscribes to an ideology that is very dangerous for America. He wants to knock this country off its pedestal so we are no longer #1. He wants to transfer wealth away from America to the rest of the world. And he wants to weaken our position in the world.”
Dinesh believes Obama’s liberal supporters would be shocked if they understood what is really driving our President. At the core of his worldview is a virulent anti-colonialism, with the United States as the chief culprit.
“America has more because America has stolen this wealth from others,” Dinesh said Obama believes. “And America must now pay it back.” In Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream, D’Souza explains what this means:
Many of Obama’s supporters rail against the top 1 percent, fancying themselves in the lowly 99 percent, and this may be true as far as they are concerned. But it is not true as far as Obama is concerned. When he talks about the 1 percent and the 99 percent, he is using a global basis of comparison. So by Obama’s measure, the vast majority of Americans are counted as rich.Obama wants to take their wealth from them and give it to those who he believes deserve it.
“He’s doing this in the name of global justice,” D’Souza said. Obama will not consider his job finished until “the American standard of living is comparable to that of the rest of the world.” In other words, Obama thinks of this country as a plunderer and of himself as the messianic leader whose job is to “restore fairness.”
Interestingly enough, while they are polar opposites politically, D’Souza and Obama share many things in common. A native of Mumbai, India, Dinesh grew up in a different part of the world, just as Obama did.
They both were born in the same year, attended Ivy League colleges, graduated in the same year and married in the same year.
But as D’Souza explains: “Here is the paradox: I am a Third World guy who has embraced America, and Obama is an American who has embraced a Third World ideology.”
D’Souza told me that he doesn’t consider the film a “don’t vote for this guy message,” rather it’s a “find out who he really is” message. Or, as the tagline to the movie puts it, “Love him or hate him, you don’t know him.”
Ultimately, D’Souza believes, “2016: Obama’s America” isn’t just about Obama. “It’s about the American dream itself,” he said. “The truth is that Obama has a different dream from most of us. It’s emblazoned across his book. As he says in the title, it’s the dream from his father.
“He’s entitled to have such a dream, if he wishes. But he is not entitled to impose that dream on the American people without their knowledge and consent.”
That’s really what the coming election is all about, isn’t it — our different visions for the future of our country.
As D’Souza reveals, Obama believes he is destined to be “the architect of American decline.” He not only wants to see this country lose its superpower status, but he wants to “fundamentally transform” America so that the “shining city on the hill” becomes just another shantytown in the global village.
If you need one more reason to see “2016: Obama’s America,” consider this response from an Obama campaign official: “This movie is complete fiction and rooted in lies, distortions and conspiracy theories about the President, rather than facts.”
Considering how much is at stake, I hope you’ll make plans now to see “2016: Obama’s America” and take some friends with you.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
–Chip Wood
