Poll Data and Anecdote

Political Tourism is haphazard. So are polls.

Biden crush, August in Iowa

The political commentary world is discussing a recent Monmouth poll. Biden falling! Warren is up! Sanders is holding even! The also-rans flounder!

They polled 298 Democrats or Democrat leaners.

Readers of this blog may well be among the cohort of voracious readers, viewers, and listeners to political news and commentary, so this commentary buzz may well be familiar. The very credible Monmouth people just published a poll and people are taking it seriously.  CLICK HERE  

It portrays something that feels real on the ground and it confirms the Big Media narrative.

Conventional data/media/commentary says:

   

   ***Biden's support is dropping back into the pack. As this blog noted five days ago (August 24), and Nate Silver at 538 notes today, the NY Times has a narrative of low Biden enthusiasm. The Times illustrated its story with a boy playing a video game ignoring Biden, and with an audience sitting. I questioned that presumed lack of enthusiasm, and so did Nate Silver, who examines data, including this poll. Biden enthusiasm might be true, compared to Warren just now, but I saw lots of Biden enthusiasm.

Beto O'Rourke crush, April in NH

   ***Warren is surging. Again, as this blog noted a week ago, Warren has upped her game, and I compared her favorably against Amy Klobuchar. Warren, I said, had increased her charisma quotient and was acting like a rock star worth seeing. The Monmouth poll shows what I saw on the ground.

   ***Buttigieg has a static niche. The Monmouth data showed that notwithstanding his off the charts fundraising numbers, his popularity has fallen back to 5%. This blog has described excited buzz about "Mayor Pete" with stories about his seven languages, learning Norwegian to read a book, his emotional maturity, and his matter of fact comfort with himself and sexuality. He is impressive and he is talked about. He is appealing to an educated, professional group of voters ready to trail-blaze through another boundary, electing a gay president. It is another in those steps toward electing a black president, a female president, a Latino president, now a gay president. Social liberals love breaking through those boundaries and Buttigieg is the present opportunity. This blog observed the people who created the big fundraising numbers; they skewed prosperous, professional, urbane,and gay, to my eye. It suggested Buttigieg has a niche, not a movement, at least not yet.

   ***The also-rans are in each other's way. The Monmouth poll notes that Buttigieg, Booker, Castro, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, and Yang have a combined total that would put them into the top ranks of candidates, some 15%, but currently they each divide up that section of the electorate. Yesterday this blog described Booker, a Rhodes Scholar, former big city mayor, a US Senator, and described him as fully capable of dominating the liberal (as contrasted with Sanders/Warren progressive) lane, the lane currently dominated by Biden and shared with twenty other candidates. 

See what you see, and describe it. 

The Monmouth poll totaled the opinions of 298 "Democrats," plus some unknown number of whom merely "leaned Democratic." Nationwide. They were people who answered their phones, a sample that is increasingly un-representative in an era of multiple robocalls per day. They created data, though, and they counted it and put it in charts.

I had my eyes open when I attended a Buttigieg fundraiser in Portland. Attending a Biden Town Hall outside Des Moines, I witnessed and experienced the crush of people following his speech. I noticed that he seemed slender, possibly a bit frail, but that he stood very erect. He did not appear befuddled. His voice was strong.

In New Hampshire in April I watched Elizabeth Warren, and I watched her again in Sioux City, Iowa. I noted whether people got there early or not--they got there early. They were excited. And she got better, my having heard her the third and fourth times.

I noticed little things, like the way Warren introduced her husband, son, and golden lab at a New Hampshire event, and that she described her difficulties as young single mother as one of poverty, not of gender. The solution, she said, is day care. I noticed what she didn't say, that the problem was endemic pervasive patriarchy. Kirsten Gillibrand is running as a woman; Warren is not. A poll might confirm that, but I didn't need a poll. I saw where she had her husband sit, right up front.

Anecdote does not have credibility, nor should it. The hardest thing to see is the stuff right before our eyes, and it is even harder to interpret it fairly. The Monmouth people used discipline to measure what they measure. Data has value.

Slender. Erect.

But so does having your eyes open. I might be wrong, but I see what I think I see.