Musings as we await results of Obama-McCain election

The big news is obviously the election in the USA and I'm totally obsessed by all the polls and pundits relating to it, so I'm sorry I haven't been blogging that much the last few days about the world of social networking and communities dominate..

Obviously being a Finn (and Alan being a Brit) we can't vote in this election and this is not a political blog. But I lived 12 years in the USA (in "red state" Texas, in "battleground" Pennsylvania and in "blue state" New York) and went to college or graduate school for 6 years in each of those three states (and then stayed in New York City to work for the last 6 years), so the USA is the country I know second-best after my native Finland, and I've always had a very close interest in the USA also for its domestic politics. I even selected political science as one of my a minor degrees that I completed alongside my bachelors' degree in marketing at Clarion University in Pennsylvania.

So a few musings, about the polls, the political tactics and the likely results in this year's election. We've blogged about how powerfully the Obama campaign has embraced concepts we talk about in our book and on this blog, from building social networks to support the campaign within Facebook and MySpace, to using YouTube video sharing sites, to collecting money via internet donations, to sending SMS text messages and even Obama Twittering. One of the keys to the Obama campaign's success has been that they did capture the power of social networking "Communities Dominate" much more than the McCain campaign.

I don't think that is the decisive factor in this year's election. It could have been in a very tight election like that of Bush 2 vs Gore in 2000 or Bush 2 vs Kerry in 2004. But this year by every sign seems to be headed to a big election win for Obama, and then it was much bigger national things - the anti-war sentiment, the bad economy, the anti-Bush vote, the anti-Palin vote etc - and a very very badly run McCain campaign (not one coherent message, and the wildly erratic "maverick" behaviour on the financial crisis, etc).

But a few items should be mentioned specifically. We see daily tracking polls like Rasmussen and Gallup with a vast difference. How can Gallup say it is a 10 point election, and Rasmussen say it is a 5 point election. Both say Obama, but this is a dramatic difference, on a daily rolling polling process, that has run for months. Every day, some 600 people are polled nation-wide, and for the last two weeks, Rasmusssen kept saying its 4-6 points, and Gallup saying its 8-11 points as a difference. Even if there was some time-based variances, you would expect that the two polls would "harmonize" and converge and reach near unanimous opinion now on election day. One of the two (perhaps both) will be severely off in its final prediction, as the national electoral vote will be only one result, and each of the approx dozen national pollsters will be compared to the final result. In this case of two of the most quoted and reliable pollsters, at least one of the two will be embarrassed Wednesday morning. How can you be possibly as much as 5 points off on the night of the election?

Yes, there is probably going to be a "Bradley effect" - that some who say they will vote for Obama, in a survey, will not be willing to vote for a black man, and will actually vote for McCain. This kind of racial bias does exist in America, I have seen it myself many many times, as a foreign student, I often hung around with the other foreign students, and the African and Asian student-friends of mine often were treated differently from me - as I am from Finland, I was "white" and more like the American whites..  Yes, there is racism still in America, more so in the middle, Western and Southern states than the coastal states of the Northeast and the Western coast, but this is luckly a trend that is diminishing. And Obama is the least "threatening" black candidate ever. He is only half-black, to begin with, and of his parents and grandparents, only his grandmother was alive during the campaign (and just died now, unfortunately) and she was white obviously. And Obama himself was totally unlike most previous black candidates like Jesse Jackson, who had very particular speaking patterns and spoke of a lot of hostility about inequality between blacks and whites. Obama's campaign has been almost totally devoid of the "black issues". A post-racial campaign if you will. Clever by Obama. He knew he was getting the black vote anyway, so by appearing totally non-black in his speeches and positions, he has been less threatening to the whites in the country.

Still, most pundits and analysts feel there will be a Bradley effect. Will it be a percentage or a few; or will it be 4% or more, who knows. People do lie to pollsters, we've seen it many times before.

I do believe, that in many cases, the Bradley effect has been "hidden" into the undecided voter block. And obviously there are many truly racists, who will simply not vote for a black candidate, who have long since decided to vote for McCain (and I don't mean to suggest McCain voters are racists, we could argue just as well that many of the blacks who vote for Obama because of his colour, are equally racist).

But yes, a Bradley effect will introduce error into the polling, that will distort the difference between final polls and the actual election today.

But that is the only "good news" for McCain in this election cycle at this polling day. All other trends suggest that the real number could be more in favour of Obama than what the last polls suggest.

We talked earlier about the effect of mobile phones (cellphones) in doing opinion polling. Because there are approx 15% of American households without fixed landlines, all those pollsters who do not sample mobile phone owners, will actually introduce potential error into the polling sample. Note, it is not inherently true that this causes error. If those who have "cut the cord" and live by mobile phone only, vote exactly like those who have a fixed landline, then this causes no error.

However, readers of our blog know, mobile phones are one of the key elements of Generation C (the Community Generation). Young adults. Behave differently. But it goes far beyond that. Its not just age.

Young voting age people who can be reached by landline would tend to be still living at home with their parents. Are far more likely to hold their parents' values, than young adults who have left home (either as young rebels, or adopting new positions when sharing most of their time with new young friends say on college campuses etc).

Young people prefer Obama to McCain by a 6:4 margin. This gets even more so with college students.

Then there is the hispanic population, which prefers Obama at a ratio of 3:2. Another key demographic of who have cut the cord first, and tend to live with mobile phones only, are transient workers - very strongly hispanics. Introduces more polling error.

Finally every time you move homes, the chance to cut the cord emerges. Those who live in a house or home they own are far less likely to move about, than those who live in rental housing. Young recently graduated workers - or perhaps recently unemployed who lost their home and now moved into live with relatives etc - younger and less-established workign age people are in rental homes. The more wealthy and older people in homes. Again the second group is among strong McCain supporters, the first group is more Obama supporters.

These mean that if a pollster has run interviews only on fixed landines, the supporters of Obama are under-represented, while supporters of McCain are over-represented. How does that correspond with Rassmussen and Gallup? Rassmussen does not poll cellphone owners, but Gallup does. This suggests to me, that the reality on November 3, was closer to Gallup than Rassmussen findings. Not that Rassmussen was wrong in its findings, only that they forgot to measure a part of the population which is strongly supporting Obama. Gallup's process is closer to the truth.

So the real world today might be nearer to 10% margin than 5%. Incidentially, 10% is rounghly the "landslide" that Ronald Reagan got in 1980 in his first election when he defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter.

Now, into that we get a Bradley effect, to diminish Obama's support.

But into that, we then get the Obama campaign's get-out-the-vote campaign. In the last two elections, 2000 Bush 2 vs Gore and 2004 Bush 2 vs Kerry - the Republican (Bush) campaign was far stronger on the last 72 hours of get-out-the-vote, mostly due to fanatical right-wing supporters and volunteers, from for example the "Christian coalition" who were energized by George W Bush's strong appeals to that community. He was the most openly religous politician for several decades and found very strong support from this, generally already Republican-leaning constituency.

This year Obama has been the most religious Democratic candidate since - at least since Jimmy Carter in 1976 - and meanwhile McCain has been the least religious Republican candidate for as long as I can remember. So religious supporters are not "obviously" for one candidate than another. Yes, McCain gets more of that support but not by anywhere near the same fervor as Bush 2 got from the same groups four years ago.

Meanwhile Obama has built an impressive ground game. We won't know until Wednesday, but all signs suggest that this is the most powerful ground game ever, with an army of volunteers and a massive network of ground offices staffed by paid Obama staffers. The last polls on the enthusiasm suggest that the vast majority of Obama supporters are very enthusiastic about their candidate, while only about half of McCain's supporters are very enthusiastic about him. The Obama voters love Obama, the McCain voters only like McCain. This enthusiasm "gap" will show up in the volunteer work, that is critical on the voting day, to bring out the vote.

Part of that has been another techie gimmick we have not talked about, but I learned of last week. There is a mobile phone applicatoin that lets a volunteer catalog his phonebook by real-time polling data. So if I live in New York, and my friend Dana lives in Pennsylvania, I can see whenever I look at my phonebook, next to Dana's phone number - what is the polling between Obama and McCain in Pennsylvania today. This then causes lots of SMS text messages and voice calls to those friends, encouraging them to work harder to push up the support of "our candidate" in that state, and also apparently is helping bring a lot of Obama supporters from "safe states" like California, to help support in "battleground states" like neighboring Nevada. Or also from "lost states" like Texas, to go and fight for Obama in a neighboring battleground state like New Mexico..

It is yet another way that the Obama campaign has used the cutting edge of technology to help boost the success of their campaign and candidate.

And now we come to the election day. Now the final gimmick in the Obama campaign - the SMS text messaging reminder. We reported here of the USA university studies that found that SMS reminders will increase a candidates's actual voting performance by 4%. That is a massive amount, where states like Florida, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana, are all within 4 percentage points. If the "fair" vote of one such states was say 1% in favour of McCain, but Obama's campaign can get their voters to boost performance by 4% (of half of the voters, this is then 2% of the total vote - of course Obama campaign would not encourage McCain voters to go and vote) - this would flip the election, and that state would go to Obama...

With these, I think the Gallup number is closer to the absolute truth than those daily trackers that do not count mobile phone owners. And with the last-minute get-out-the-vote campaign far stronger by Obama and with their mobile phone reminers, I do think they will overcome any Bradley effect. I expect Obama to win easily, and for the final national vote to be in excess of 10% advantage for Obama. If so, the election will be called rather early, as Eastern battleground states like Virginia, Ohio, Florida etc will be called rather soon in the night for Obama, and the election results will be clear.

However, its all now up to American voters. Either way, this is a historic election. Tomorrow morning America will have a first. Either with the biggest upset in American elections, McCain will be president, and the USA will have for the first time a female vice president. This would be great for womens' equality on a symbolic level - althought of course most feminists would say that Palin is not really a good poster-child for womens' rights. It would be historic nonetheless.

Far more likely, we'll have Barack H Obama elected as President of the USA. This will be a fantastic achievement for the nation that still in the 1960s had many deadly clashes between white supremasists and those wanting equality for blacks. As I saw so much evidence of racism in America when Ilved there, the first black President for America would be a great sign of true change. After Obama., it would not be a significant concern anymore in any election, what is the race of the candidate. This bodes well for hispanics especially, as the strongest-growing minority in America.

But yes, I'm back to flipping between all the 24 hour news channels on my TV, and visiting all the major political blogs - until the last state is called. My prediction? Obama wins 9% of the national vote, and takes 364 Electoral College votes to McCain's 174. I expect the election to be called for Obama around midnight Eastern Time. But we'll see. Any such event is fun for the statistically warped, as I am, so I'm pouring over all my numbers, statistics, projections and making very last minute adjustments with every new item of data coming in..

If you are a US citizen - please do go and vote in this election. The world is watching.

Comments

[Alan Moore]

Nice one tomi - I can tell you the whole of slovenia is voting for Barack - but also I think we should reflect on his truly grassroots approach.

He asks people to donate $5 to his campaign - his facebook campaign was the fastest growing Facebook community in Facebook history 250,000 in 2/3 weeks.

whereas Hilary was asking for a minimum donation of $2000.

Barak Obama understands that people want to be part of the process. It’s the end of retail politics and the green shoots of networked politics premised upon engagement.

Obama says

Yes you can write your own profile

Yes you can supporters near you

Yes you can plan and attend events

Yes you can network with your friends

Yes can become a fundraiser

Yes you can write your own blog

Barak Obama is saying yes you can be part of this, you can be part of history.

You see people embrace what they create.

And I hope he is right

Alan

Good night and good luck