Both Parties Guilty of Ballot Games

By Nathan L. Gonzales

While some Democrats are incensed about the way former Majority Leader Tom DeLay chose to exit his race for reelection in Texas 22, both parties are guilty of being coy with election laws, primaries, and filing deadlines to gain a partisan advantage.

Of all the accusations hurled at DeLay, being politically unaware is not one of them. The congressman certainly could have bowed out before the March 7 primary, but he waited another three weeks so he could have direct role in choosing his successor. His move unquestionably gives the Republicans a better chance to hold the seat Bush carried 64%-35% in 2004.

Meanwhile in Illinois 17, Democratic Rep. Lane Evans bowed out of his reelection bid just seven days after the March 21 primary. The congressman's health (he has Parkinson's disease) has been a factor for the last decade, but it is remarkable that he couldn't have decided it had reached a critical point before the filing deadline or even the primary.

Now, Evans's political decision and timing gives Democrats a decidedly upper-hand. If Evans had decided not to run for reelection, Republicans would have made a harder push to get a better candidate in a district Kerry only won 51%-48%. Now, Democrats have the freedom to choose their own nominee, without a pesky multi-candidate primary, while Republicans, according to state law, are left to boost their nominee's (former television anchor Andrea Zinga) chances as best they can.

Other blatant ballot maneuvers include Rep. Bill Lipinski (D, IL-3) dropping out of his race in late August 2002 to ensure his son Dan would replace him in Congress. And in 2004, Rep. Rodney Alexander (LA-5) first filed for reelection as a Democrat but re-filed as a Republican just hours before the filing deadline, leaving him with no general election opposition and permanent enemies within his former party.

But one of the most notorious ballot maneuvers was in 2002 when embattled Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli (NJ) took himself out of the race on September 30, just five weeks before the general election. Millionaire businessman Doug Forrester (R) was on his way to knocking off the incumbent, but instead faced then-former Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D), the hand-picked nominee.

Sometimes there are extraordinary circumstances (death, for example) where a nominee is unable to be on the ballot. But more often than not these days, politicians are scouring filing deadlines and state laws in an effort to subvert the actual voting portion of democracy.

This column first appeared on Political Wire on April 9, 2006.

No Time to DeLay: Now What for the Democrats?

By Stuart Rothenberg

In announcing that he was ending his Congressional career and would resign his seat in the United States House of Representatives, Representative Tom DeLay (R) gave Democrats just what they wished for: His head.

DeLay’s exit won’t deprive Democrats of their “culture of corruption” argument. DeLay and discredited lobbyist Jack Abramoff will still make the headlines, and Democrats have enough ammunition stored up to allow them to run on ethics and scandal from now until November. No, Tom DeLay won’t be erased from photographs and past news stories, so Democratic candidates can still use him as an example of alleged Republican abuses.

But for former congressman Nick Lampson (D), who has been running for months to oust DeLay from his seat in Texas’s 22nd Congressional District, DeLay’s announcement is a political disaster.

Make no mistake about it. Lampson’s real chance of winning this House contest was in making DeLay the issue in the race. Lampson probably can’t win because of his own record or his views. He could only win if voters were so repulsed by DeLay that they were willing to vote for anyone, even a Democrat, to get rid of him.

Lampson’s problem is that he is a Democrat running in a very conservative, very Republican district. Sure, there are Democratic voters in the district, and Lampson will get their votes. But he’ll need to attract GOP voters if he has any chance of winning. And without DeLay on the ballot, that will be much, much harder to do.

Lampson has called for a quick special election to fill the vacant House seat once DeLay exits Congress. No wonder, he has loads of money in the bank and has been running for months. A quick election would benefit him, which is why he is screaming for a quick one.

Republicans now seem inclined not to hold a special election at all, leaving the seat vacant until November. That’s a better scenario for them, since it will give the GOP time to select a strong standard-bearer for the fall and build the resources it needs to overwhelm Lampson. (A number of potentially strong GOP officeholders have been mentioned as possible Congressional candidates, so Lampson is almost certain to face a well-tested, politically appealing Republican on the November ballot).

George W. Bush carried the 22nd District overwhelmingly in 2004 (64%-35%), and there is no reason to believe that voters wouldn’t prefer a new Republican – without Delay’s ethical baggage – to a Democrat who lost his own seat after redistricting.

Delay will still hang like a cloud over the ’06 midterm elections, and Democrats appear to be well-positioned to make major gains nationally, including possibly taking control of the House of Representatives. But in DeLay’s Texas Congressional district, the sun is finally breaking through for Republicans.

This column first appeared on Town Hall on April 7, 2006.

It May Look and Smell Like a Poll, but Is It?

By Stuart Rothenberg

I read “Beware of Online Polls” on the Hotline Web log only a few hours before I received a press release from Tennessee GOP Senate hopeful Ed Bryant’s campaign screaming that “Zogby Poll Confirms Bryant Strongest Candidate.” Bryant’s memo was mostly balderdash, and it’s not alone. I’m seeing other silly press releases and references to controversial polls, so I figured it’s about time to discuss online polls.

The Hotline entry, written by the always astute Chuck Todd, warned readers about the Wall Street Journal Online/Zogby International’s online polls and noted that some of the results “don’t make any sense.”

He asserted, correctly in my view, that pollsters have not yet figured out how to conduct online polls in a way that’s accurate. Like the Hotline, both Roll Call and my newsletter, the Rothenberg Political Report, don’t report online polls. Well-regarded pollsters are right to say their methodology is unproved.

Of course, we aren’t the only ones skeptical about online polls. Other media outlets, including CNN and the print edition of The Wall Street Journal, generally don’t report on online polls either. Many media outlets also ignore polls taken by automated phone systems rather than real people, because of concerns about their accuracy. Unfortunately, others in the media aren’t as discriminating.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I’m not merely defending the status quo when I question online polling. Polling is based on statistics, and sampling techniques matter if you care at all about accuracy and reliability.

There are plenty of veteran pollsters who challenge the reliability of online polls. One of them, Warren Mitofsky, who served as executive director of the CBS News election and survey unit for more than 20 years and started the CBS News/New York Times Poll in 1975, told me recently that online polls have “no scientific basis” because “their samples are people who volunteer.”

Those samples don’t represent the general population, and efforts to weight online results “are bogus,” said Mitofsky, a trustee of the National Council on Public Polls, an association of public polling organizations established more than 35 years ago.

While he acknowledges that some people defend online polling — in fact, online pollster Harris Interactive is a member of the NCPP — Mitofsky also argues that his highly skeptical views about online polling “are widely held among people with a knowledge of methodology. Those people don’t even take [online polling] seriously.”

Gallup Poll editor-in-chief Frank Newport, an old friend, told me that “Gallup does not do online polling to represent the general population.” His complaint, echoed by other pollsters who preferred not to be identified, is that online polls rely on volunteers, and that a self-selected universe is not necessarily representative of all adults or all voters — even if polling firms weight respondents on the basis of age, gender, partisanship, etc.

“People who volunteer to do polling, typically, are very different from people drawn at random,” insisted one veteran pollster whose firm does conduct online polling, but only “when we have a defined sampling frame.” A sampling frame is a type of listing from which pollsters can draw respondents in such a way as to give everyone in the universe a roughly equal chance of being selected.

So why would the WSJ’s Web site collaborate with a pollster to conduct and publicize online polling, especially when the newspaper itself collaborates with NBC News and two highly regarded pollsters, Peter Hart and Bill McInturff, to conduct and release traditional, high-quality telephone polls?

I figured I ought to ask WSJ.com about its online polls, but I was greeted coolly and put off when I called an editor at the Web site. Instead, a Dow Jones public relations person called me and insisted that I needed to submit my questions in writing. I pointed out that WSJ reporters would find that requirement unacceptable when researching a story, but he wouldn’t budge. So I submitted the questions, along with a complaint about the requirement.

Here is what I got back from a Dow Jones spokesman: “We run the Zogby Interactive polls on The Wall Street Journal Online because we believe that they provide news value for our readers, who can also review the methodology themselves on our site.”

I take that to mean that Dow Jones doesn’t care whether the data is accurate or the methodology appropriate, only that they have numbers and that makes them “news.” Thank goodness the folks at the print edition of the WSJ have more sense and journalistic integrity.

Why would a media Web site run polls that most polling experts call unreliable and unscientific? I can’t be sure about the WSJ Online, since they wouldn’t answer my questions. But, generally, I suspect that part of the answer is ignorance, and some of it is sloppiness. Most of it is simply about business — putting up “content” to draw page views.

Many reporters and editors simply know little about methodology, and I expect some of them regard talk about such things as arcane.

But I also suspect that some don’t really care about whether the numbers are entirely reliable or whether they meet some standard that they don’t understand. Media Web sites and 24-hour cable television networks consume a great deal of information, and for some, it doesn’t matter whether the data is right, only that it exists.

Fortunately, most major media Web sites, reporters and producers know that not all polls are created equal, and they take steps to assure that they are offering only reliable data. They don’t leave it to readers and viewers to analyze and evaluate survey sampling techniques.

Reporters, producers, news writers, Web loggers and everyone else who distributes news and analysis — including candidates — need to understand that not all polls are created equal, and that online polling is both extremely controversial and generally not accepted as credible by most polling experts. Hawking those polls doesn’t add to the credibility of a media outlet, or a candidate.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on April 6, 2006. Copyright 2006 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

New Print Edition: KY3, MI Senate, & Senate Ratings

The new April 7, 2006 print edition of the Rothenberg Political Report is on its way to subscribers. (Click here for subscription information.)

Kentucky 3: Bucking the Trend
By Nathan L. Gonzales

Republican incumbents in districts carried by John Kerry are bracing themselves for the potential Democratic wave this November, but Kentucky’s 3rd District Cong. Anne Northup (R) is hoping to be the exception rather than the rule.

For four consecutive cycles, Democratic candidates have challenged Northup in her Democratic tilting district, but all went down to defeat. This year, Democrats are hoping they can begin a different kind of streak.

National Democrats made a heavy push to get 2002 nominee Jack Conway (D) into the race, but he declined to run again. But two Democrats are battling for the nomination, which will be decided on May 16: Iraq War veteran Andrew Horne and newspaper publisher John Yarmuth. Meanwhile, Northup continues to build an intimidating campaign war chest.

For the rest of the story including the lay of the land and analysis of the Democratic primary and general election, as well as the Bottom Line..subscribe now.

Michigan Senate: Wading Upstream

Republicans spent much of last year cycling through a list of potential candidates, but they are still taking their best shot at Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Even after names like Cong. Candice Miller, Domino’s Pizza CEO David Brandon, and Jane Abraham dropped off the board, three Republicans remain in the race to take on the incumbent.

But even though the national environment is proving to be ominous for President Bush and his party, Republicans believe the economic situation in Michigan may give them a unique opportunity.

The state’s economy has lagged behind in recovery compared to its Midwest neighbors, and Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s (D) job approval numbers have suffered as a result. Two-thirds of the voters believe the state is headed down the wrong track and millionaire businessman Dick DeVos (R) is already running television ads against the governor.

Republican Senate candidates Mike Bouchard, Keith Butler, and Jerry Zandstra are hoping to take advantage of the potential opportunity if state voters are looking for a change and want to take out their anger on the two top officeholders in the state on the ballot this November: Stabenow and Granholm.

Michigan remains a battleground state. John Kerry won it back in 2004, 51%-48%, over President Bush. But Republicans control both the state House (58-52) and the state Senate (22-16). Voters do not register by party in the state.

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**A final note to our Print Subscribers: Beginning with this issue, we will be updating our 2006 Ratings (rotating House, Senate and Governors) more frequently from now until Election Day.