Drunken Polls

The Subtle Joys of Polling Crosstabs
Most pundits are happy to report the top line from a poll, blithely reading off that a candidate is ahead by 20% one day and behind by 15% the next. If there is any internal concern or irony in these reporters, it's long gone by the time the final version is posted. Only on particularly slow news days will you ever hear some tidbits about "second choice options" or other simple cross tabs. However, at Black Swan, it's those buried analytics that are most fascinating to us, even if we realize that sane people consider the inner workings about as interesting as webpage source code.

Fortunately for you, we have found an intriguing set of cross tabs that I think you're going to love! (If you are still reading at this point, thank you for your faith in me, or just your morbid curiosity.) Public Policy Polling (PPP) has surveys that go deep into the mind of likely voter to find their first and second choice for the Republican nomination, as well as several match-ups in two-way or three-way races. The results are fascinating, and not from a strictly political sense.

Is that Jim Gilmore Supporter Drunk, or Just Stupid?
No, this is not a slight against Jim Gilmore, or anyone who thinks that he would make a good president. This is about one specific person in New Hampshire who was contacted by PPP. I can talk about just one individual, because there is only one person out of 515 Republicans who supports Gilmore (okay, maybe that was a slight against him).

This one supporter, we will call them Gil in honor of the candidate, is easy to track through the poll, and see their various answers. For instance, Gil identifies as a moderate Republican, who is male and over 65. Of note is that when asked to name a second choice, Gil prefers Ted Cruz. However, in a 4-way race between Cruz, Rubio, Trump, and Bush, Gil changes his mind to Rubio. Then again, if you remove Bush from the contest, to a Cruz-Rubio-Trump contest, he's back to Cruz again. Switch the 3-way to Cruz-Rubio-Bush, and Gil likes Rubio again. Hey Gil, you do know that you can still vote for Cruz, right? Alright, clearly this guy likes Rubio and Cruz, but which one does he like better in a head-to-head match up? Ted Cruz. So if the race were just Cruz vs. Trump, you would vote for.... Trump. Of course you would, Gil. Hey, can you tell me how many fingers I'm holding up?

This goes on and on, with this one loon contradicting himself every chance he gets. It turns out that when asked if he has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each candidate, he doesn't even like Jim Gilmore. So clearly this guy is unreliable, and probably just messing with the pollster. You're bound to have a few outliers who are adding just a little extra to your margin of error.

Let's switch to Iowa, where things are bound to be better, right? Things are looking good for the Gilmore campaign there, as PPP found TWO Gilmore supporters out of the 510 likely Republican caucus-goers surveyed. On another positive note, only one of them has an unfavorable view of Big Jim (the other supporter still isn't so sure). Also, both of these supporters belong to a critical group of voters that the Republicans would like to win over in the general election: liberal female tea-party members. Jim Gilmore does seem to attract the most interesting people.

Cruz Supporters Only Slighter More Sober
It's a good thing that there aren't many of those crazy people responding to the pollsters. For instance, Ted Cruz is a serious candidate with serious popularity, and you can count on his supporters not to be messing around like Jim Gilmore's. At the very least, 100% of Cruz's supporters in both states view him favorably. However, it does kind of beg the question of why it is that, just two minutes later, when the pollster asks New Hampshire about the four-way match up between Bush-Cruz-Rubio-Trump, only 83% are loyal enough to Cruz to pick him a second time, while 13% defect to Trump. That's roughly seven different people out of the 55 or so Cruz supporters contacted. It's ok, though, because in a two-way race between Trump and Cruz, most of them jump back into Cruz's camp. They do seem to lack a certain courage of conviction.

Rubio doesn't have it any better. For any given match-up involving Rubio as an option to vote for, anywhere from 12-15% of his supporters in New Hampshire choose another option. (The one exception is a head-to-head against Trump. Apparently there are some things you just don't joke around about.) In Iowa, that number for Rubio is closer to 17-20%. In another camp, Bush can hold on to about 90% of his supporters through any match-up in NH, and between 82-88% in IA. Trump is apparently the only candidate who has a strong cadre of no-nonsense supporters, maintaining 95-98% no matter how many alternatives they are given.

America is Sick
Across the board, at least 10-15% of the voters surveyed give weird and contradictory answers over the course of a single survey. Keep in mind that these are the likely voters, according to the experts' models. So it's not like they would lie, or not know who they were voting for, right? Instead, I have a few hypotheses about what is happening:
a) These respondents are severely inebriated in some way
b) Contrary to earlier reports, Iowa is not a native English speaking state
c) There is rash of under-reported concussions sweeping New Hampshire
d) Bored respondents are just handing the phone to their two-year-old child/grandchild to play with
e) The most jaded political pundits are right, and the American electorate literally does have the memory of a goldfish

No matter what the cause is, it should be clear that there is an additional source of error that goes far beyond the mathematical sampling error that is being routinely reported and used to justify these results. Furthermore, this previously unreported "bat-guano-crazy error" is somehow making it through the "likely voter" screens (which apparently don't include questions like "Have you been drinking this evening?"). So the next time that you see a headline about a candidate jumping 20 points in the polls, consider what the people they polled might have been smoking.

(For those interested in seeing more of the insanity, you can look at the New Hampshire and Iowa polls directly.)

The Dark Horse Surge in New Hampshire

So, uh... what's up with New Hampshire Democrats?
The news of the hour, on the Democratic side, is apparently Sander's stunning surge to a 27% lead over Clinton in the latest CNN/WMUR poll in New Hampshire. Pretty much every political outlet and pundit that I have seen is quoting this number, as if the Oracle handed down the result at Delphi. I would like to include it as an interesting counterpoint to the other polls taken in that state in the past week.

It is pretty quickly apparently that one of these polls is not like the others. One of these polls just does not belong. The ARG poll (which is technically more recent) shows Sanders leading by 6 points. Admittedly, +6 is still a lead, but that's a huge difference from +27, and is in line with their previous two polls in the past month. The Monmouth poll of +14 gives the most similar result to CNN/WMUR, but is still off by double. Public Policy Polling (PPP), which performed decently well in 2012 and 2008, even gives Clinton a consistent +3 lead.

Now I'm clearly not the type of person to conclude that the minority opinion is wrong for being in the minority. Normally, I would look at three factors to validate a poll result: the demographics, the pollster's past accuracy, and the trending numbers from pollster's past results. Unfortunately, the poll did not include anything even vaguely resembling a demographic in their report. (If a more detailed report does exist, please send it to me!) The pollster (WMUR) is pretty much held to New Hampshire, but in 2012 they were highly erratic with their predictions, with back-to-back polls just days apart showed swings of 9 points. Finally, this recent result represents a large shift from December (50% to 40%) and September (46% to 30%) neither of those results or their relative motion were supported by any other outlet. Conclusion? WMUR, you're drunk. Go home.

So, uh... what's up with New Hampshire Republicans?

On the other side of the coin, something unexpected seems to be happening. There are now unconfirmed reports that John Kasich may be running for president. You may be excused if you are currently scratching your head trying to figure out who I'm talking about, but if you rewatch the Republican debates, you will distinctly see his name show up in the credits.

While desperate reporters and pundits are trying to put together a story about an outlier poll showing an upstart surging ahead in New Hampshire, they completely missed my favorite one: ARG reports that John Kasich is the anti-Trump, running only 7 points behind the "buffoon."  Plus, this exciting story actually has some potential meat behind it, with recent polls from Monmouth, Reach, and ARG (again) supporting the missing link of Kasich's surge to a weak second place in early January. Now none of these polls are exactly gospel, but it is now highly plausible that Kasich could easily take second place and the self-proclaimed "Prince of Light and Hope" could emerge as the new establishment pick. With 49% of NH primary voters making up their minds in the last three days before the election, combined with an electorate that isn't completely bored with hearing his name every day, he has a lot of room to change some minds and mount a successful surprise attack.

Prediction: Cruz Wins Iowa Caucus

Prediction: Cruz Wins Iowa Caucus
Based on the latest poll data, it is likely that Cruz will win the most delegates in Iowa. The current estimate of the popular vote among caucus-goers is Cruz: 30%, Trump 22%, Rubio 14%, with remaining candidates' support being too small to be certain. The 95% confidence is +/- 8%, representing the high uncertainty of this type of race.

There are three key factors that I am considering:
1) The result of a couple of polls with high quality samples, which come close to the exit poll demographics from 2008 and 2012 (Fox News and NBC/WSJ/Marist)
2) The data from a PPP poll, giving some insight into the second preferences of voters
3) An examination of past behavior of Iowa caucuses

One important factor to keep in mind is that approximately half of the people who attended the caucuses in 2008 and 2012 did not make up their mind until the last month, with about a quarter deciding in the last week or less. This is supported by the polls that I can see from those times. This doesn't mean that they had no idea who to support, or that they wouldn't end up going with their best guess from December. However, it does mean that the majority of voters' preferences are still fluid, and they could easily change their mind to a second choice.

This is important as we look at a number of candidates at the back of the pack, who may be seeing falling numbers. As certain candidates seem less viable, a snowball effect takes place, where falling support makes voters who are leaning towards that candidate to re-evaluate their position. The very nature of the caucus amplifies this effect, as an uncertain voter walks into a person's home or other small gathering on caucus day, and finds that they are pretty much alone in their support for candidate A.

So where are these fluid votes going to flow? For any candidate looking at less than 5% of the vote, the second choice is for Cruz over Trump, at more than 2:1. Particularly noteworthy is Paul supporters, who are know to be well organized and well placed for the caucuses, who favor Cruz 5:1 over Trump (but with almost equal preference for Carson).

Another interesting point is that while voters who lean towards Trump are still considering Cruz as a second choice (36%, far above any other candidate), Cruz supporters are much more likely to support Rubio than Trump (26% to 18%). Similarly, 36% of Carson supporters see Cruz as a second choice, versus 12% considering Trump. The bad news for Rubio is that, other that Cruz supporters, almost no one else sees him as a good second choice (including Bush supporters).

The take home message on this is that in the midst of a chaotic field, any volatility aims to favor Cruz.

The Importance of Election Day Turnout

The 'Voter Turnout' Strategy
There's a lot of talk about turnout being the deciding factor in the coming election. According to the theory, the number of "true independents" or "swing votes" is small and getting smaller. Partisan politics is driven more and more by identity, and the dominance of party-line voters is the norm. The implication is that it isn't worth the effort to try to win votes from the "other side" since Democrats won't support a Republican any more than a Red Sox fan will cheer for the Yankees. Instead, the strategy says that elections are won by getting more of your team out to the polls than the other guy.

The politicians' belief in this theory does help explain the hyper-partisanship seen in today's campaigning and legislation. It also seems to drive the extremism we are seeing from the different candidates, putting the two parties further and further away, ideologically. For instance, Sanders and Clinton debate how much to increase the minimum wage, while the Republicans are trying to decide whether the existence of a minimum wage is unconstitutional or merely a very bad idea.

Validate the Theory
Given how much time is spent by the pundits talking about these points, very little ink and bytes has been spent looking deeper into this effect. For an empirical evaluation, let's turn to the past presidential exit polls to see how much truth there is to this point.

In 2012, 92% of Democrats voted for Obama, while 93% of Republicans voted for Romney, while self-declared Independent/"Other Party" voters split 50%:45% for Romney. Given that 32% of Americans identify as Democrat and 30% identify as Republican, you might be forgiven for thinking that Romney should win the popular vote, 49.5% to 48.5% (with 2% to "other" candidates). However, the actual turnout for Democrats was 38% of voters, vs. 31% for Republicans, with a final tally of 51% for Obama to 47% for Romney. A disproportionate turnout for Democrats clearly was the deciding factor in an election that Obama "should" have lost.

While this phenomenon is not an aberration, it is a relatively recent pattern. In 1980, Reagan came to power amidst a strong turnout for Democrats by winning over voters of all backgrounds. After that, we see Bush the 1st and Clinton (the 1st?) win elections by reaching out to the other party while voter turnout remains stable. In 2000, Bush the 2nd inherits the same voter turnout distribution, and wins the electoral vote despite narrowly losing the popular vote.

It is in 2004 that we first see the triumph of "turning out your base", with a surge in turnout for Republican and conservative independents providing the deciding factor in what otherwise could have been a nail-biting repeat of 2000. Whether intentional or not, the Democrats learned their lesson, and countered with increased turnout of their own, plus a large support from the independents, to win in 2008. However, in both 2004 and 2008, the winner of the popular vote (and presumably the electoral vote) would have been the same without it.

The conclusion: maybe voter turnout isn't the definitive strategy it's cracked up to be. It's a great way to tilt the tables a little, but a strategy of winning over the hearts and minds still has a better track record. Now, we continue to hear how the middle is shrinking and swing voters have gone the way of the dinosaur, so perhaps more than four years is too far back to look in politics. If the Republicans actually nominate Trump or Cruz, we will see if that is really the case.