Methods Behind the Madness

. . . Or, how I analyze elections

A little history for those who don’t know.

*In 2004 I was doing a job that now has been largely replaced by computers. I was a “poll flusher,” which meant that I was to go to a certain extremely predictive precinct in the most “swingy” county in Ohio—-a “bellwether” precinct. I was to go twice, once at 10 in the morning, once at four in the afternoon. My job was to find out what % of Republicans had voted by that time.

Karl Rove, who was running George W. Bush’s reelection campaign had a (for the time) well-designed strategy. If Bush won Ohio, he’d win. Rove was convinced Florida was already in the bag (it was). Ohio was close. Rove thought that if the Republicans turned out, that Bush would carry Ohio.

I arrived at my precinct at 10 and found that 40% of Republicans there had already voted. I returned to my home to each lunch and logged onto a certain conservative site. The posters there were frantic at the then-respected “DrudgeReport” carrying banner headlines, “EXIT POLLS SHOW KERRY UP IN OHIO” and similar depression news. Except, based on what I had seen, it probably wasn’t true. I warned everyone to stay calm, go vote, that what Drudge was saying wasn’t what I was seeing at my key precinct.

Sure enough, when I returned at 4:00 pm, some 90% of the Republicans there had already voted! And the polls were open another three hours. In other words, Rove had it right. Rs were going to turn out, big. Again I got back, and the chatterbots were worse than ever. “Oh my God, we’re losing!” No, I said, and I told my story. Sure enough, Bush won Ohio by 110,000 votes and won reelection. (Not somehting I’m particularly proud of now, but he was still better than Algore or Lurch).

Fast forward to 2016. By that time, I had been chastened by thinking the 2012 exit polls were also wrong. They weren’t. Zero won reelection. But in the meantime I had begun to focus heavily on voter registration and early voting/absentee voting numbers (by party, as of course you never know how someone will vote—-but party ID is the single best identifier of how someone will vote). I had watched the numbers in Florida move toward the Rs, and once early voting began, the trends told a very clear story: Cankles was not doing nearly as well in early voting as had Obama, and would likely lose Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. The voter registrations in Pennsylvania also had moved toward Rs, but not as strongly. Still, I was convinced that if the trends held, Trump would win Florida by about 2 points, Ohio by about 6-8, and eke out a win in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

I had already started a book on the election. Now I gave it a title in early October 2016—weeks before the election: How Trump Won. But I couldn’t get a publisher. Everyone thought I was nuts.

Sure enough, on election night I’m in a back room at Twitter with pollster Richard Baris and he called Florida three hours before the networks did, and called Pennsylvania an hour before they did. Trump had won.

I got a call from Regnery. “Do you still have the manuscript?” Yes, I said, but when I couldn’t find a publisher I stopped writing at about 150 pages. “That’s great,” they said. “Joel Pollak of Breitbart also has an unfinished manuscript about being on the campaign plane in the press pool with Trump. Could you combine books?” I said, yes, it’s possible, but it would take a good editor. Fortunately, we had such an editor, and the result was the book you see above.

President Trump was always happy to display it.

I followed the same voter statistics models in 2018, but there was something else happening: while most of the trends were right, almost 40 Republican House members had bailed out, leaving 30 seats vulnerable that should never have been contested. In the 2018 election, which I wrongly said the GOP would hold the House, DemoKKKrats won almost every at-risk seat, most of them by under 2 points. They literally ran the table.

But I and others were still sold on the voter registration model of being more important than polling for showing election outcomes. I ignored one thing at my peril: Fraud. I simply did not think either the DemoKKKrats were capable of pulling off a total election fraud (individual seats here and there, yes). Nor did I think the Republicans would just let it happen. I was wrong on both counts, even though all the “on-the-ground” stats still favored Trump. Only the polls said otherwise—-but Baris had Trump winning Arizona and Georgia narrowly and picking up one of the big three of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Needless to say, after hosting an election night webcast for five hours with Tracy Beanz of www.uncoverdc.com and Baris, we all shut down thinking Trump had won—but not knowing for sure and concerned about Faux News’s early call of Arizona. We thought that would be reversed.

So where are we this time? The voter registration stats are as impressive as they were in 2016. There are big changes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida (where Republicans have taken the statewide lead!), and strong, but not as dominant in Arizona and Nevada. Only New Mexico has run against the tide, getting bluer.

However, I think that a mixture of signals need to be considered. Voter registration numbers; polling; any “canaries in the coal mine” in terms of special elections or lower-importance elections during the year; and “animal spirits,” which is to say, gut feelings.

I’ve discussed voter registration, which is strongly in the Republicans’ favor. The retirements are overwhelmingly in Republicans’ favor—-25 net so far (Devin Nunes retired to help Trump, or it would be 26). I think by election day 2022 that number will be between 30 and 35. Special elections haven’t shown much. Florida’s crazy DemoKKKrat Alcee Hastings won by the exact same percentage as he did before, but the R turnout was down 2%. Then there is redistricting, which has solidified many DemoKKKrat and Republican seats. The Rs picked up a few seats, net, thanks to Texas and (probably) Florida, but not as many as they could have. In states like Illinois, DemoKKKrats gerrymandered like pros, carving out large DemoKKKrat leads.

However, here is where the “animal spirits” come in. Biteme has been polling in the very low 40% range. Today, Quinnipiac, a poll that Nate Silver at 538 labeled “A+”, has Biteme at 33%. Several other polls have had him at 36%.

A word on polls: all pollsters operate within a “margin of error,” including Baris who is the best. As he told me, “If I have a 4% MOE and predict Trump will win by 2, and loses by 1, I’m accurate.” Well, yes. But in terms of predictability, that doesn’t do Trump much good. So if the Q poll has a 4% MOE, Biteme may be at 37% (HORRIBLE) or even as low as 29% (RIDICULOUS).

Therefore I think the overall gist of the polls showing, for the most part, Rs up in the generic ballot and Biteme dragging near the bottom of the canal suggest that the “animal spirits” are saying that DemoKKKrats are in massive trouble. As of today I see no way that the Rs don’t win the House and Senate back. The only question is “how big?” That would seem to say that despite redistricting, it might not matter, that those D voters who are now voting R—-but haven’t yet changed their registrations—-are going to make redistricting irrelevant. And if that happens, the landslide could be huge.

Larry Schweikart

Rock drummer

Film maker

NYTimes #1 bestselling author

Political pundit

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(My book, A Patriot’s History of the United States, on Frank Underwood’s bookcase in “House of Cards”)