How New Voters May Affect the Final Percentages
Sat Oct 30, 2004 at 08:00:41 PM PDT
I've seen many, many diaries discussing current poll numbers, quite often offering cogent criticism of likely voter models and their effects on the percentages. But I haven't seen any diaries discussing how a huge influx of Kerry-leaning new voters would affect those percentages.
If I've simply missed such diaries, let me know and I'll delete this one. Otherwise, I think this element needs to be aired. Bush is at 48% in some polls now, but he may fall well below that number in the one poll that matters.
Now I know we've had discussions of Chris Bowers'
Incumbent Rule. According to Chris, it's a safe bet that Bush will receive no more than one-third of the undecided vote, and he points out that some modern incumbent presidents have received only one-fifth of that vote.
So, if we start with a 47%-47% tie in a poll of likely voters, with 3% undecided, Chris's smart money would have those undecideds moving 2 to 1 for Kerry, giving him a 49%-48% lead.
However, for whatever reasons, polls near election eve almost always overstate the incumbent's support. According to Guy Molyneux:
There have been four incumbent presidential elections in the past quarter-century. If we take an average of the final surveys conducted by the three major networks and their partners, we find that in three of these the incumbent fell short of or merely matched his final poll number, while exceeding it only once, and then by just a single point (Ronald Reagan). On average, the incumbent comes in half a point below his final poll result.
--snip--
The numbers for challengers look quite different. In every case, the challenger(s) -- I include Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 -- exceed their final poll result by at least 2 points, and the average gain is 4 points. In 1980, Ronald Reagan received 51 percent, fully 6 percentage points above his final poll results.
So, if we again take that 47%-47% poll and apply the average numbers above, Kerry's support would grow to 51%, while Bush's would slip to 46.5%. Why? I'm not sure, exactly. Call it a mixture of Chris's incumbent rule and an endemic weakness in polls of overstating the incumbent's current support. Faulty likely-voter models may be the cause.
Now, I know what you're saying: I thought you were going to talk about the effects of new voters on the percentages. I am. Right now.
In 2000, some 105,417,258 votes for president were counted, according to Dave Leip's Atlas of Presidential Elections, one of the rockinest, sockinest sources out there. If the same number of votes are cast this year, Kerry's 51% would translate to about 53.75 million votes, and Bush's 46.5% would yield 49 million.
That's a great margin, but it's not enough for me, and that's where the new voters come in. Numerous experts have been predicting turnout as high as 120 million, a 14% increase over 2000. We've seen that Democrats have won registration battles in numerous battleground states. We've also seen that young voters are displaying far greater interest in this year's election. According to a recent Zogby poll, 77% of 18- to 24-year-olds support Kerry. A Harvard poll of college students shows them preferring Kerry by 52% to 39%, with 8% undecided.
We have also seen that, by a margin of 37% to 27%, more Democrats believe that this is the most important election of their lifetime, and another 40% of Democrats view it as one of the most important. That's 77% of Democrats believing that this election is the most important or one of the most important they've seen, and the many reports of early voting we've seen at dKos show that Democrats are coming out to vote in high numbers.
Finally, it is accepted as fact that high turnout favors Democrats, because registered Republicans are generally more likely to vote. The higher the percentage of voters casting ballots, the higher the plurality of Democrats.
So, let's say that we do have 120 million votes cast. That's an increase of 15.5 million over 2000 (but I'll use 15 million for my calculations, and I'll exclude third-party candidates from those calculations). If Kerry gets the new-voter vote by a margin of 55%-45%, his margin of victory increases by 1.5 million votes: 53.75M + 8.25M = 62 million. Bush would add 6.75M to his 49M, giving him 55.75 million. The final percentages would be Kerry 51.67%, Bush 46.45%.
If Kerry gets 60% of the new votes, he would win the popular vote 62.75 million to 55 million, with final percentages of Kerry 52.3%, Bush 45.8%.
So pick your poison, Bush. You can lose by getting only a third of the undecideds, and you can lose by losing badly among new voters. I think you'll lose both ways.
There's a great line from The Sun Also Rises, in which a character is asked how he lost his money. "Two ways," he says. "Gradually and suddenly." The same is true for how Bush is going to lose this race.
One final thought: If Kerry wins the national vote 52.3% to 45.8%, that's easily a large enough margin for him to pick up Virginia, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Missouri, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and maybe North Carolina and Louisiana.
Now back to your regularly scheduled GOTV.
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