Rick Perry vs World

16 October 2010

re: Rasmussen and his luster

Rasmussen has gained widespread attention for being the first to forecast Scott Brown's dramatic win in the special Massachusetts Senate race in January (the major networks never knew it was a competitive race until the weekend before the election) and the political vulnerability among Pennsylvania Republicans of Sen. Arlen Specter (who later switched to Democrat and lost his new party’s primary in May of this year).

I didn't factcheck it, but that jibes with my memory. So it's hard to see how Rasmussen's luster could have possibly declined this election cycle.

Posted by Evan @ 10/16/10 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

Rick Perry vs World gets results!

Friday morning I wrote:

Throw the Hail Mary and take a high-risk strategy. I'd release an ad talking about how he wants to repeal most parts of ObamaCare.

About 10 hours later:

"I wouldn't have voted for that bill," @billwhitefortx says about the health care reform bill that passed Congress.

Posted by Evan @ 10/16/10 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

15 October 2010

How Bill White Can Win

It's no secret that Bill White is a pretty long shot to win the gubernatorial race at this point. He's behind 7-11 points, and underdogs at that margin with only two weeks to go in the race almost never come back. Nate Silver's database puts those possibilities in single digits. Of course, that just means that of the polls in Silver's data set, somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 candidates came back to win. Hardly rocket science. And there's reason to think that Silver's model overstates White's real chances because I doubt he included a model of the effect of early voting. Texas' early voting, unlike many other states, reduces the chance that a major scandal or gaffe can change the race. And even for a Democratic partisan, the ETF aspersions don't qualify as a major scandal.

Why is Bill White losing?
The best way to answer this is by looking at the respective candidates messages.

Rick Perry's message: Texas has the best economy in the nation because we keep taxes low and balance our budgets. Bill White left Houston bankrupt and scandal-ridden.

Bill White's message: Rick Perry is corrupt and I'm a businessman who will do better in education and healthcare.

Basically, Bill White is running as a generic Democrat. Maybe a generic pro-business Democrat. In Texas, which hasn't elected a single Democrat statewide in 15 years while even blue states Rhode Island and Mass elect Republican governors a few times. And this is likely to be the most Republican year in my lifetime, surprassing 1980 and 1994. Do you see the problem?

Name one area that Bill White disagrees with most Washington, DC Democrats. I can't. Perhaps he does, but he hasn't shown it. He certainly hasn't spent lots of time talking about it. I am 100% sure most likely voters can't identify a single issue.

And considering that his last few jobs have been mayor of Houston, chair of the Texas Democratic Party and working in the Department of Energy under Bill Clinton, you can see why Texans might not be convinced.

What can Bill White do?
Throw the Hail Mary and take a high-risk strategy. Unless he's planning on running for Senate in 2012 (I think he will, but that will be a harder race for him to win than this one), there's no reason not to take a high-risk strategy.

I'd release an ad talking about how he wants to repeal most parts of ObamaCare. It's not a state issue, which is exactly why he should do it.

Is there any chance he'll do it?
Zero. Politicians are risk-averse, even when they shouldn't be. If there were any chance, I probably wouldn't post it.

Would he win even if he did it?
Probably not. See Texas and see very favorable year for Republicans.

Beyond that, he hasn't laid any foundation with his base or with swing voters. Is it believable to swing voters if Bill White all the sudden breaks with his party on a major issue? I doubt it. To date, he hasn't done it or given much inclination of it, besides saying that he's a business man.

What about his base? The Democratic base is already demotivated and White hasn't managed to get them passionate enough about him that he can start freelancing. On the other hand, it's entirely a turnout question; no White supporter is going to go vote for Perry because White says he wants alot of ObamaCare repealed.

Posted by Evan @ 10/15/10 05:24 AM | Comments (3)

14 October 2010

Farenthold Ortiz TX27 poll

Via polltrack, the poll Paul Burka was talking about a few days ago that shows Farenthold up over Ortiz in Corpus Christi.

Farenthold (R) 44, Ortiz (D) 36, Mishou (L) 2 OnMessage (R) 10/4-10/5 400 RV

Posted by Evan @ 10/14/10 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

National Democrats don't think they can save Chet Edwards

It's time for triage among the national campaign committees. Having reserved millions of dollars in many districts, they are now dumping the ones that aren't winnable. CQ:

Three weeks before Election Day the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is getting ruthless with its independent expenditure decisions.

Other places where Republicans noted ad reductions Tuesday were the open-seat race in Arkansas' 1st district, Colorado's 4th district (Rep. Betsy Markey), Iowa's 3rd district (Rep. Leonard Boswell), South Dakota's at-large (Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin), Texas' 17th district (Rep. Chet Edwards) and the Phoenix market that covers both Arizona's 1st and 5th districts. Those districts are held by Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell.

Posted by Evan @ 10/14/10 02:47 AM | Comments (0)

Au contraire! Rasmussen looks smarter by the day

Paul Burka wrote a week ago:

I think Rasmussen has lost some lustre in this election cycle

I'm not quite sure how that could be. It was only in this cycle or the previous one that journalists stopped acting like automated polls were the ugly step-sister of polling that could only be mentioned if it confirmed their preconceived biases. I'm pretty sure I could find a few BurkaBlog posts that put him in the Rasmussen skeptic camp, as well as the SurveyUSA skeptic camp.

Rasmussen got alot of heat from Democrats early in the cycle because it had numbers that were more on the Republican side than others. As we've gotten closer to election day, pretty much all those pollsters have tweaked their models, looked at their likely voter screens...voila, no longer are Rasmussen's numbers out of line. In fact, Gallup -- long considered a gold standard -- has been fairly consistently showing much worse numbers for Democrats than Rasmussen.

If anything, Rasmussen has gained in luster as a pollster this cycle. He was one of the first pollsters who captured what was going on in the electorate. Everyone should realize that whether a poll is automated isn't nearly as important as whether a pollster is skilled.

Posted by Evan @ 10/14/10 12:07 AM | Comments (0)

13 October 2010

Getting it right in the title: this post really has absolutely nothing to do with Rick Perry running for president

The other day Jason Embry reported:Recapping a report that Republican National Committeeman Bill Crocker made to state party leaders, Munisteri wrote, "Bill also gave a report at my request, on his efforts to preserve Texas as a more important player in the upcoming presidential contest of 2012. Bill already eloquently presented a proposal to the RNC to allow Texas more flexibility in holding its presidential primary, but we narrowly lost at the last RNC meeting. Consequently, I've asked Bill to head an informal committee to look at Texas' options at becoming a bigger player in 2012, including the feasibility and consequences of moving up the Texas primary and/or holding a straw poll."

This led Paul Burka to write a post headlined: This post has absolutely nothing to do with Rick Perry running for president

I really thought that Perry would wait until after the general election to reveal his presidential ambitions, but here they are, out in the open. Perry always has a plan, always knows what his next step is going to be, and this looks like step one of the coming presidential campaign.

What sayeth wikipedia?

Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.

It doesn't seem very likely that Munisteri is acting at the behest of the Perry campaign or to win the governor's approval.

In evaluating such a claim, it's useful to think about the point of view of the person involved. About six months ago, Steve Munisteri got himself elected Republican state chair pretty much on his own. Perry didn't handpick him to be the chair of the state party, as is often the case in other states. He got elected by putting together his own coalition; in other words, he has his own power base and doesn't owe Perry anything. Perry, like his predecessor, has largely stayed out of the inner workings of the state party. So as long as Munisteri doesn't get the governor really angry, it's unlikely that Perry will cause trouble to any potential Munisteri re-election bid.

From Perry's perspective, it'd be awfully odd for him or his campaign not to keep their eyes focused on winning in November. They're not really known for leaving stones unturned and being undisciplined when it comes to campaigning. Furthermore, it makes no sense for them to do it now and not later when there is no reason to rush that I am aware of.

In fact, there is an alternative explanation that makes much more sense: Munisteri was doing what party chairs always do. They try to get their states to be more influential in the process. The party activists most important to Munisteri's re-election would like to see Texas have more influence in the presidential nomination process. Most of them have been wanting that for decades.

Finally, Munisteri's own bio makes particular note of the fact that part of the start of his involvement in politics was one of Texas' last important presidential primaries. You don't think that makes him want Texas to be involved in the process again?

Maybe Rick Perry really is running for president. I've written many times that I doubt it, including recently. But when Munisteri does what party chairs normally do, for the stated reasons that they normally do them -- that is not confirmation nor rejection of the theory.

Posted by Evan @ 10/13/10 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

New Perry ad "Right Track"

I thought the final scene was a little odd, but that could just be me. It's a reiteration of the theme we've seen from all of Perry's ads up to this point. The camera likes him more than it does his opponents.

Has Perry's camp gotten more positive on paid media the closer we've gotten to election day?

Script below the jump, courtesy of Texas Tribune.

[Read More]

Posted by Evan @ 10/13/10 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

12 October 2010

Kinky Friedman working on his 4th party

I wrote this about 7 months ago:

You've failed as a candidate on the GOP, Democrat, and Independent lines. Maybe it's time to give the Libertarians a shot?

Just a few minutes ago, the Texas Tribune posted:

Iconic Texas entertainer and perennial politician Kinky Friedman plans to endorse Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Kathie Glass

If Kinky runs for president in 2012 as a Libertarian, that'd just make the cycle complete. Or maybe as a Green.

Posted by Evan @ 10/12/10 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

11 October 2010

New Perry ad

No idea if this is web-only or what the ad buy is. Not subtle. Not detailed. Fairly effective though.

Posted by Evan @ 10/11/10 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

[Previous 10 Entries] [Next 10 Entries]

SITE MENU

+ Rick Perry vs World
+ About Me

+ Archives

+ Email:
perryvsworld* at *gmail dot com

ADVERTISING

SYNDICATION

DISCLAIMER

Rick Perry vs. World is powered by Nucleus.

Site design and Nucleus customization by Kevin Whited.