Dueling Kansas Gov Polls: who to Believe

There are now two recent polls with very contrasting results out on the Kansas Governors race. A poll from Survey USA showed the Democratic team of Paul Davis and Jill Docking with a 48-40 lead over incumbent Republican Governor Sam Brownback and Lt. Governor Jeff Coyler. Then, on Sunday a poll done by British YouGov polling firm for the New York Times and CBS News showed Brownback with 47 to 37 lead, and including leaners at 52 to 40 lead.

Naturally, this has prompted some questions. How can such divergent results, around a 20 percent swing, be explained? Which poll is most reliable?

The first thing I noticed is that the YouGov poll didn't include Libertarian candidate Keen Umbehr who draws about 5 percent of the vote in the Survey USA poll.

The NYT/CBS/YouGov poll is part of massive national poll of every Gubernatorial and Senate race in every state, with over 100,000 taking part.

Taniel at DailyKos notes

In 2012, the margin of YouGov's final polls favored Republicans by an average 5 points, including large errors in competitive races in Nevada, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Virginia—all in the GOP's favor.

YouGov doesn't use the same random-digit dialing use by Survey USA and traditional pollsters. Instead they use a panel of respondents, who aren't random selected. In a scientifically valid poll every voter should have an equal chance of being randomly selected, making the sample representative.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times observes:

 YouGov attempts to build a large, diverse panel and then match its panelists to demographically similar respondents from the American Community Survey, an extremely rigorous probability survey conducted by the Census Bureau. This step is intended to mimic probability sampling. But it can require significant assumptions about the composition of the electorate, including partisanship. These assumptions are contestable and based on varying amounts of evidence.

Some groups tend to be underrepresented in web panels: the less educated, the less affluent, Hispanics and those over age 65. You Gov then blows up the under represented groups. So those in the subgroups in the panel, if they have unrepresentative views can skew the entire poll.

Comparing Internals/Crosstabs

Let's peer underneath the topline to understand the differences and see if there are signs that one or another poll is implausible.

 Black voters. One of the more implausible results in the YouGov poll is its claim that black voters prefer Davis by only a 53-46 margin.  There is no "race" breakdown in the latest Survey USA poll, but a November 2013 had Davis up by 65-21 margin.  I think the YouGov result  is implausible and quite likely that Davis-Docking will carry the black vote by a bigger margin.

If blacks are five percent of the electorate, the difference between a 50-50 split and a 90-10 split would be about 4 percent, about one-third of YouGov's Brownback edge.

By the way, YouGov interviewed only 31 black out of 1274, or 2.4% of the panel. In contrast blacks are estimated to have been 5 percent of the 2012 electorate.

YouGov also interviewed only 25 Hispanics.  

Women voters. Incredibly, the YouGov poll has Brownback leading Davis 50-41, while Survey USA has Davis up 51 to 35.

A news report on an exit poll for the Kansas 2012 said that among women Obama was almost equal, while 69 percent of men favored Romney. That is a gender gap of about 20 points in 2012, compared to a YouGov gender gap of 6 and a Survey USA of 13 points.

Republicans.  YouGov, in contrast to Survey USA has Brownback doing exceptionally well with Republican voters grabbing 82 percent to only 9 for Davis. In contrast, Survey USA has Davis getting an impressive 29 percent of Republican voters, compared to only 60 percent for Brownback. It may just be a coincidence, but the Survey USA poll shows "some dudete" symbolic candidate Jennifer Winn drawing 30 percent in the Republican primary.

Independents.  YouGov shows this segment, breaking narrowly for Brownback 46 to 43, while Survey USA has Davis leading 48 to 27. (Independents are 36% of the YG panel and 24% of Survey USA.)

Senior Voters.  YouGov has Brownback leading 57-39, Survey USA has Davis on top 56-36. (65+ voters are  projected to be about 29% of voters.)

Summing up: YouGov has a historical +5 GOP bias, excluding the Libertarian candidate likely gives another +5 bias for Brownback.  Adding in the very suspicious cross tabs for blacks (and Hispanics) and women, not to mention the other categories, makes a strong case that the Survey USA poll is closer to the truth and that the Davis-Docking team is very well positioned to win in November.

2014 Euro Election Posters from Germany

While in Berlin last week for the International Trade Union Confederation Congress and LabourStart's Global Solidarity Conference, I observed lots of election posters for the Euro elections which were held last week.

My theory was the party votes would be roughly in inverse proportion to the attractiveness of the posters.  The two leading parties, the CDU and the SPD, seem to have relied more on billboards, while the other parties had more posters.

Here's a defaced CDU (Christian Democratic Union) billboard featuring Chancellor Angela Merkel, followed by a poster featuring another CDU politician, and then an issue themed billboard.

 

Here's the SPD (Social Democratic Party) billboard, features Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament since 2012. Previously he was leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, And their candidate for Euro Parliament President in 2014.

Here is a poster from the Green Party

 Here are two posters from Der Linke,  the "Left Party."  The bottom one also includes one from the "Pirate Party."

T

Two Communist Parties with terrible politics had great posters. Here is one from the DKP, German Communist Party, which considers itself a continuation of the historic Stalinist Party.

Here is a poster for the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany (German: Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands, MLPD), an anti-revisionist party which still looks kindly on Stalin and Mao.

A poster from the Ecological Democratic Party, an ecological party that is also anti-abortion.

Finally, from the Euro-skeptic Alternative for Germany, contesting the Euro elections for the first time. 

Results:  CDU/CSU  35% (down 3%);  SPD 27% (up 3.5%); Greens (10.7% down 1.4%); The Left (7%, down .08%): AfD (7%, new party). The Ecological Democratic Party (.64%, down .1%). 

The Communist Parties got less than 0.6 percent of the vote, but I haven't seen any detailed results.

Political Duopoly Reconsidered

From Ballot Access News

TEXAS DEMOCRATS HELP GREEN AND LIBERTARIAN PARTIES
 
For the sixth time in a row, Texas Democrats are indirectly helping the Green and Libertarian Parties to remain ballot-qualified for 2016. The indirect help consists of not running a full slate of candidates for statewide office. The two ballot-qualified minor parties must poll 5% for a statewide race (or 2% for Governor) in order to remain on the ballot. When one of the major parties stays out of a race, it is easy for those two parties to meet that vote test. Texas Democrats left three statewide offices unfilled this year.

The problem with intersectionality--a graphic illustration

It seems that the hip word on the left today is intersectionality.  I think it is a problematic concept.  It is a long word and not in common usage.  I am doubtful that  it leads to clear thinking or good strategies.  It seems to me that it is a progressive version of
"proactive" or "think outside the box." (perhaps the most inside the box phrase of recent decades.  I think is less useful than "coalition" or "alliance."

Intersection has, I think, two meanings that commonly spring to mind. Neither makes this a useful term.  First, when two streets come together. Second, in mathematical set theory-- an intersection is the set of items that have both characteristic A and characteristic B. I don't think either helps to make "intersecrionality" a politically useful term.

Here are sets A and B.

And, here is the intersection of A and B. Those items that are members of both A and B.

In contrast, in a set theory, the union of A and B contains all items that are a member of A or B.

South Africa in Crisis 1977

The August 2012 police shooting of approximately 34 striking miners has been widely compared to the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. It should also be compared to the 1976 Soweto uprising in which more than 170 youth were killed.  The Sharpeville massacre led to the banning of ANC and the Pan African Congress and their shift from passive to armed resistance.  Soweto was also a turning point.

I wrote the following article for New America, the paper of Social Democrats USA on the fallout a little more than a year later when the South African government instituted a severe political repression.  My last sentence was "Only a political miracle seems capable of reversing a political dynamic that is inevitable heading for confrontation and explosion." There was a miracle in 1990.  But it is now seems that the terms of the miracle and decisions since have had their own contradictions and that South Africa is entering a period of intense crisis.  I don't yet have a handle on all that is involved.

In the meantime, here is my 1977 take with some modern links added.

South Africa Lurches to The Precipice

by Stuart Elliott New America  Nov 1977 (?)

The most dramatic crackdown in two decades [a reference to the Sharpeville massacre] virtually forecloses the possibility of a peaceful resolution to South Africa's racial crisis. On October 19, the South African government banned black protest groups, closed down the leading black newspaper and arrested its editor, Percy Qoboza, and arrested at least fifty people and served an unknown number with banning orders, which bar them from political activities and curtail their freedoms for five years. Both urban black leaders, regarded as moderates, and white liberals were victims of the repression.

The Black ConsciousnessMovement, founded by Stephen Biko in 1969, which filled the gap left by the earlier banning of the African National Congress and the Pan-AfricanistCongress, was only one of many organizations to be banned. Also proscribed were non-political self-help organizations like Black Community Programs, a business-financed group which ran a network of medical clinics. The main targets of the crackdown, however, appear to be the organizations which are the political expression of urban blacks. Among the groups covered by the ban are the South African Students Movement, a high school group; the South African Students Organization, a university group ; and the Black People's Convention, an umbrella group that is the closest thing to a black political party. The Soweto Teachers Action Committee which coordinated the resignations of several hundred high school teachers last month in support of students who have boycotted classes for more than three months in demand for the upgrading of black education was also banned. Leaders of the  Committee of  Ten, an organization of black moderates, which was formed earlier in the year in an attempt to end the near-anarchy that prevailed in Soweto since last year's rioting, were also arrested. The action of the South African .government was a clear statement that : not only has no intention of ever allowing blacks to have a voice in a federal structure, but that it will not even permit blacks to organize for peaceful political change.

The South African government also struck at leading white liberals like those around the Christian Institute of Southern Africa, an ecumenical group noted for its authoritative reports on apartheid. Donald Woods, the white editor of the Daily Dispatch, was arrested as he was preparing to board a flight to New York. Invited to the United States by the American ambassador to South Africa, William G. Bowdler, Woods was to have met with Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, and possibly President Carter. Under banning, Woods is forbidden to work as a journalist or to write or speak for publication. In addition, he is restricted to East London in Cape Province, subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and limited to meeting only one person at a time other than members of his own family. Just as the crackdown was a clear rebuke of Western opinion, the arrest of Woods was a challenge to the Carter administration's human rights policy and its opposition to apartheid. The South African action undoubtedly complicated the British-American effort to secure a peaceful transition to majority rule in Rhodesia as well.

The crackdown also marked an accelerating restriction of the political freedoms that have long been South Africa's selling point in asking for time and tolerance from the West. Not only was the World, the leading black newspaper and the second largest in all of South Africa, closed down, but its editor Percy Qoboza was detained without trial, a status that can be prolonged indefinitely by the government. Along with the arrest of Woods, this was clearly intended to warn other newspapers "not to abuse" the right of criticism. Threats against the press have become a regular feature of speeches by government leaders in recent weeks and it is widely expected that harsh measures controlling the press will be passed by the new Parliament in January.

The willingness to consider the need for change that existed among white South Africans for a brief interlude following the Soweto riots has been extinguished. With white liberals and moderates weak and disunited, the overwhelming majority of whites appear determined to retain their domination by increased repression and the abridgement of democracy, whatever the cost. The cost is likely to be high. Only a political miracle seems capable of reversing a political dynamic that is inevitable heading for confrontation and explosion.

Rachel Maddow says Paul Ryan is a Ayn Randist, not a fiscal conserviate

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UN Take Over of Internet? :Congressman Mike Pompeo vs. New York Times

Mike Pompeo (R-KS4)

...there is an effort to manipulate the International Telecommunications Union—a treaty originally created in 1865 to address telegraph service—to provide the United Nations jurisdiction over the Internet.  The showdown over whether the UN will seize control will happen at the December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai.

 Pompeo  boasts that he has written a House resolution opposing the UN takeover of the internet.

New York Times

Documents prepared for the December meeting, which leaked out last week — yes, on the Internet — show that there are no proposals to hand governance of the Net to the I.T.U. The union insists that it has no desire to play such a role. And even if some governments would like to give the agency increased regulatory powers, the United States and other like-minded countries could easily block them.

Ted Koppel Channels Alan West

Ted Koppel is a widely respected newsman, but this week in an NPR interview he channeled crazy right-wing Congressman Alan West who has been widely ridiculed for claiming that 80 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are members of the Communist Party. The standard form of this smear has been to claim that members of the Progressive Caucus are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Again and sadly, untrue. The inability of the far right to distinguish between liberals, progressives, democratic socialists, and Communists is a habitual deficiency that is, I suspect, scoffed at by the elite media like Koppel and NPR.

Koppel was talking about Sunday's French Presidential election, but he showed a similar ignorance of French politics. Here is what Koppel said, after a week in France preparing for a special report for NBC.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is the communist, who runs the leftist front way on the fringes - huge rallies, Neal, with tens of thousands of French communists who are coming out there.

Melenchon, however, is not a Communist. He is not even a former Commununist. He is a former member of the French Socialist Party. He was a Minister of Vocational Education is a Socialist government and former Socialist Senator. In 2008, Melenchon and others on the left the SP, exited and formed the Left Party, which is democratic socialist in its orientation. The Left Party has formed an electoral alliance with the much diminished Communist Party and other smaller groups.  That does not make Melenchon a Communist and it does not make the hundreds of thousands who have attended his rallies Communists. It should also be added that there are at least two Presidential candidates more on the left fringe than Melenchon.

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How Time Photographed the Protesters

TIME magazine named “The Protester” as its “Person of the Year” last year.Fellow Wichita democratic leftist Russell Fox said they got it right. And, I agree. This behind-the-scenes video shows how photographer Peter Hapak traveled around to seven different countries to capture portraits of protestors for the story. The resulting photographs can be viewed here.

Are corporations persons?

The PPP polling firm has a new survey  out on the South Carolina primary.  The pollsters asked South Carolina voters about the
non-binding "corporate personhood" referendum Steve Colbert hoped to land on the ballot that would ask voters whether "corporations are people" or "only people are people." Only a third of likely voters said they think "corporations are people" compared to two thirds who think that "only people are people." Further, a majority of supporters of every
GOP candidate -- including Mitt Romney -- say that they believe that
"only people are people."

“The New Nationalism” Theodore Roosevelt

Speech in Osawatomie, Kansas
August 31, 1910

Theodore Roosevelt at Osawatomie, August 31, 1910

We come here to-day to commemorate one of the epoch-making events of the long struggle for the rights of man—the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country—this great republic—means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.

There have been two great crises in our country’s history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises—in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, not only did you render life worth living for our generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington’s colleagues. If this republic had been founded by them only to be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then the judgment of the world would have been that Washington’s work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned Washington’s work, as you carried to achievement the high purpose of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will be forever associated; and Kansas was the theater upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent act. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.

Watch Rick Perry's Campaign End Before Your Eyes

Occupy Wichita October 8

The Occupy movement continues in Wichita as it expands nationally. There is small group meeting nightly, but today there was an effort ot get a larger turnout. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day.

A broader group of participants, including folks from the labor movement. I saw people from the APWU, IAM, IBEW, SEIU, and Teamsters.

There is still a lot that needs to be done if the movement is to be broadened and deepened. I may have some good video interviews, but they will need to be edited. In the meantime, here is a photo slideshow. 

The Young Guns

KS-02: Jenkins draws late, possibly tough, Dem challenger

Daily Kos reports

One district that had been essentially left for dead by Democrats this year was the one occupied by freshman Republican Lynn Jenkins. That changed at the filing deadline, as Jenkins drew a potentially intriguing Democratic challenger. The Democrat is Sean Tevis, who raised six figures from small donors in a longshot state legislative bid that he wound up narrowly losing (52-48).

Bumper sticker of the week

Spotted on a car in Wichita on January 1, 2o1o.

Views expressed in the bemperticker of the week are not necessarily those of this blog.

The bumper sticker of the week feature will not necessarily appear on a weekly basis.

Blogging Around

Massimo Pigliucci,The Problems with Libertarianism

nice round-up of the varieties of liberatarianism, from left to right, and some insightful critiques. Over one hundered comments, which I haven't slogged through.

Ben Cohen on Marek Edelman, the last hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Marek Edelman (zichrono livracha) - the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising - has passed away at the age of ninety. In 1942, Edelman was one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) which united Bundists, Zionists, communists and others to confront the Nazi threat. The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto the following year was the first act of mass civilian resistance in Nazi-occupied Poland - a salient fact that should be remembered by those who portray the victims of the Holocaust as having passively accepted their fate

Harold Meyerson, "Is Europe's Left in Crisis"

Europe's socialists suffer from three major maladies. First, each of their parties has been the champion of the welfare state in their respective nations, but the political support for universal welfare states has weakened as immigrants have transformed the populations of the hitherto homogenous European states. Second, the relative numerical decline of the blue-collar working class across Western Europe has compelled the parties of the left to embrace new constituencies and new agendas, some of which conflict with their old constituencies and agendas. And third, though globalization has not had the catastrophic effect on European workers that it has had on their American counterparts, it has weakened the nation state's ability to manage its own economy and secure it from harm, undermining the arena where socialists won their greatest victories.

Socialist International, "The Way Forward on climate change and the financial crisis"

Max Dunbar, "The Glorious Leap Backward"

when China’s economy piles success on success. Murdoch has been trading with China for decades, Brown welcomes its leaders to Downing Street. Does it really matter that the government evicted around 1.5 million people from Beijing and kept migrant workers in states of indentured slavery in the runup to the Olympics. As a power China is heading into growth and prosperity while the Western economies go smash in the setting sun.

Capitalists and leftists alike can support a country that combines the worst of capitalism with the worst of socialism. As well as corporations and governments trading with Beijing there has been a rash of books in praise of the glorious republic and progressive pundits – Martin Jacques is probably the best known – playing down its human rights atrocities. Ti

bet is just so last millennium. The point is to be on the winning side – at whatever cost.

Don't Follow Tea baggers, Read the Traffic Signs

I shot this picture from the window of my car while driving by the Tea-baggers (here and here) protest in Wichita.

I didn't notice the traffic sign, until I got home.

"RIGHT LANE ENDS"

Appropriate.

Rep. Paul Davis: Update of Working Kansans' Agenda

Kansas House Democratic Leader Paul Davis updated the Labor Caucus on the Working Kansans Agenda during the 2009 Washington Days gathering in Topeka.

For more on the agenda, see here and here.

I'm extremely progressive

The Center for American Progress has an interesting interactive quiz. Answer 40 questions and it tells you how progressive (or reactionary, I guess) you are. You can compare yourself to various categories.

I'm more "progressive" than "liberal Democrats" (247.1) who are more progressive than "progressives."

How progressive are you?