Arizona's Own Espresso Pundit

Wall St. Journal on Grijalva vs. McClung

Interesting article in the WSJ.

If the Republican "wave" reaches historic proportions—but perhaps only if it does—it could swamp Democrats such as Rep. Raul Grijalva.

Mr. Grijalva won re-election two years ago with 63% of the vote in this heavily Democratic and Hispanic district, and he has always won decisively.

Mr. Grijalva, 62 years old, is confident enough in the district's leanings that he co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a large group of liberal lawmakers. That, of course, makes him an especially inviting target for conservatives.

The Republican candidate, Ruth McClung, 28, is a physicist who works for a defense contractor. She's never held public office before, and she's embraced the tea-party movement.

Mr. Grijalva, by his own admission, has made one big strategic error: supporting a tourism boycott of his home state after it enacted a controversial immigration law. He's since rescinded that position, but it's proved damaging in the economically struggling area.

 

Sports: Better Writing, Higher Standards.

Arizona Republic Sports Columnist Scott Bordow receives a lot of heat from readers who send him tips that don't end up in the paper.  Bordow responds that journalism has high standards.

We are not going to use an anonymous text message to accuse a coach of malfeasance. We will not suggest a school is recruiting simply because we received several e-mails telling us that's the case.

We need facts. Names. Documented evidence. Can we gather that on our own? Absolutely. But to do so we need someplace to start, rather than general accusations from an anonymous text message.

Wow, how refreshing--the Sports Department won't print something just because someone "tweeted" it. 

Can we get Bordow to cover the Governor's race?

 

Vandalism is OK when it's...you know, "For the Children."

 

Win or lose, the No on 302 Campaign is going to go down as the most unethical in state history. 

Pop Quiz for the Cronkite Kids...

Journalism 101, final exam question:  The theme is "When do you have enough information to ensure a story is accurate enough to go to press."

Here's the scenario.  "You are a reporter for the State's paper of record.  You are reading Facebook and notice that a former reporter for New Times writes on his Facebook page that someone told him that the incumbent Republican Governor who is running for re-election has a major health issue that will prevent her from finishing the term she's currently seeking.  You have no other information.  You have no idea who the source is.  The former New Times Reporter is also a prominent Democrat who just lost a race for the US Senate.  You ask the Governor if the story is true and she denies it.   Do you run with the story anyway?

The answer boys and girls is obviously...Hell no. 

How could you possibly run with that story?  You have no idea if it's true.  You have no idea who the real sources are.  All you have is a fricking Facebook post from an obviously partisan former reporter for an alternative newspaper who says someone told him that the Governor is sick.  And when you ask the Governor, she says the story is not true.

Naturally, the Republic ran the story.   Naturally, Governor Brewer and her campaign spokesmen and her official spokesmen denied the story.    Then after two weeks of denials, rumors and continued speculation, Gov. Brewer had to get her doctor to confirm what she has been saying all along. 

Gov. Jan Brewer's doctor says she's in excellent health.

The governor's office on Friday released a statement by Dr. Gordi Khera. It came in response to about two weeks of internet speculation that the 66-year-old Brewer is in poor health and might not be able to serve a four-year term if elected Nov. 2.

Khera's statement says he's coordinated medical care for Brewer for about 10 years and finds her to be in "excellent medical health." He says she can proceed with daily rigorous duties as governor and work as many years as she desires.

Journalism at its finest.  So my Cronkite student friends, when your professor tells you about the noble profession you are learning and explains that without qualified professional journalists to separate the truth from the fiction, the unwashed populace would have to rely on rumor, native drums and chicken entrails in order to discern the truth...introduce your professor to the Republic's Capitol Team.

 

 

"Obviously An Error"

Raul Grijalva appeared on the national version of Univision last night for an interview with Jorge Ramos. 

As you know, Grijalva called for a national boycott of Arizona and the backlash has been so strong that his once-secure seat is now in danger.  I haven't followed the race closely enough in the English media to know if Grijalva has publicly admitted that calling for the boycott was a huge mistake.  But as you can see from the Univision screen shot, Grijalva describes it as obviously an error.  A few seconds later he describes it as "tragic." He later modifys that to say it's pesonally tragic.  Well, we'll find out in a week or so, but I think he's right on all counts.  This error is certainly going to be a personal tragedy Grijalva.

Early Ballot Totals Favor Republicans

Earlier this week I pointed out the it's difficult to predict this year's election results because we don't really know who is going to vote.  Well, early ballot totals are favoring Republicans.  Check out CD 5--almost half of the ballots are Republican while only 28% are Democratic.  That bodes badly for Mitchell--at this rate, Schweikert wins early voting by 10%

The CD 1 numbers are too low to mean much, but still favor Gosar.  Take a look at CD 8.  That's about what we would expect, but in a year like this, we can assume that nearly all of the Republicans are going to vote Republican and most of the Independents are going to vote Republican. So it looks to me like early voting is favoring Kelly by several points. 

Those are my quick thoughts.  I'm open to comments.

CD          REP        DEM      IND        Total

CD 1       5209       4398       1706       11313

CD 2       31119    19111    14209    64439

CD 3       25212    16416    10288    51916

CD 4       5384       11718    4410       21512

CD 5       24606    14929    10852    50387

CD 6       25783    13978    11487    51248

CD 7       5630       11409    4390       21429

CD 8       22614    20113    12666    55393

Left Finds Grijalva Race Still Close Enough to Steal.

This article in the Yuma Daily Sun is getting some national attention.

Seven workers are going door to door in Yuma County to get eligible Latino voters to register for permanent early voting ballots.

In just two months, the seven canvassers have gotten more than 3,000 local Hispanics to sign up for the early ballot.

The group organizing the drive--Mi Familia Vota--claims to be non-partisian, but is closely aligned with the hard left side of the Democratic Party.

Today, the Service Employees International Union, Mi Familia Vota Civic Participation Campaign, and America's Voice are launching Spanish-language radio ads in nine media markets across the country. The ads point to the Republican Party's obstructionism on immigration reform, cite the GOP's successful effort to block a vote on the DREAM Act last week, and encourage voters to support the candidates who "support our families, and make our dreams come true."

There's obviosly no problem with the left regestering like-minded voters--anymore than there's a problem with the NRA registering people at gun shows. 

However there are two questions--how much federal "outreach" funding does Mi Familia Vota recieve? 

And...do these registrations and requests for early ballots represent qualified voters.  On the second question, the answer would appear to be "no."  This from gateway pundit:

“A source from the Yuma County Recorder’s Office has found that 65% of the registrations have been found to be invalid!” Wrong address. Not citizens. The registrations were all dumped off at once. Now before the requests for early ballots expires, the groups are requesting early ballots.

(Update:  Dude, if you guys expect me to spell things right and use verbs and stuff it's going to take all the fun out of blogging.)

 

Feeling Strongly Both Ways.

Republic Editorial writer Kathleen Ingley made an excellent point in a "quick hit" yesterday.

Tapping into renewable energy on a large scale requires more than a lot of wind turbines and solar arrays. We must add transmission lines. Google figured it out and is investing in a $5 billion project to connect with future offshore wind farms. One huge project is smarter than piecemeal ones. Now solar needs a similar level of vision and investment.

Well said.  It should be obvious that renewable energy plants are worthless if they can't get their power to the customers who want to buy it.   One of the best places in the country in which to build solar power plants is the vast area between Phoenix and the California border.  Not only does that region have great access to the sun, but it also straddles Phoenix and Los Angeles--two huge markets for renewable power.

Unfortunately, the area between Phoenix and L.A. doesn't have enough transmission capacity in order to get the power to market, so solar plants in that region are less viable.  It didn't have to be that way.  A few years ago, Southern California Edison proposed building a transmission line from Phoenix to LA that would have relieved the congestion and allowed the power to flow both to Phoenix and L.A.

Unfortunatley the Republic ran an editorial opposing the line.

The editorial was so well written that the author won an award.

That author was...Kathleen Ingley.

Catch the Wave

People often ask me why polls swing so much.  Why did everyone miss the Republican wave in 1994?  Why don't we have a better idea what's going to happen this cycle?  The answer is simple---we have no idea who is going to vote. 

Statistical sampling is very accurate.   If, say, Walgreen processes 10 million prescriptions a month I can sample a thousand of them and give you a really accurate estimate of the number of mistakes in the entire 10 million.

But that doesn't work with voters--and it's not because they lie, or because we can't call the ones without land phones. The problem is that when I design a voter poll, the first question I have to ask myself is "who is going to turnout."   I start my sample with "Adults" but that will tell me nothing about the election.  Then I narrow the sample to "Registered voters"--half of whom won't vote, so I still have nothing.  Then I try to identify "likely" voters.    In normal years, I can get pretty close by polling people who always vote, and I can add in those people who assure me that they are definitely going to vote (even though a lot of them are lying).   In a normal year, that will get me pretty close.

But that polling method makes it impossible for me to spot an abnormal year.  That's becasue my sample assumes a normal year.  Sure, I can make some adjustments.  In 2008, we had a rough idea that younger voters would have higher turnout because of the hopey changey thing.  This year, we think Republcans are going to win big because the likely voters are swinging Republican and we think the young Hopey Changey guys are going stay home.

Those two factors tell me that it's going to be a pretty big Republican year.  But that's all we know.  So is it going to be a HUGE Republican year where all the toss ups go Republican, and the Dems lose 90 seats?  Or is it going to be kind of a normal Republican year where Democrats lose 30 or 40 seats?  We have no idea. 

That's because there are millions of ticked off people who almost never vote.  It's easy to construct a polling sample in which they all vote--and Republicans have huge wins.  And it's easy to construct a polling sample in which turnout among this group is higher than normal, but still within traditional ranges--and Republicans have moderate wins. 

The bottom line is that we simply have to guess at turnout and that guess will generate substantial swings in the outcome.  Here's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Gallup's struggle with the sample.

The difference depended on who the nation's oldest and most venerable polling firm decided was likely to actually go to the polls. In one scenario, Gallup saw the GOP with a slim three-point lead nationally; in another, the margin was 17 percentage points

Here's a great example.  We have plenty of polls in the Reid vs Angle race in Nevada--most of which give Reid the slight edge--but we are starting to get a glimpse of actual turnout and it doesn't look good for Reid. 

 In Reno’s Washoe County and Las Vegas’s Clark County, Republican turnout was disproportionately high over the first three voting days, according to local election officials. The two counties together make up 86 percent of the state’s voter population. 

Rumor is that we are seeing the same thing in Arizona--Republican ballots are being returned at a higher rate than normal, while Democratic ballots are being returned at a lower rate that normal--but may be that's a timing difference.  Democratic ballots may simply be skewed later in the cycle.

Is November 2nd going to be a ripple? wave? tsunami?  Despite the most sophisticated polling in history, we simply have no idea.

Your Slip is Showing...

Did you catch the bias in this headline?

 

The article is about efforts to get "comprehensive" immigration reform passed.  That would include the "Dream Act" plus a guest worker program. 

The theory is that Democrats in Congress are going to get thumped, but they will still maintain control during a lame duck session.  That couple months is the "Window."  But the headline writer chose to call it a window of "opportunity."  I of course think it's a window of "vulnerability," in which Congressmen who have been turned out of office in droves use every procedural gimmick to pass a series of unpopular laws in the brief period between the time the voters throw them out of office and the time they are physically removed by security.

Here's Ed Pator alluding to the plan.

Some Democrats acknowledged that immigration is a politically explosive topic and said they believe related legislation might have a better chance after election passions have cooled.

"There are people right now who don't want to take a stance because of their political situation," said Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz. "Hopefully, after the election they may be able to reconsider and see where they're at and be willing to engage."

"Where they're at" is unemployed with nothing to lose--but still in office for 60 days.  That's the "window" and I'm sure there will be plenty of "opportunities" during that short time period.