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Required Reading: Advantage Obama?

By Dean Barnett

From the Daily Kos, “Tie-Breakers. Advantage Obama. Advice? Take Nothing for Granted” by Joe Trippi Having scrubbed itself of the ugly Trig Trutherism that more prestigious publications still wallow in, the Daily Kos is still able to host diaries written by respectable people like Joe Trippi. Trippi, the strategic genius behind both the 2004 Howard Dean and 2008 John Edwards campaigns, tries to reassure the Netroots that all remains well in their hour of doubt:

If the race stays closely fought to the end, there are a number of possible tie-breakers that could decide the outcome: 1. Polls are likely underestimating the turnout of young voters because many of these voters use cell phones and pollsters are having a difficult time including their views with accuracy. Obama has a big advantage with these voters. As a potential tie-breaker – ADVANTAGE OBAMA. 2. Polls are likely underestimating African-American turnout in the election for the same reason. Many of these households have cell phones instead of landlines, have only recently been registered to vote, or do not get through the screening questions of pollsters including “did you vote in the last election?” As a potential tie-breaker – ADVANTAGE OBAMA 3. The Bradley Effect. So named because when Tom Bradley, the African-American Mayor of Los Angeles ran for Governor of California polls showed him up by 10points – he lost the election. Pollsters later determined that many white voters had failed to tell pollsters the truth about how they intended to vote. I was Tom Bradley’s Deputy Campaign Manager in 1982. I saw the “Bradley effect” up close at the age of 26 – it was real. It is 26 years later and I can tell you two things for sure it isn’t the minus 10 points that it was in 1982 but it isn’t zero either. There will be an overestimation of the number of white voters casting ballots for Obama. As a potential tie-breaker – ADVANTAGE McCAIN.

I’ve always found Joe Trippi’s conviction that he has a monopoly on common sense rather endearing. In 2004, Trippi’s candidate Howard Dean raised a bazillion dollars on the internet. Figuring he had cracked some sort of code, Trippi sought to bring the same sort of magic to the John Edwards campaign in 2008. In spite of Trippi’s internet expertise, Edwards raised about $75 and a couple of pledges to host coffees outside Des Moines via his online operation. Of course, the Dean campaign caught lightening in a bottle in 2004. Actually, it would be more accurate to say it received lightening in the bottle. It’s not like the campaign discovered a repeatable formula for raising online funds, any more than the 2008 Ron Paul campaign left a roadmap that normal, elect-able candidates will be able to follow in 2012. Trippi shows the same kind of egotism in this essay. It may come as a shock to him, but he’s not the only one who’s figured out that the 2008 race is a tough one to poll. It will further shock him to know that all reputable pollsters are actively trying to figure out how they should weigh each of the factors that Trippi points to. So will the pollsters systematically understate Barack Obama’s support as Trippi maintains? If only there were some empirical data we could look at to see how the pollsters did in similar races…Wait a minute! Barack Obama has already competed in a bunch of little elections called primaries. And guess what? He did not systematically over-perform the pollsters’ predictions. Quite the contrary – anyone who remembers New Hampshire, Indiana and Texas might recall that Obama had the uncanny habit of underperforming expectations. Admittedly, those of us who hope for a McCain victory are feeling a little bullish this morning and are finding the polls more hospitable than has typically been the case. But one campaign verity that Trippi overlooked remains quite relevant: Campaigns that begin braying, “Don’t believe the polls!” seldom win.

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