How to Steal an Election - Dirty Trick #666 with help of AP/NBC

An excellent article in the NY Daily News by Shaun King covers many aspects of this, particularly with regard to AP's role.

I will focus on additional details, giving a blow by blow, filled with numbers and dates account, and in particular focus on NBC's roll in these dirty tricks.

On 6/6/16, AP and NBC virtually simultaneously and theoretically independently, called the election by POLLing select elected officials in order to suppress the vote the evening before one of the largest primary election days of the year. An election where the largest state, California, had a recent poll by NBC that showed Bernie leading YUGE

Even with the main stream media clearly favoring Hillary all election season, they have been forced to occasionally come up with excuses.

Today Steve Kornacki false claimed that "a few more superdelegates" changed their minds so it is nothing special that NBC (and AP) virtually simultaneously surprised the world with their "news".

First of all, there was no surprise as clearly demonstrated by this video of Hillary's "secret win" with was decided at least by June 4.

But let's get back to the "few more superdelegates"

At 8:48 PM on June 6th, NBC announced that enough superdelegates were polled "in effect answering if the election were held today WHICH IT ISN'T, their vote is on Jul 25" they would vote for Hillary.

But if you wind the wayback machine JUST TWO HOURS EARLIER

NBC had 19 fewer superdelegates counted.

If you are unfamiliar with the Internet's wonderful Wayback Machine, it's a great way to get around websites that delete their content to hide the truth.

The website address above has a datetime as part of its address. 2016006 is June 6, 2016 and 184502 is 6:45:02 PM. This is a snapshot at that exact time of the NBC News webpage http://www.nbcnews.com/poitics/2016-election.

Next time you think someone is going to hide their changes on a webpage, go to the wayback machine at http://archive.org and enter that webaddress there. It will take an PERMANENT picture of that webpage at that moment and no rigged and bought by powerful people organizations will be able to change it. The Wayback Machine is owned BY NO ONE. It is The Truth. Permanently Preserved. Use it.

But its not perfect. If you don't tell it to save a page, it's own periodic copying of the Internet might not find it. This was the case when AP DELETED a story before the Wayback Machine could find it. Thankfully, Google also has a limited ability to save recent changes. I used Google along with the Wayback Machine to trace AP's history of delegate tallies to help me figure out why NBC decided to suddenly increase its delegate count (aside from the obvious orders from Hillary to do so).

At 1:09:36 PM that day (260606130936), AP also had Hillary far more than "a few delegates" away. Their tally of 547 superdelegates polled for her meant Hillary needed 24 more to reach the magic total of 2283. (This AP story was posted the day before on June 5th at 4:20 PM but the numbers were not updated by AP as will be seen in subsequent screen shots)

Politico rereported this almost same AP information later on June 6th, with a final update of the story at 2:27 PM. So between June 5th at 4:05 PM and June 6th 2:27 PM, AP has found ONLY ONE MORE superdelegate change.

NBC also had similar poor luck in changing their numbers prior to their MAGICAL discover of dozens of delegates (not a FEW delegates Steve Kornacki, whose reputation for encyclopedia knowledge of FACTs must be being tarnished by his new role as PR flack for Hillary/MSNBC).

In the 12 hours before their 6:45 PM report of 2164 delegates, they had only found 3 more delegates (as of 6:26;50 AM on June 6th)

So what changed between 6:45 PM and 8:48 PM on June 6th?

Please read Sean King's reporting on AP's tricks and wonder out loud how NBC could have come to the same finding that roughly 2 dozen people changed their mind in 2 hours.

At 8:20 PM on June 6th AP announced they magically found 24 ELECTED OFFICIALS who all in a 2 hour window decided they wanted to tell news organizations that they were for Hillary: ELECTED officials (AKA superdelegates) who knew exactly what this would do to suppress the vote in 6 states including the nation's largest states, and who perhaps knew that fellow democrats were running for office in those states and that liberal ballot initiates in those states would have fewer democrats coming to vote increasing the chance that conservatives/Republicans would prevail in those voter suppressed elections.... that would explain why they chose to be anonymous so they didn't have to answer to ANGRY voters and ANGRY politicians whose elections were TAMPERED WITH by "Super" delegates who were pressured by Hillary's MANIC need to WIN AT ALL COSTS.

OK, that is opinion, but one that is reasonable given human nature.

But the Internet eventually KNOWS ALL, so those anonymous SELFISH DEMOCRATS WILL BE OUTED. It will start with Wikipedia. The Great Equalizer.

WATCH THIS PAGE

You will see new appearances of super delegates allocated to Hillary. Likely EVERY ONE of them after June 6th 8:20 PM EST will be one of those SELFISH DEMOCRATS suppressing the vote today.

Let the world know who they are, what they did, and act accordingly.

A few more comments on NBC and it's drive to Elect Hillary 

AP has been focused on "making news" to announce primary wins and nomination wins. NBC (and CNN and others) have not been so relentless to make sure they are way out in front. So this call for Hillary by NBC was out of character. Except that they have been in the tank for Hillary for a year or more. And if there is one incident that makes this CRYSTAL CLEAR, it was April 7, 2016 when THE ENTIRE NETWORK REFUSED to cover Bill CLINTON's incredible mistake that day. When EVERY OTHER significant news organization IN THE COUNTRY was covering it. Because it was embarrasing to their candidate. And JUST LIKE FOX, MSNBC (AKA MSDNC) got MARCHING ORDERS FROM THE TOP to IGNORE what was EMBARRASING to THEIR CANDIDATE.

As you can see from my reports on Twitter at the time and my updates on the subsequent thread

Reuters, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, US News and World Report, Newsweek, Washington Post, NY Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Atlantic, International Business, The Guardian, Salon, Politico, Slate, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Truth Dig, Talking Points Memo, NY Daily News, Washington Times, Daily Caller, Weekly Standard, Breitbart, 

All those news organizations reported on this black mark on Bill Clinton. Yet MSNBC was silent.

At the same time, NBC posted a HIGHLY edited video clip that showed NONE of Bill Clinton's offensive attacks on Black Lives Matters.

NBC: Bill Clinton Takes on Protesters

The real story NBC tried to hide.

Finally, many hours after EVERY news organization without NBC in its name covered the REAL story, MSNBC put on a brief apologist (naturally someone who is black, but more importantly a CLEAR HILLARY SUPPORTER) Joy Ann Reid to spend 5 minutes saying "Bill will be Bill". That was it for the whole day.
The next day MSDNC occasionally played the highly edited NBC clip above and didn't say ANYTHING about Bill doing anything wrong.
Because these two days (Apr 7 and 8) the were unanimous (except for Lawrence O'Donnell) wanted to focus on how BAD Bernie was for saying Hillary is unqualified which he did IN RESPONSE to the lawyerly IMPLICATION of the same complaint from Hillary about Bernie.
Finally after no one cared, a couple days later MSDNC did have occasional coverage of the real speech from Bill where he savagely attacked Black Lives Matters protesters calling them MURDERERS.

The extreme difference between MSDNC and NBC on April 7 and the entire news world, made clear to me that their mission, from on top (a la Fox News Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch) was to HIDE NEWS that HURT THEIR CANDIDATE.

These aren't news organizations. They are POLITICAL ADVOCACY GROUPS who should BY LAW have their right to PUBLIC AIRWAVES STRIPPED FROM THEIR GREEDY CORRUPT HANDS.

OK, that's the end of the opinion part of this post. But honestly look at the indisputable facts above and try to reach a different conclusion.

Clinton profits in Wyoming from Zombie absentee ballots?

How did the Clinton supporters turn a probable 31 point and 4 delegate loss into an 11 point and 0 delegate loss? Or a 37 point and 6 delegate loss? Keep reading...

In the Nebraska caucus, 20% (2900/14340) of Hillary's votes were mail-in.

In the Wyoming caucus, 54% of Hillary's votes in 12 counties representing 74% of all delegates
were mail-in.
The photo below is in Casper, Natrona county, the second largest caucus.

Above is a video from Sweetwater county showing the huge disparity in the Hillary Supporters side vs the Bernie Supporter side. Despite that, Hillary Supporters got close with a 10 to 12 delegate decision.

County	Hillary Vote %	Hillary Votes	Hillary Mail-In Votes	Hillary Mail-In %	Hillary's Delegates	All Delegates
Laramie	51.5%	731	402	55%	26	51
Natrona	54.1%	357	270	75.6%	20	38
Albany	25.3%	316	125	39.6%	8	33
Sweetwater	46.6%	222	133	59.9%	10	22
Fremont	51.1%	233	91	39.1%	10	20
Sheridan	53.3%	203	95	53.3%	7	14
Uinta	40.3%	73	37	50.7%	4	9
Carbon	59.5%	75	56	74.7%	4	7
Sublette	32.8%	41	14	34.1%	1	4
Washakie	58.8%	30	15	50%	2	3
Platte	39.1%	25	12	48%	1	3
Johnson	40.7%	27	11	40.7%	1	2
7 Counties w/vote totals but no mail-in numbers	37.8%	594	?	?	22	59
4 Other counties	?	?	?	?	8	15
Statewide	?	?	?	?	124	280

Hillary won 6 of those 12 counties and she won 7 to 10 statewide.

I am lacking mail-in data on the other unnamed Wyoming counties.
If you were at one of the other county caucuses and have mail-in totals, please contact me

Why the difference?

From CNN: "A Clinton campaign aide said their 'secret sauce' in Wyoming was the state's onerous vote-by-mail rules that required anyone voting by mail to have voted as a Democrat in the 2014 midterms."

What is curious about that statement is that I have not yet found any evidence of that rule. Was this false rule leaked to put journalists on to the wrong trail? I don't know, particularly because CNN didn't give the name of the person to ask this.

There is no statistically valid reason why 54% of Hillary voters would be absentee while it is 27% for the Bernie's.

If in 12 counties she had had only 20% mail-in in those and the rest of the mail-ins became no-shows, Bernie would have won state delegates by 31 pts (instead of by 11), had a 5-3 national delegate margin now and a better than even chance to win 4 out of 6 more national delegates at the Wyoming state convention.

County	Hillary Vote %	Hillary Votes	Hillary Mail-In Votes	Hillary Mail-In %	Hillary's Delegates	All Delegates
Laramie	37.4%	411	82	20%	19	51
Natrona	26.5%	109	22	20.2%	10	38
Albany	20.4%	239	48	20.1%	7	33
Sweetwater	30.4%	111	22	19.8%	7	22
Fremont	44.4%	178	36	20.2%	9	20
Sheridan	43.1%	135	27	20%	6	14
Uinta	29.4%	45	9	20%	3	9
Carbon	32%	24	5	20.8%	4	7
Sublette	28.8%	34	7	20.6%	1	4
Washakie	47.5%	19	4	21.1%	1	3
Platte	29.1%	16	3	18.8%	1	3
Johnson	30.3%	20	4	20%	1	2
7 Counties w/vote totals but no mail-in numbers	37.8%	594	?	?	22	59
4 Other counties	?	?	?	?	8	15
Statewide	?	?	?	?	97	280

In this more normal scenario, Hillary Supporters win zero counties (plus 1 to 4 counties where no votes are known).

So the 11% win giving a 7-7 delegate tie would have been
a 31% win giving a 9-5 delegate advantage to Bernie Supporters.

And this is just with these twelve counties. If the other counties follow the same pattern it would have been a 37% win giving Bernie Supporters a 10-4 advantage.

All of which matters a lot to the media and pundits, even the ones who keep trying to write off Bernie Sanders' campaign.

P.S. I also have data on Bernie Supporter mail-in's in those twelve counties. It was 26.5%.

WHAT TO DO
What needs to be done is an audit of the mail-in's to find out which are valid. Wyoming has clear rules/restrictions on absentee ballots.

Sign this petition on MoveOn (and ask MoveOn at the top of the page to endorse it too)

Another petition is on WhiteHouse.Gov (there may be others, so let me know). Go and sign them.

Also, if you have data on the other 11 counties, let me know.

Trump incites his racist followers to violence, denies any involvement

At yesterday's Trump Rally in Fayettville, North Carolina. Or should I say Hitler's Rally at Nuremberg, Germany

The police deputies are right in front and behind of the victim when he is punched, and there response is to HANDCUFF and ARREST THE VICTIM.

The racist man who punched the guy was never interrogated, stayed the entire rally and was only charged once this video got wide spread coverage. None of the police have been arrested. Of course.

Trump denies any involvement.

Meanwhile, the attacker was on TV saying

"You bet I liked it. Knocking the hell out of that big mouth." And when asked why he punched the protester, he said: "Number one, we don’t know if he’s ISIS. We don’t know who he is, but we know he’s not acting like an American...Yes, he deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him."

FYI, when the man raises his arms (and flips the bird) it was because Trump had just said to him "Go home to your mama". The victim's mother had died when the he was a kid.

Washington Post Story

Inside Edition Interview of Racist Attacker

More Hitler-like hate speech out of Trump

Do three people know less than one (about Nevada's Latino Voters)

While reading this, spend a minute listening to one of the greatest Car Talk talk bits.

It will explain how bad political memes (and other dumb ideas) happen.

If you want to really get into that, here is the letter mentioned in the above one minute bit.

Since I am about to tread on sacred ground, let me first hedge by saying that on average when Ezra Klein, Nate Silver and Nate Cohn agree on something it is more likely to be accurate than 3 randomly chosen pundits. Sometimes by a wide margin.

But their notion about Bernie Sanders not winning the Latino vote in NV started with one of them not knowing what he was talking about and then another (cue the Car Talk bit above) and ....

It started when Nate Cohn wrote too much with too little time to research over 2 hours of tweets during NV election results day using simple back-of-a-napkin-sized math.

This nonsense was then blessed by the other two (along with an article of
IF you assume A, B, C, D, E, F...
THEN our theory is correct).

To go point by point on that article to detail in depth exactly why each of its assumptions are suspect is beyond the scope of this blog post (and my currently available time).

That article supposedly points to this NY Times analysis of Nate's, but the included URL just goes to a page showing the actual total delegate counts at the time. So I have included all the relevant tweets in this.

That other well known analysts in that tweet conversation like pollster/poll analyst Mark Blumenthal and Harry Enten and a few unknown data scientists (but one data scientist worked on the '12 Obama team) were skeptical, is never addressed by the trio (or even mentioned in the Vox article above). And since Ezra and the Nates carry such weight in the political pundocracy, you can count on this bad idea spreading like wildfire - starting with the Sunday talk shows and then really raging by Morning Joe early Monday.

I'm another unknown data scientist, but I've spent 3 decades analyzing/forecasting data and am currently working towards a master's at Harvard in my field to get some name-brand credentials. But credentials shouldn't matter. Common sense should suffice.

I'll end with one last ancient pearl of wisdom:

Occam's Razor

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

A bunch of people (entrance pollsters) tried to randomly select voters at caucuses.
vs.
The lengthy arguments in the Vox article and Nate Cohn's Tweets

You decide which has the fewest assumptions.

And then if you still feel that Latino's can't possibly favor Bernie Sanders, please explain how the complex set of motivations all kinds of different people have when voting, can be boiled down to

1. what race you are 
2. that a Senator spent most of his life not living near people of your race (neither did the other Senator, but I digress)

And please do so with the smallest number of credible assumptions.


P.S. Yes I support Bernie Sanders, but I don't support bad math, bad statistics or bad data science.

Rare South Carolina Primary Poll has Suspect Demographics

With so few current polls in South Carolina, looking in detail at these polls is even more important.

The demographic breakdown in the YouGov/CBS poll looks suspect.

The % of Democratic pollees that are black is 62.5%. In 2008 when there was a black candidate running it was only 55%. The racial composition of the state hasn't changed since 2008 so why would a race feature two white candidates have a surge in black voters? if anything, one would expect the black vote to be less than 2008.

Even if the demographics were like the extraordinary 2008 primary, the 73% of black voters for Clinton would suggest a 6 point reduction in Clinton's lead. A 56/43 vote split. More likely the demographics are not so favorable as 2008, meaning an even closer race.

Opposition Party Senate NEVER blocked an Election Year Supreme Court Nomination

The 80 year myth circulated by Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley and every Presidential GOP candidate is easily dispensed with:

Contrary to the GOP Senate Majority Leader's claims that the Senate has not confirmed a Supreme Court Justice during an election year in over 80 years, that same person confirmed the currently serving Justice Kennedy in an election year (1988) and Justice Murphy was confirmed in 1940.

In the Supreme Court's history, 21 people have been nominated in an election year.

However, their obstruction based on fallacy is worse than that.

In only 4 years was someone appointed but not confirmed to the Supreme Court in an election year.
1968
1852
1844
1828

Those were all special cases.

In every case, the Senate was controlled by the same party as the President.

So an opposition party Senate has NEVER blocked a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. Not once in the 228 year history of the world's longest democratic constitution.

In all the 4 years above, the President was unpopular within his own party.

In 1968, the former Senate Majority Leader, President Johnson was at war with a large faction of his party. He was so unpopular as president that he decided he couldn't win his own party's nomination and withdrew. Sitting Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was nominated to take over for retiring Chief Justice Warren. Fortas had angered this faction of the president's party both because of his close association with he president and his own dubious acts. More details are here.

In 1852, the President was so unpopular he was not nominated for reelection by his own party. Like the case in 1844 the President had only become President by being VP when the President died and failed to win an election in his own right.

By 1844, the President had been thrown out of his own party and rejected all 7 of his nominations while the President continued the spat by renominating already rejected nominees multiple times. More details on this are here.

In 1824, President John Quincy Adams was chosen as part of the Corrupt Bargain by the House of Representatives despite the President losing to Andrew Jackson by 11% in the popular vote (no candidate had reached 50%). Both were members of the same party. The corrupt bargain poisoned his administration. A couple weeks after Andrew Jackson beat him in the 1828 election, John Quincy Adams nominated a Supreme Court justice, who was not confirmed and 22 days later Andrew Jackson nominated his own candidate.  More details are here

Data on Why Bernie Sanders Will Win in Heavily Non-White States

If you believed many pundits and people from the Hillary Clinton campaign, she has 80% support among blacks (another poll with similar info) and therefore Bernie Sanders is doomed.

But these are old polls (August and November 2015).

And they are no surprise.

The first 11 months of 2015 the coverage on CBS/NBC/ABC national news:

Candidate	Minutes
Clinton	113
Sanders	10

For years Hillary Clinton has had near 100% name recognition. 4 months after Sanders announced his campaign, 38% still knew too little about him to even give him a favorability rating.

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We need CURRENT polls from Nevada and South Carolina.

---

Here is why there will be none in Nevada. There are similar reasons why you may get few to no polls for South Carolina.

(Feb 12 EDIT: One Nevada poll (from the GOP) just published. It shows Bernie TIED with Hillary)

There is other useful.

Look at the recent election exit polls of New Hampshire (and to a lesser extent Iowa).

In the New Hampshire Primary which Bernie Sanders won 60% to 38%, CBS exit polls showed

	Bernie	Hillary
White (93%)	61%	37%
Non-White (7%)	49%	50%

In New Hampshire 7% was non-white. Nevada has 35% non-whites and South Carolina registered Democrats are 44% non-white. If Nevada and South Carolina voters felt the same (based on their race) towards Hillary/Bernie,
then Bernie Sanders will get a
15 point win in Nevada and a 10 point win in South Carolina
Based on the data from this article about Nevada's Hispanic voter turnout, using that data which suggests a 27% non-white vote this would mean an even larger 18 point win for Bernie.

What about Iowa? NBC exit polls showed

	Bernie	Hillary
White (91%)	46%	49%
Non-White (9%)	34%	58%

If Nevada and South Carolina voters voted like Iowans (assuming anyone really votes solely based on their race), Hillary Clinton gets a

12 point win in Nevada and a 14 point win in South Carolina
(The above Nevada Hispanic turnout alternative reduces it to a 10 point win in Nevada)

Even this situation when Bernie was still being ignored by the media and the GOP competition, whit is not the 60 point blowout implied by the 80% black support claims.

---

So which result is more likely, voters acting like they did on Feb 1st or Feb 9th?

Campaigns get momentum, particularly in Bernie Sanders case where the media has ignored him (see above). The media is no longer ignoring Bernie Sanders. Particularly when he tied the all-time 24-hour fundraising record of 6 million dollars by taking 10 seconds to ask the people watching his NH victory speech to donate.

Caveats: Individual voters in South Carolina and Nevada won't have identical concerns as New Hampshire or Iowa. Both campaigns will do different things in these upcoming states than they did in New Hampshire. Particularly if Bernie Sanders wins in Nevada. The exit polls are samples, not the entire population of people who voted in this primary.

But the exit polls from voters is better than no information.

Less useful data: national polls. Pollees are asked about candidates even though they won't vote for months. They have much less time and reason to become informed now. Too many things will happen to change their minds.

Based on demographics and recent exit poll data,

I expect Bernie to have at least a 10 point win in Nevada.

This will only reinforce the likelihood of a victory in South Carolina.

For good non-data focused arguments supporting the overall claims in this post, read here and here.

Des Moines Register Likely Voters Not Likely

The end does not justify the means. Des Moines Register predicts a couple dozen elections fairly well, so no one questions the details anymore. They just consider it the Gold Standard and accept whatever it says as a matter of faith.

But math isn't based on faith.

As Jeff Roe points out, despite his clearly partisan motivations, the Des Moines Register called 3019 registered voters and determined that 602 were likely to caucus which is a 19.9% turnout. Traditionally turnout is 6% turnout. A 19.9% turnout would yield 386,000 GOP caucus voters when the highest all time was 131,000. In other words, not very likely.

Why would the Des Moines Register allow 602 people to represent Iowa?

Math.

In one case the math would render the Des Moines Register poll as unimportant, in another case it might bankrupt their polling budget, assuming they had the manpower to accomplish the task.

To get a 6% turnout of the 3019 registered voters they contacted, that would mean only 181 would provide the answers for their poll. A standard margin of error for such a small sample is 7.2%.

Can you imagine the media reporting on a poll with a 7% margin of error?

That would mean that Trump's numbers are 95% . to be somewhere between 21 and 35. Cruz would be somewhere between 16 and 30. Rubio would be somewhere between 8 and 22. In that scenario, an analyst could plausibly suggest that Rubio could win the Iowa Caucus.

The alternative math solution is to greatly increase the number of registered voters reached. For a 6% turnout that means reaching 10,033 registered voters. That would cost the Des Moines Register at least 3 times more money, with at least 3 times as many staff to contact them. Do they have that much staff? And with all the poll fatigue, it might take a lot more calling to reach a given registered voter. So is 4 times the cost and 4 times the callers an unreasonable requirement?

The Des Moines Register claims they aren't trying to predict turnout, but that is a screen to keep the discussion away from a huge margin of error or a huge cost of doing correct polling.

The fundamentals of statistical sampling assume your sample represents the general population. Who believes that people that are judged by the Des Moines Register are THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY to vote than the general population have views that represent the general population?

On the Democratic side the numbers also show questionable math.

They again accepted 602 (more on that suspicious number later) registered voters as likely to vote in the democratic caucus which again produces the 386,000 number of actual democratic caucus voters even though 2008's record SMASHING attendance had only 239,000 democratic caucus voters. A number 1/3 that size (130,000) seems more reasonable which would match (after inflating for population growth) the 2004 Democratic Caucus attendance when we had the revolutionary Dean, the eventual nominee Kerry, Speaker of the House Gephardt from next door Missouri and many others to bring out voters.

But cutting that much means just 203 likely voters with a 6.9% margin of error. This means analysts trying to guess whether Clinton's 45 really is a number between 38 and 52 and Sander's 42 really is a number somewhere between 35 and 49.

In other words, the analysts and media pundits would dismiss the Des Moines Register poll as just another poll result in a field of dozens of polls.

Or the Des Moines Register could triple or quadruple its staff to try to reach 10,000+ registered voters who would actually answer their phone call.

The most likely result is the Des Moines Register would not have the resources to contact that many registered voters so they would either be forced to report a too large margin of error, or hope that their credentials keep anyone from looking under the hood at their suspect math.

The last minor point is their choice of EXACTLY 602 people to vote in the GOP caucus and the same exact number in the democratic caucus. There is 0% reason to believe the size of the two parties caucuses will be the same. They Democrats have much larger caucuses whenever both parties have no incumbents. This forced choice of tallying the voices of more GOP likely voters than is going to happen is for appearances. They don't want to confuse data illiterate media analysts and pundits with HONEST MESSY data (which is normal in the real world). If they present two different margins of error, their might be questions. People might look closer at the data and their methods.

Finally, there are much worse polling methods used. The CNN one at Christmas time 2011 with 0% independents in its sample launched the viability of Rick Santorum. That was far worse than this Des Moines Register poll.

This post is mainly to point out that math counts. Changing the math to make things look good to the media does not.

Who's on the Bubble for CNBC GOP Debate

The short answer is that likely all 10 left from the last main debate will be together again and there will only be 2 more polls that determine this. The longer explanation follows.

Bob Jordan (@bobjordanapp) wrote on Sep 29:

Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director and host of Meet the Press, has expressed a willingness to shorten the stage after 11 candidates plodded through a three-hour marathon debate on CNN two weeks ago.

Todd has a lead role in establishing debate rules for CNBC, an NBC affiliate.

“Let’s just say the goal is to create a threshold that candidates have to meet to qualify for the stage rather than committing to putting 10 candidates on the stage. And I don’t think we should commit to more than 10-candidate debates,’’ Todd said in an interview on ESPN radio. “You have to be viable. So now we’re in debate three it’s time to show viability and only the viable ones survive.”

A day later, the CNBC published its debate qualifier rules: 

To qualify for the primetime debate, candidates must average 2.5 percent on the national polls from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and Bloomberg — released between September 17 and October 21.

Because of basic math six candidates (Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Bush, Rubio and Cruz) already have a high enough average that they could get 0’s on the next 5 polls and still qualify.

But that brings up another question. How many more polls will there be? 

By looking up the frequency of national polls by these organizations, it is virtually certain that neither Bloomberg, ABC nor CBS will do another national poll before October 21. ABC finished their 2nd poll this year on Sep 10 (their previous poll ended Jul 19), CBS finished their 2nd poll on Sep 13 (their previous poll ended Aug 2) and Bloomberg finished their 2nd poll on Sep 21 (their previous poll ended Aug 2). NBC, as parent company of CNBC “might” be tempted to rush out a poll just 3 weeks after their last poll on Sep 24 (their polls always end on Thursdays and they average a poll once every 7 weeks), but doing one so quickly might seem to be less objective-minded, and raise credibility issues to make such a radical departure from their previous pattern of polling every 6 to 8 weeks.

That leaves just CNN and Fox, who have been averaging polls every 5 and 4 weeks respectively. Fox’s last poll ended Sep 22, and is the chief sponsor of the GOP, so it seems very likely they will release another poll on or just before the deadline. 

CNN likes to end polls on Sundays and Oct 18 is the last Sunday before the deadline. It means slightly rushing a new poll since their last one ending on Sep 19, but it seems likely they will do one.

So most likely situation is that there are only TWO MORE polls.

What does this mean for the remaining candidates? Of the candidates at the last "kiddie table" debate, the highest polling averages (using the CNBC criteria), at just 0.5%, belong to Santorum and Jindal. They would have to average a whopping 6.5% to get to the debate. Neither has ever polled that high on ANY national poll this year.

This leaves 4 candidates currently averaging between 2.75 and 4%. Two of them (Kasich and Christie) could get goose eggs on the next two polls and still qualify for the debate. Huckabee just needs to get a 1% on just one of the next two polls to qualify.

Seem like a lock. But is it?

While it is a highly likely Huckabee will bottom out before reaching 0% on Oct 21, but since both the CNN and Fox polls are likely to come out just before the Oct 21 deadline and they only report 0 or 1% (not 0.5%), it isn’t unreasonable to see zeros. 

But there is one sign of hope for Huckabee. CNN’s last poll had Huckabee at 6% (vs. 3.2% on their trendline at the time). Perhaps something about their polling method gives Huckabee a bump. So maybe that means CNN will be down to 3% near the Oct 21 deadline meaning Huckabee would make the cut even if NBC also came out and gave him a 0.

That leaves one candidate, Rand Paul. 

If there are one or two polls before the deadline, as long as the new results average 2%, he is in. Looking at the forecasted trends above based on all national polls, he should get by with 3%. 

What about house affects? The last time Fox and CNN polled about Rand Paul he got 2 and 4% respectively, about 10% higher than the 2.7% average he was trending on for all polls. So he seems like he will just get in. 

It gets a little more dicey if NBC also does a poll because with three polls he needs to get a total of 7 points so there is not much room to spare on the forecast. 

If something important and negative gets a lot of coverage in the next month (the trial involving his father, sister and campaign strategist comes to mind), that might be enough to drop .5 % in one poll, which rounds to 1% and he just misses the cut.

Does CNN's polling methods save Mike Huckabee? Will Rand Paul avoid negative, poll depressing news? We'll know in a few weeks.

- JW

Hardball Most Competitive since Obama '08 Election

On August 26, 2013 MSNBC made an adjustment to its evening lineup, moving Ed Schultz into Chris Matthews' live showing of Hardball at 5 PM and turning his repeat broadcast at 7 PM into his live showing.

MSNBC President Phil Griffen said:

"This move will concentrate the 'Hardball' audience to one key time period and enhance the flow of our evening programming"

The Huffington Post's media critic Jack Mirkinson said

"The move could also be something of an admission about the continuing struggles of Schultz's 8 PM replacement, Chris Hayes. His wonky show has failed to match the ratings the more blustery Schultz put up in the time slot."

Politico's media critic Dylan Byers assessment was:

"MSNBC's evening lineup will now return to a mishmash of two different kinds of liberals who, though united behind a progressive agenda, do not always see eye to eye on aesthetics."

A common problem with critics and pundits is that they have no training in analyzing data. They will tell you the ratings (number of viewers) were up (or down) vs. yesterday, or last month, or last quarter, or last year and give you no context or explanation as to why that particular comparison is relevant (or not).

The following graph shows that Phil Griffen made a GREAT move when he shifted the lineup. The 7 PM hour is now more competitive than it has been in 5 years (just after Obama was elected and also when Obama beat Clinton in the primary). The 8 PM hour while not doing nearly so well as in Olbermann's heydays is as well now as it has in the last 4+ years not counting the runup to the 2012 election. (ALL MSNBC shows did MUCH better than normal in the month or two before and after the '08 and '12 elections)

Now, if you are an accountant, you will want to know how the ratings change on a show because that will affect your revenue, but media critics/pundits aren't (usually) accountants. They want to tell you who is hot or not.

The world of cable news is mostly driven by what is happening today. Ratings go up or down for a show vs. the prior day because of whatever events are happening that day, whether there is a substitute host, which day of the week it is, etc. In a larger scale, the "events happening that day" are more interesting to mostly politics-driven cable news shows when you are nearing election day in a presidential year, or a major primary, or a major speech and also major news events (e.g government shutdown, a hurricane, a bombing, etc). So to compare the ratings of one show does on a day where something major happened to another day where nothing significant happened is generally pointless.

What is more relevant is how did a show do against its major competition.

That is why the graph above compares how close MSNBC was to Fox (i.e. 120% means MSNBC did better than Fox, 80% means Fox won). Because day to day news events will make the trends hard to follow, I averaged entire weeks. In this case I chose an average of the previous 4 weeks to make the trends evident. (A single major event can cause a ratings spike triple of a typical day, sometimes even 7 times greater). I also excluded special shows (e.g. live coverage of the convention, or live election results, or the president's State of the Union address, etc). I did not try to take into account when the normal host was not broadcasting that day only because I didn't have that data readily available. I am guessing the the vacations hosts take are roughly the same and often at the same time of year so that this is likely to have insignificant impact in a 4 week average.

I also chose to use the ratings in the key Demo (age 25-54) not only because advertisers (revenue) care mostly about this view age range, but because it is pointless for any cable news network to try to compete with the millions of retirees who are dedicated to Fox. The overwhelming majority of Fox viewers are over 65. That has always been true and the addition of Megan Kelly to their prime time lineup has not changed that.

Finally, ratings focused media critics should maybe give Chris Hayes a break as they look at these comparative numbers. Chris Hayes is now doing much better than Lawrence O'Donnell (who hosted at 8 PM between Jan 24, 2011 through Oct 21, 2011) and Ed Schultz (who hosted from Oct 24, 2011 to March 25, 2013) with the exception of the big ratings bump that every MSNBC show got 2 months before and after the 2012 presidential election and even better than Keith Olbermann did in his final year and a half (July 2009 to Jan 2011). While my data doesn't go before Dec 2005, I would bet (excluding the time around the 2004 election) that Chris Hayes current ratings vs. Fox are better than Keith Olbermann's were during his first 3.5 years of Countdown (Mar 2003- Oct 2006) or his prior 2 years at MSNBC ('97 to '98).

So give Chris Hayes some more time. As Fox's viewers continue to die off, there may yet again be a point where MSNBC is regularly competitive with Fox's O'Reilly.

Just win, baby

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/presidential-election-2012-romney-politics_n_2036245.html Sadly, I agree with this whole column. It seems to be a byproduct of the information age. I'm not sure how it evolves towards something more healthy and balanced.

Romney Legislative Process - Conservative or Radical?

Rachel Maddow's Show had a big scoop last night.

Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, chaired Michigan's constitutional convention in the early 1960's.

As a result their constitution added a clause to SLOW DOWN when a new law takes effect. Laws passed by a majority take 3-15 months before they are valid (giving the opposition time to repeal it, or giving everyone time to plan how to adjust to it). For emergencies they enacted an exception, so that a 2/3 vote makes the law effective immediately.

When the radical GOP took over Michigan's legislature and governorship, NINETY SIX PERCENT of their passed laws were "emergency laws".

They never had a 2/3 majority. Instead they ignored their constitution. They did not count the votes.

See how the speaker of the house "counts" within 3 seconds that at least 73 people are standing (73 is a 2/3 majority).

A county court just ordered the house republicans to follow their constitution.

Rachel Maddow devoted 16 minutes of her show to this.

Get the word out. Make the rest of the media cover it.

Make Mitt Romney answer what he thinks of his father changing Michigan's constitution to slow down legislation and whether today's GOP's violation of that very consitution is OK.

Power Corrupts. Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

What has happened in Michigan, I believe is THE most radical thing that Republicans have done anywhere in the country.

They have eliminated
Democracy
The have eliminated
voting rights
at the local level in their state.
They have tried to eliminate
Democrats voting rights in the state legislature

Whether you are on the left or on the right or in the center or if you don't particularly care about politics
if all you care about is that we have a form of government in this country
called democracy
we vote
if you care about the idea that we still use voting here
if you still care about the constitution -

frankly
Michigan ought to have a flashing red light siren on it right now
- Rachel Maddow


See the entire 16 minute segment of her show describing in detail how Michigan's Republican Party has flagrantly violated their constitution in 546 illegally passed bills since they took power in 2011.

Michigan GOP takes away Right to Vote (even from Democratic legislators)

If you are an African-American living in Michigan there is a 50/50 chance that this year, the state of Michigan has considered scrapping your right to vote, scrapping away your right to elect local officials to represent you. - Rachel Maddow


See the entire 16 minute segment of her show describing in detail how Michigan's Republican Party has flagrantly violated their constitution in 546 illegally passed bills since they took power in 2011.

Ron Paul and Cold Weather

Climates that are cold focus their populations on more basic issues. The less money you have, the more you are affected by less people friendly climates.

So perhaps it is no surprise that Ron Paul's brand of fiscal conservatism appeals most to people living in northern states.

A particularly interesting difference is in the north to south alignment of Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. None of these states have non-trivial mormon population, so that can't skew the results. None of these states are the "home" of a candidate. As you go south, Ron Paul votes dissipate.

See the map below:

Ron Paul's results in Michigan would have been much better if the chief rival (Mitt Romney) wasn't born there and have a father who was governor there. The same is true in Massachusetts where Romney lives and was himself a governor. His success in the directly adjoining states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine would likely have been even better had Romney not lived and been governor nearby.

"Liberal" Hypocrisy on Liberty Issues

This is just sad. How many liberals voted for the non-liberal Obama was bad enough, but for them to actually approve of Obama's following the anti-Bill of Rights policies that Bush began? In the case of using drones to execute US citizens abroad are even one upping Bush in their assault on the constitution.

Here are more attacks on civil liberties by the Obama administration and their approval by the stupified Democratic base.

What makes it worse, is that had Clinton won, it would be no different.

Stealing back an election

Update: my Twitter attempts to goad Nate Silver and some others into rethinking Maine seems to have worked. And as I suspected, the Ron Paul enthusiasm is already at work making this happen. I suspect there are similar efforts happening via other internet RP communication websites as well as the campaign's internal operations.´

---

We need 195 more votes!

According to this, as of Nov 8. there were 6907 registered Republicans and 8,247 eligible independents who could vote in the Washington County, Maine GOP caucus.

If the turnout at this Saturday's caucus was the same as the Iowa caucus (5.4%), you'd have 373 GOP and as many as an additional 445 independent voters at the caucus. In 2008 only 113 showed up, but what was their incentive?

Surely the Ron Paul campaign's get out the vote operations can result in 300-500 attendees showing up this Saturday in order to WIN Maine (in the eyes of the MSM).

Do not let the Maine GOP Party chairman decide that 84% of the precincts with Romney in the lead is a FINAL VOTE.

The Iowa GOP Chairman tried to give Romney a tie and now he is no longer the Iowa GOP Chairman, and the media finally reported that Santorum won.

(Of course no one won any final delegates, but that's another story).

Ron Paul can win those 195 votes and the media will have to pay attention an call him the winner of Maine.

From the 2008 Maine caucus, County gave 32 more votes to Mitt than Paul. I have no idea whether Ron Paul's campaign was active in Washington County in 2008, but just to be on the safe side, add those 32 votes to the 195 needed above. In 2008, 113 voters showed up to vote. Add 227 to that making 340.

So if voting more than triples in Washington County caucus next Saturday, that should be enough to give Ron Paul the win in Maine.

But let's be safe, and shoot for finding at least 300 Ron Paul voters to show up in Washington County.

As someone from far away, I'm not legally allowed to vote, but give me a phone list and I'll make those calls.

Let's make all the votes count.

Newt Gingrich is a big fan of the Lincoln Douglas debates and also claims he is not racist when he calls President Obama, the food stamp president.

So here's an interesting quote:
“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he declared in Charleston, Ill., to robust cheers, “nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people.”

What politician said these word? Here's a hint: it was spoken at one of
these celebrated Lincoln Douglas debates.

Think it was Douglas?

Think again.

Abraham Lincoln, the "founding father" of the Republican Party said that.

Here's the rest of the story from a Lincoln historian who told the "historian" Newt Gingrich that he would not want a real Lincoln Douglas debate with President Obama.

Apple and the High Tech Industry's Deathshops

Last fall I wrote about Steve Jobs death. Part of that had to do with the how one worker making iPhones killed himself after his treatment by his employer (the Apple contractor, FoxConn). But I learned this is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the high tech industry is built upon employment conditions so bad, their employers install nets around their buildings to limit the suicides. Sweatshops is too timid a term to describe these companies. These are deathshops.

This author advocates we boycott Apple because they pay only 8$ per iPhone in labor expenses in their death shops, but frankly these practices are all over the high tech industry. How could I begin to find an electronics company that does not create their high tech products using such deathshops? At the moment, I will do my best to buy only used products so that I send no additional money to fund these deathshops. Maybe in time I can find companies that insure nothing in their high tech equipment is produced by a deathshop. Though this may be far harder to do than those who shop at quality grocery stores like PCC (when I lived in Seattle) to insure that their food is produced humanely.

Immigration - A Santorum Personal History

It strikes me as odd how strident Rick Santorum is against illegal immigration given his background as the first generation in his family who was born in America. It seems that it is possible that his grandfather got to America just before (or perhaps not so legally) just after the draconian Immigration Act of 1924 and that his father had to wait until he was 7 years old until he could join his dad. I'm not sure why Rick Santorum talks about 5 years. This immigration act was targetted at Italians and Jews, cutting down Italian immigration from 200,000 per year to 4,000 a year (while increasing immigration quotas from "favored" nations).

I wonder if someone did some real investigating whether they would find out some detail, perhaps embarrassing or perhaps some deep psychological wound, that would explain why Rick Santorum is so unforgiving of people wanting to move to America, despite the roadblocks put up by this generation's bigots. When his father was born, the Italians and Jews were the target of bigots in America. Today it is Mexicans. The target changes, and "legal" means of enforcing the bigotry changes, but fundamental bigotry is still there.