Campaign Memo

Why the Polls Mean Nothing

The polls continue to show Bush slumping, the Republicans fading and Democrats favored by double digits nationally. (UPDATE: Except for the new Zogby which shows Republican gains.) One pundit after another declares that the Democrats are poised to take back the House and maybe even the Senate, and bloggers as well as the columnists are debating who will be the new congressional leaders, as Democrats jockey for positions and committee chairmanships.

It all could happen, but it all could also be a recipe for disaster, not to mention humiliation that would make the past two presidential elections look like Christmas. So what could go wrong?

It's not about how the country feels about this or that; we know how the country feels about just about everything, and even the polls are showing little is being changed by events or Bush speeches. It's not even Democratic fumbling of an effective message. The problem for Democrats is much more basic: in order to win elections, they have to get more voters to go to the polls and vote for them. And that's exactly what they are not so good at.

The Republicans are way ahead in identifying and motivating their voters. With the lax attention of the Democrats to new techniques and technologies, and with their continuing blindness to successful Republicans tactics in suppressing minority votes and probably stealing votes through fraudulent means, they are grinning their way to defeat.

If anything should be a wakeup call, it's this week's primary elections. Rhode Island is the prime example of continued Republican success at getting their voters to the poll. As the Washington Post put it:

In the past two national elections, in 2002 and 2004, Republicans outperformed Democrats in bringing their backers to the polls, but many Democrats and independent analysts have suggested that the competition may be different this year, in part because of slumping morale among GOP activists. But Chafee's performance -- combined with reports of late-starting organization and internal bickering on the Democratic side -- suggest that the Republican advantage on turnout may remain intact even as many other trends are favoring the opposition.

The Hotline provides the gory details, once the national Republican party stepped in to engineer Chafee's victory, because they realized that his conservative opponent had no chance to win in the general election:

Rhode Island will become a case study in the effectiveness of the Republicans’ 72 Hour Program. Behind the curtain, Chafee’s campaign spent $500,000 to squeeze out every conceivable voter from neighborhoods across the state. They searched for independents who voted Democrat in municipal elections but who had once upon a time voted for a Republican for president or governor or senator. There were a few of those. They looked for non-affiliated voters in Republican neighborhoods. Using microtargeting techniques, they even tried to figure out which committed Democrats might be tempted to vote for Chafee.

By the end of the summer, Chafee’s campaign had identified 42,000 potential supporters. Then the second part of the program kicked in. Message, here, is a verb. The campaign “messaged” these voters, often individually. Chafee himself called more than 100 of them who were identified as being capable of swinging the votes of colleagues and friends. The standard complement of robocalls, mailings and personal visits were employed. In the twelve days of September, Chafee, the RNC and NRSC made more than 198,000 phone calls to the voters on their list. Many voters received one every two days.

On election day, the Chafee campaign stationed poll watchers at 100 key precincts across the state. By 10:00 am, the RNC and the NRSC were confident that Chafee would win.
It didn’t faze them when Laffey’s campaign bragged about meeting their targets. Chafee had simply found more voters.

Contrast all the money and expertise that the Republicans can command to win elections with the paltry resources and attention that anyone pays to the actual election process, even in a blue state like Maryland, where poll workers were in short supply, and Diebold was saving money on training people to deal with their machine glitches. And speaking of Diebold, how many studies is it going to take showing that these electronic voting machines are fatally flawed and massive cheating is easy, before people get alarmed enough to do something. There was another one today. If it takes as long as accepting climate crisis science, we're in even more trouble.

Then there is the low turnout, even in states with hotly contested races. When less than 20% of the electorate turns up, can you still call it an election? More to the point here, it's a sign that people may simply be more fed up with all of it than motivated to change anything at the ballot box.

UPDATE: Dionne's column in the Post says that this Republican operation includes crafting negative ads on specific Democrats in local races, emphasizing personal and local attacks. The Roving hand smears, and moves on. With so much discontent out there now, this is more likely to motivate people to stay home in disgust and not vote, a pox on all their Houses and Senates. This of course helps the party better able to deliver its own voters.

Here's the thing. People are fed up with the people currently running government, and on the federal level that means Republicans. Bush can make all the speeches on national security he wants, and his oil conglom pals can drop the price of gasoline another buck, it's not going to change many minds.

So there should be a Democratic landslide in November. But instead there could be a perfect storm: people more disgusted than mad who don't go to vote, plus suppression of Democratic voters and votes through various nefarious means at the polling places, plus Republicans better able to identify, motivate and deliver their votes. The result: Republicans stay in power, and people are even more disgusted and disillusioned. After that, I don't want to even think about it.

Democrats had better forgo congratulating themselves for the election they haven't won, or they'll blow the best chance they're going to have for a long time, and maybe the last best chance to save this teetering Republic. Besides clarifying a strong message, they need to pay serious attention to identifying, motivating and delivering Democratic votes, and pay close attention to ensuring Democratic votes are registered correctly at the polls--- and counted.