There is an extraordinary upset coming in the midterms. But the traditional media is dead wrong in all their assertions about Republican success.
Democrats are actually winning in all the key demographics: 18 to 29 year olds in 2008 - who are now 18 to 30 year olds in 2010 - overwhelmingly voted for Democrats in 2008.
African-Americans, empowered in 2008 by an African-American President, are not "exhausted" at all. They are energized by their influence in exposing insidious racism via the same old Southern strategy of the Republican Party for two straight years.
But there are far more reasons why every Democratic vote counts, and why Democrats are ridiculously underreported in all the published polls.
Women are also alarmed by an extreme Christian fundamentalist right wing openly anti-women's rights. Sensibly, they also see the fantastic lack of congruence in Republican arguments against higher deficits but for tax breaks for the rich that only increase those deficits. Women understand money!
Hispanic voters have been absolutely alienated by Republican candidates. Is there any doubt that Democrats are far more inclined to more favorable immigration and naturalization policies for them?
The reason the pollsters are so dead wrong has been exposed by Nate Silver in his NYT essay, "Bypassed Cell Phones: Biased Polls?"
On Wednesday, Pew Research issued a study suggesting that the failure to include cellphones in a survey sample — and most pollsters don’t include them — may bias the results against Democrats. Pew has addressed this subject a number of times before, and in their view, the problem seems to be worsening. Indeed, this is about what you might expect, since the fraction of voters who rely on cellphones is steadily increasing: about 25 percent of the adult population now has no landline phone installed at all....
[my emph]
But studies have proven that nonresponse error and coverage error have yielded sampling errors that yield much higher margins of error than have been cited.
The upshot: Wholly illegitimate published polling results!
In May 2010, a wonkish social research firm, RTI International published draft-only, non-peer-reviewed material, the results of telephone surveys in Florida. It is entitled, Cell and Landline Phone Usage Patterns among Young Adults and the Potential for Nonresponse Error in RDD Surveys.
Among their findings....
... Surveys using traditional random-digit dial (RDD) sample frames of landline numbers exclude the 38 percent of adults age 18 to 24 who live in households without landline phone service. In addition to this well‐documented coverage issue, a further problem is the potential difficulty in contacting and interviewing an additional set of about 19 percent of young adults who live in households with a landline phone, but primarily use a cell phone. RDD telephone surveys may further underrepresent the full population of young adults by excluding those who primarily rely on cell phones and are difficult to reach by landline phones. Young adults who primarily use cell phones may have important similarities to those who only have wireless phone service in terms of key survey measures.
....This analysis provided data on how young adults’ phone usage could potentially contribute to nonresponse error, beyond coverage error....
If anything, this study understates the breadth of the error as regards 18-30 year olds:
The researchers were only concerned with 18-24 year olds!
Hang on for more on November 2nd, but this is why Getting Out the Vote has never been more critical for our side.