Canuck
1841
I think that’s been obvious for a while now. The question is, will it stay that way for the next 6 weeks? I certainly hope so but they say that a week is an eternity in politics.
Oghier
1842
I don’t think enough people will change their opinions to make any difference. The issue will be whether the models polls use for who actually shows up to vote are accurate.
I’m not sure what you mean by “market-heavy”, but if your model is uniquely applicable to the US then you might want to check for some circular reasoning.
Under your model, how does the middle class grow or shrink? Alternatively, what happens to the middle class when median income rises or falls? I read something the other day that the median income in Nevada has fallen about $10K since 2008. I think most people would interpret that as “Nevadans are getting poorer” not “The definition of middle class in Nevada has been revised downwards”.
To answer your question: A common way to define middle class is by consumption patterns, something like “X% of total income is discretionary”. Under this model, median income can give you some idea as to how many people are in the middle class, but it does not define (or bound) the income range that determines membership.
If it’s a Sunday, it means we’re going to start seeing newspaper polls that show up in Sunday editions of local papers. Today we have poll porn from two!
In the Columbus Dispatch Poll of Ohio, they find Obama +9 in the Buckeye, 51-42. Obama and Romney were tied at 45 in the same poll taken before the conventions.
Meanwhile, there’s one gold standard of polling you can absolutely take to the bank. When Ann Selzer polls Iowans, she doesn’t miss. (She was already famous for the accuracy of her pre-Iowa caucus polls for the Des Moines Register, but in December of 2007, it was her December 30 poll 3 days before the Caucus that showed Obama +7–other polls had him trailing–and predicted a record turnout of new voters for that caucus.) Ann’s first presidential poll of Iowa since February for the DMR finds Obama +4 at 49-45.
There’s good and bad news for both sides in the crosstabs of those polls.
In the Ohio poll, it’s all good news for Obama. He’s tied with Romney among seniors (a figure that has dropped significantly since Paul Ryan was named Romney’s running mate), and leads Romney in all other demographic categories, including white males. Early voting in Ohio begins on Tuesday.
The Iowa poll has better news for Romney. Selzer found that just 2% of the voters in that close race are “undecided”…but a whopping 10% say they may change their minds before voting. That’s sort of perplexing to me. More conflictedness: Romney outpaces Obama when asked “Which President would be better for business?”…but Obama barely beats Romney when asked “Which President would be better for the economic health of the country?” Stay tuned. Iowa will be close and if I’m Team Romney, I’m fighting like hell for that state.
In other countries that aren’t as saturated with market thinking and attitude, you can have non-market middle class measures. You’ll have stuff like college professors who are paid less than street cleaners, but get respect and in-kind benefits, and access to earlier in the queues. In the US that doesn’t apply; it’s just market interactions.
If the median income in Nevada fell $10,000 uniformally it converts some people into unemployed, working class, and poor and converts some upper-middle class or rich into middle class. Whether that expands on shrinks the middle class depends on the income distribution.
The meaning of the term is fairly complicated, and there’s alternative definitions. One possibility is “remove working and upper class, they’re what’s left.” In general it’s going to be centered somewhere near the middle of the income distribution; that’s why the word “middle” is in there.
As to disposable income, you’re just doing a linear transform on median income to some number higher or lower. Go for it, I guess.
Alstein
1847
Obama just ran the ad here in Greensboro, after a string of Romney ads.
It’s clear Romney’s spending more money in NC, but Obama isn’t conceding the state.
Ads have been long gone here in PA by both teams. My phone is finally quiet too…thankfully!
Just wondering, what states now are seeing the most ads/phone calls for either camp?
Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado are the current big four, with North Carolina becoming a battleground focus now too, maybe. Hearing some buzz that Romney may “refocus strategically” on ad strategy in Ohio (meaning, reducing ads and sort of conceding) and going for the hail mary strategy if things don’t turn around dramatically after the Wednesday debate. If that happens, then Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire enter into things.
Some of the problems inherent to that strategy is that Ohio is more expensive to advertise in than is New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, or obviously Iowa. (Of the current battlegrounds, Florida is easily the most expensive, with North Carolina and Ohio being kind of equal in second, and Virginia right behind.) If Romney cuts his ads back in The Buckeye, so will Obama, and he doesn’t need to win all of Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Nevada (along with Florida and Virginia)…he just needs to win one of those. Uno.
Thanks for that, gives me something to think about while looking at the poll data.
I do hope more people chime in though, before PA tilted to Obama, it was a non-stop barrage here.
Just curious as to what is happening in other states. By that I mean which ads, how many calls, etc.
I haven’t seen any ads, nor received any calls. I’m in CA, though, and don’t have a land-line, so that’s pretty much to be expected.
Drai
1852
With the combo of California and no land line, you could have just as easily said you are on Mars with a Star Trek communicator.
Of course you wouldn’t get any calls or see local ads about the presidential race!
dfs
1853
I’m in ohio with a land line.
It rings 6 times a day. Whenever we pick it up somebody wants to know who we are voting for or let us know what we can do to help.
We are being trained not to answer the land line.
This is likely the final straw that makes us ditch the landline.
Same thing here, constant phone calls.
From an introduction at a Romney fund raiser last night, given by the chairman of Marriot International.
“Both Mitt and I have summer places up in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. And a few summers ago I was taking my grandchildren and children to town in the boat for ice cream. And we got into the docks and they were all full and I looked around, there was no place to park, so we stopped at the end of a dock. They all jumped off and ran up the dock. And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat, handle the ropes, do anything – they just left me out there at sea. So I finally found a place to park after about 20 minutes, and I pulled in, I said, ‘Who’s going to grab the rope?,’ and I looked up and there was Mitt Romney. So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me just as he’s going to rescue this great country.”
Thank god Mitt helped him park his yacht.
LMN8R
1856
Yikes, what did I do to start seeing Romney ads on this board??
I think the key takeaway from that anecdote is that Bill Marriott’s own children apparently abandoned him to die on the high seas. That’s modern Republican thinking in a nutshell – “fuck you, I need to get my ice cream!!!”
I’m in Virginia - the ads on TV are near-constant, though the Obama ads have begun to significantly outnumber the Romney ads in my non-scientific experience. The Obama campaign began running the 47% spot the other day and it’s that one that I seem to see the most… it ran a few times during the Redskins game yesterday.
I’ve got an unlisted land-line number, so I don’t usually get calls.
NH here, and despite having only 4 EC votes, still considered a swing state.
I don’t watch live TV and I listen to NPR, so I don’t have a feel for the media ads. We do have a land line (oh noes!), but even unlisted we still had a lot of canvassing calls. Lately though (last few weeks) none.
I do only see Romney and GOP signs however where I live (near the seacoast); there’s also a fair number of Tea Party nutjobs. However, over the past 20 years we have become far less Republican, probably in large part due to in migration from MA (as expensive as housing is here, it’s even more so in MA.)
JeffL
1860
In Iowa, no land line so no phone calls. But that 47% ad is running a lot.
I have to admit, when I first heard that Romney had told a bunch of fund raisers that he couldn’t worry about the 47% who would never vote for him, and all the uproar, my first thought was “eh. It’s true that there is a hard 47% that are going to vote Democrat no matter what, just as there are some number around that range that will vote GOP no matter what, so while him saying that is not politically smart, it’s the truth.”
But when you hear that ad and the actual words, without clipping and with no commentary on top, just what Romney is saying, it is very damning. A great ad, I think looking back it will be considered the representative ad of the campaign.
