Forget The Polls Surveys don't factor the peeps turning out. BY DAN CAROL As I write this, George Bush has a 13-point advantage in the Gallup poll but his 12 point lead in last week's Pew poll is gone. Other polls have the two gents tied. Just what gives here? Well, the dirty little secret is that polling is less scientific than we're led on. So I am here to tell you, as a supposed expert on politics, that the race will stay ugly and close to the end — no matter what the latest polls say. That plus this: we're gonna win, for sure. No matter what the polls say. We all still have to put our heads down and do the work of getting our friends out to vote and winning over our undecided Aunt Sallys and Uncle Jacks to the fact that Donald Rumsfeld is incompetent and that George Bush has bankrupted their nephew's (or niece's) future. Plus please make sure that the people you know who think politics is stupid nonetheless register and vote, just this one time, because you asked them. Simply begging for Kerry votes is another fine option. As for the polls, let me share some perspective to build your confidence level, starting with my own "private Idaho." Back in 1996, I was convinced I was about to knock off Larry Craig, the untouchable conservative U.S. Senator in my deftest campaign ever — my independent-minded candidate (that's how you describe Democrats in the Baked Potato state) was surging. Or so I thought. The campaign pollster had us dead even a week out and then as icing on the cake we got the biggest newspaper's endorsement, which Democrats seldom snagged in Boise. And then? We lost by 18 points! According to our pollster, our polling wasn't wrong. It just that the assumed "average" amount of voter turnout being assumed in 1996 was way, way, WAY off. That meant the statistical model driving all extrapolations about the sampled population was also way off. In even nerdier language, right wing voter registration that year had unexpectedly gone way, way up, so that the poll's "margin of error" was overwhelmed by the greater variance in voter turnout. Now one would think the media would care a little about looking stupid — but they just keep writing the checks for more and more polls. It seems trite to say that the press is hooked on them because it allows them to cover the horse race rather than the issues. But Purdue University researchers have actually complained how the 24-hour news machine is more interested in the headlines generated by polling shifts than they do in fixing the obvious variance errors they have discovered. Of course, we the people all know there is one other key factor that drives polling shifts — it's the swing voters who love to toy with pollsters by changing their answers every night on whether they will vote, let alone for whom they will vote. So you ask, what does it all mean if pollsters' predictions and voter turnout models are as stable as houses built on barrier islands? It means we need to watch carefully for the storm surges of voting behavior. This year, plain and simple, is our year. But don't get cocky as I said — do the work that you can do. At the same time, don't be all whiney or moping either because Kerry is kind of lame. We are going to win. Here's why. We have registered a lot of new people — three million nationally and counting. Here in Oregon, new Democratic registration is outpacing Republican signups by more than 3-1. A big youth vote, perhaps exceeding 1992, also seems likely. Talk of "draft" among young people is no longer about beer keggers — it's about Iraq. Meanwhile, we've got prominent hip-hoppers like P Diddy amping up the vote, and a voter registration drive for every demographic. In short, our peeps are coming out. The polls aren't fully factoring that in. And that's the stuff of quiet confidence. Wear it proudly. So forget the polls — we got The Boss, The E Street Band and The Vote for Change tour. Forget the polls — we've got more canvassers and less couch potatoes. Forget the polls — because the only one that matters is Nov. 2. Dan Carol is a Democratic political strategist and a founding partner of CTSG (www.ctsg.com), a progressive consulting firm based in Eugene and Washington, D.C.
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