Cell Phones and Election Polls: An Update

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1761/cell-phones-and-election-polls-2010-midterm-elections

Cell Phones and Election Polls: An Update

October 13, 2010

From:     To:

The latest estimates of telephone coverage by the National Center for Health Statistics found that a quarter of U.S. households have only a cell phone and cannot be reached by a landline telephone. Cell-only adults are demographically and politically different from those who live in landline households; as a result, election polls that rely only on landline samples may be biased. Although some survey organizations now include cell phones in their samples, many -- including virtually all of the automated polls -- do not include interviews with people on their cell phones. (For more on the impact of the growing cell-only population on survey research, see "Assessing the Cell Phone Challenge," May 20, 2010).
It is possible to estimate the size of this potential bias. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducts surveys with samples of landline and cell phones, which allow for comparisons of findings from combined landline and cell interviews with those only from landline interviews. Data from Pew Research Center polling this year suggest that the bias is as large, and potentially even larger, than it was in 2008 (See "Calling Cell Phones in '08 Pre-Election Polls," Dec. 18, 2008).
In three of four election polls conducted since the spring of this year, estimates from the landline samples alone produced slightly more support for Republican candidates and less support for Democratic candidates, resulting in differences of four to six points in the margin. One poll showed no difference between the landline and combined samples.
In the Pew Research Center's latest poll, conducted Aug. 25 to Sept. 6 among 2,816 registered voters, including 786 reached by cell phone, 44% said that if the election were held today that they would vote for the Republican candidate for Congress in their district or leaned Republican, while 47% would vote for the Democratic candidate or leaned Democratic. Among the landline respondents, 46% preferred the GOP candidate and 45% the Democratic candidate, a four-point shift in the margin. In this survey, both estimates would have shown a close race between Republicans and Democrats.
Limiting the analysis in the survey to those considered most likely to vote in this year's elections, a similar bias is evident. The combined landline and cell estimate produced a seven-point Republican advantage: 50% supported the GOP candidate for Congress in their district while 43% backed the Democratic candidate. The Republican lead would have been 12 points if only the landline sample had been interviewed, a significant difference from the combined sample of five points in the margin.
Significant differences also were seen in March and June of this year. In those surveys, Republicans and Democrats were tied among registered voters in the combined sample of landline and cell phone interviews; in both surveys Republicans had a six-point lead among landline respondents. In the survey conducted July 21-Aug. 5, there was no difference in the estimates produced by the combined sample and the landline sample alone.
After the Nov. 2 elections, the Pew Research Center will release a comprehensive analysis of the cell phone issue, which will include the Center's final pre-election survey.

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October 2, 2010

The Secret Sponsors

By MIKE McINTIRE

IT was the wisecracking baby who caught my attention.

Sitting on a living room carpet and addressing the camera in a dubbed voice that growls like a Vegas bookie, he tells viewers, “Gramps is sad — Obama cut $455 billion from his Medicare.” He warns of dire consequences from the health insurance overhaul if voters do not take action in November.
“I don’t know what smells worse,” the little guy huffs, “my diaper or this new bill.”

A sign-off informs the television audience that this high-minded piece of issue advocacy was paid for by the “Coalition to Protect Seniors.”

Hmmm.

Who are the members of the coalition? Where do they get their money? And why are they spending hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking candidates for Congress around the country?
Obvious questions, and yet they are difficult to answer, given the increased use of tax-exempt organizations as vehicles for campaign spending.

Nonprofits can raise unlimited amounts, and spend a good percentage of that on political activities. But they are generally not required to publicly disclose their donors, making them appealing to moneyed interests who prefer to stay in the shadows.

A recent report by Public Citizen found that in the 2004 elections, 98 percent of outside groups disclosed the names of donors who paid for their political ads; this time around, only 32 percent have done so. The report suggested that groups were taking advantage of a loosening of disclosure requirements and loopholes. Meanwhile, the amount of money spent by these groups skyrocketed to more than $100 million as of last week, more than twice that of the midterms four years ago.
Corporations and unions can now spend freely in elections, under a recent Supreme Court ruling, but they still must disclose their activities. That’s why an intermediary that is not required to disclose its donors is attractive to politically active businesses that might want to conceal their activity.
“Corporations are reluctant to be associated with specific ad campaigns,” said Paul Ryan, an election law expert at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “I expect more money to go to intermediary groups.”

Reporters are paid to try to get around these barriers, and we have resources at our disposal that the average person does not. I’ll get on a plane if necessary to go confront someone, meet a source or check out an address. News organizations subscribe to public records databases, and go to court to try to force disclosure of important information.

To see just how hard it is to crack the secrecy that shrouds the vaguely named groups bombarding the airwaves, I went looking for one that seemed typical of the trend. The Coalition to Protect Seniors, with its attention-grabbing ads and middle-of-the-pack spending — about $400,000 as of last week — fit the bill.

I also decided to limit myself to the tools that an average voter might have: the Internet and a telephone.

My first stop was the coalition’s Web site, which featured an image of two glum-looking old people and lots of facts and figures asserting that the elderly are at risk from “Obamacare.” There was no phone number. No names of anyone involved with it. An address listed there turned out to belong to a Mail Boxes Etc. store in Wilmington, Del.

Clicking on the “contact us” tab, I sent off an e-mail to the coalition, with all the confidence of tossing a bottled note into the ocean. (I never heard back.)

I called a few political consultants, both Republicans and Democrats. All right, I’ll admit your average voter does not have numbers for Washington political operatives programmed into their cellphones, but I needed to start somewhere. As it happened, none of them knew anything about this group.
“Is that the one with the talking baby?” one of them said.

I went a little deeper. A check of incorporation filings showed that the coalition was formed as a nonprofit in June, around the same time its Web site went up. It listed a registered service agent — someone who accepts legal papers on a company’s behalf — as its official address; a hosting service held its Internet domain name, further masking its actual location and the people behind it.
No in-depth news stories had been done about it. A search for lawsuits, tax filings, liens, property records — any sort of public document I could think of — yielded nothing.

Maybe the spending reports it files with the Federal Election Commission would provide a clue. As with other so-called independent groups that support or oppose candidates, the coalition must disclose its expenditures, although it does not need to reveal the sources of its cash.

The filings showed that it had been busy running TV ads and sending out mailers opposing candidates who supported the health care bill. It reported spending $108,000 in the first few weeks of September to campaign against eight Democrats, including Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader; Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado; and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Like its Web site, the coalition’s F.E.C. filings also gave its address as Delaware, where many corporations are registered in name only because of the state’s business-friendly tax and disclosure laws.

The address on the coalition’s filings was a suite in a large office building in Wilmington that seemed to be shared by an array of other businesses involved in the health care, financial services and energy industries. Calls to several of them turned up none that acknowledged knowing anything about the coalition.

One last clue emerged from the filings. They showed that much of its money had gone to a Florida consulting firm, the Fenwick Group, a two-person outfit whose Web site listed other clients that included health care and technology companies.

I called the phone number for Fenwick. A man answered.
“K & M Insurance,” he said.
“I’m looking to speak to somebody with the Fenwick Group,” I said.
“Oh, that would be Jay.”

I was sent to the voice mailbox of someone named Jay Handline. I hung up without leaving a message and pondered this latest development.

Why, I wondered, did the number for the coalition’s campaign consultant ring at an insurance company? Looking at K M’s Web site, I saw that it is a broker for seven large health insurance providers, including Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana and United Healthcare.

Mr. Handline, it turns out, also serves as the chief marketing officer of Convergence Health, a health care technology company. That is, when he is not running Dance Trance, a dance fitness studio where he is known as a “nationally acclaimed jazz funk fusion choreographer,” according to its Web site.
“People of all ages are welcome to come and groove to the thumpin’ music!” it says.

I tried the Fenwick number again, and this time Mr. Handline picked up. He said he was not a member of the coalition and only placed its television ads, adding that he got the job through someone in the health care field for whom he had done similar work in the past. He would not name the person
“But they’re not a member of the coalition either,” he said.
So who are the members? 
“I really can’t give you any details.”

He took down my number and said he would see if anyone in the coalition wanted to talk about it. No one did.

I suppose I could keep nosing around by traveling to Delaware, or better yet, Florida (I haven’t grooved to the music in a long time). It may yet come to that.

At any rate, it is clearly going to take a lot more work to see through an organization that is about as transparent as a dirty diaper.

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September 27, 2010

As Laws Shift, Voters Cast Ballots Weeks Before the Polls Close

By JEFF ZELENY

CINCINNATI — At least one-third of all ballots across the country this year will be cast before Election Day, party officials said, reflecting a steady rise in early voting that is profoundly influencing how political campaigns are conducted in many parts of the country.
 
Democrats, who have been quicker to take advantage of the technique in the last two election cycles, say that a voting window of 30 days could allow them to win votes from people who might not otherwise cast a ballot and help level an enthusiasm gap that threatens their Congressional majority. Republicans concede being slower to adjust to the changes, but said they have stepped up their efforts in what they hope will be a strong year for the party.

“You can lose an election before Election Day,” said Jason Mauk, executive director of the Ohio Republican Party, which is intensifying its emphasis on early voting for the first time. “It’s in our best interest to try and bank as many soft votes as we can.”

The calendar may still say September, but people can begin casting their ballots on Tuesday in Ohio. Voting is already under way in Georgia, Iowa and four other states, with Arizona, California and Illinois set to start in the next two weeks.

Never mind that October is filled to the brim with televised debates, advertising pitches and eager anticipation from candidates waiting to see if they win the endorsement of their local newspaper’s editorial page. These old political rituals take place after millions of voters have already selected their candidates.

A patchwork of early-voting laws has emerged in counties and states across the country over the last two decades, but much of the expansion has taken place in the last four years. This is the first midterm election where each party has altered its tactics to adjust to the new realities of voting, according to strategists in both parties, resulting in a campaign where everything from advertising to yard signs comes earlier.

“There is now much more consideration to making sure you have your opponent fully defined before ballots go out in October,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist in California, who is advising Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor. “It would not be unusual to consider dropping that big negative on an opponent in the first week of October to try to have a big impact.”

In California, residents are able to indicate a permanent vote-by-mail request, which means a ballot will automatically arrive in the mail four weeks before an election. The lists are available to campaigns, which Mr. Stutzman said has significantly increased the get-out-the-vote effort for absentee voters.

While people in New York must have an excuse to vote before Election Day, which is why only 5 percent cast absentee ballots in the presidential race two years ago, most states no longer have that restriction. Voting alternatives range from a pure mail-in ballot in Oregon to a three-week period of balloting in Florida, Texas and Nevada.

Early voting has hardly driven all eligible citizens to vote. Turnout has increased only slightly since 2005 when many states began making voting more convenient. But it has made it far easier for campaigns to find voters who would be likely to be supportive if they could get them to the polling place. And with 70 percent of Americans now able to take advantage of no-excuse early and absentee voting, the trend is permanent.

“It’s not going to represent a seismic shift in the number of people voting,” said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor who studies early voting and election law. “The convenience of voting is a factor, but it’s not the major reason that people don’t show up to vote.”

Here in Ohio, an election period that now stretches over 35 days is one of the few things lifting the spirits of Democrats. Two years ago, the party overwhelmed Republicans in early voting. John McCain received more votes on Election Day, but Barack Obama carried the state, because many Democrats and independents voted early.

“We have more than 30 days to find our supporters, get them out to vote and win this election,” Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat, told a crowd at a weekend rally, where he rolled up in a bus with an early-voting message emblazoned on the side. “Are we going to do it?”

A group of Republican voters filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Cincinnati challenging the practice of a few Ohio counties — Democratic-leaning ones — that provide postage-paid envelopes for absentee ballots. Voters in most counties across the state have to provide their own stamp, a disparity they argue created unequal access to vote.

One of the biggest elements of the Democratic Party’s effort to persuade first-time voters from the last presidential race to vote in the midterm election comes through early voting. Organizing for America, the party’s network of Obama supporters, is focusing much of its effort on important Congressional races in states that allow early voting.

In Florida, where ballots began arriving in mailboxes last week, a liberal group called Progress Florida sent an appeal Monday urging people to “Vote in your pajamas.”

The Democratic strategy is being amplified by President Obama, whose travel schedule over the next three weeks closely tracks the dates when early voting begins. Unlike the 2008 campaign, aides said that this year’s early-voting effort was largely devoted to hard-core Democrats, excluding independent voters who might not be supportive of the party’s message.

In Ohio, Mr. Obama is set to arrive next month for an early-voting rally on the campus of the Ohio State University, where he will encourage students to cast their early ballots for Democrats. Party officials here hope the effort is something of a second act for the 2008 campaign, when early voting helped give several candidates an edge.

This year, Republicans said they were not ceding the strategy, but party officials dismissed the suggestion that a midterm election would give Democrats the same advantage of a presidential election. “It defies the logic of low-propensity voting,” said Mr. Mauk, the state party’s executive director.

A crucial test will come here in Cincinnati, where Mr. Obama became the first Democratic president to carry Hamilton County in 44 years. The Board of Elections office on Broadway Avenue has expanded service until 9 p.m. on some days, and until noon on Saturdays.

“Now, is there any reason not to vote?” Maryellen O’Shaughnessy, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state asked a cheering crowd at a rally here as she offered detailed instructions how to cast early ballots. “Folks can’t say they don’t have enough time to get to the polls.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Miracles, Democracy, and the Fight Against SB 1070

By Joel Olson

One by one we go around the room. We state our name and why we are here at this meeting, seeking the repeal of SB 1070 and other anti-immigrant laws. “I want to keep my family together.” “I believe in human dignity.” “I’m afraid my family will be broken up.” “I believe in freedom for all people.” “I want a resolution to this problem.” “I want a new world.”

This is what my Wednesday nights have been like since the passage of SB 1070 in April: for three hours I sit in a hot, sweaty room at the local Catholic church in Flagstaff, Arizona, with anywhere from 25 to 50 adults plus a gaggle of little kids. It’s a meeting of the Repeal Coalition, an all-volunteer, grassroots organization that is struggling for the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. Three-quarters or more of the participants are Latino. About that many are undocumented or related to someone who is. Women outnumber men, and they participate more. The discussion is noisy and animated, and mostly in Spanish, with people doing the best they can to translate into English or vice-versa. Often just the gist gets translated. (Someone says a joke in Spanish and three-quarters of the room erupts in laughter and the rest of us smile sheepishly, then someone says a joke in English and it goes the other way.) But somehow we feel like part of the same group. The kids in the adjacent room tear through the paper and crayons and cheap toys until someone pops in a video. By 8:30 p.m., exhausted, we clap it out, clean up, socialize, and take care of the little things we couldn’t get to in the formal meeting. Then we all go home, do the work we volunteered to do, and come back fighting the next Wednesday.

This is what democracy looks like.

In Arizona right now, this is the lull before the storm. SB 1070 is scheduled to become law on July 29. If you don’t know, SB 1070 is the notorious anti-immigrant law that makes it a state crime to be undocumented, requires everyone in the state to carry ID (“Your papers, please!”), makes it a crime to give an undocumented person a ride in your car or a meal in your home, and practically mandates racial profiling.

On July 29, if the police have “reasonable suspicion” that you are undocumented, you will be ripped from your family and thrown in jail.

On July 29, if you give a ride in your car or allow into your home a person you know is undocumented, you are “recklessly disregarding” that person’s legal status and can be arrested for “harboring” an “illegal alien.”

On July 29, if you get stopped by the cops and you don’t have identification on you, this will count as “reasonable suspicion” that you may be in the country illegally, and you are subject to arrest, no matter where you are from.

If this sounds to you like the makings of a police state, well, it does to me, too.

When Governor Jan Brewer signed 1070 into law at the end of April, Arizonans took to the streets in the tens of thousands. We organized protests, held community forums, and spoke out wherever we could: the state capitol, trailer parks in Phoenix, Flagstaff City Hall, the borders of the Tohono O’odham nation, neighborhoods in South Tucson.

After the crowds died down, the lawyers stepped in. To date at least six lawsuits have been filed that seek to prevent SB 1070 from going into effect, including one by the Obama administration.

Undocumented folks and their loved ones are holding their breath, praying that the lawsuits will succeed. But many of them aren’t putting all of their eggs in that basket. They know that ultimately, only grassroots action will defeat this evil law .

Which brings us to the meetings.

Americans generally don’t know how to run a meeting, or participate in one. We can vote, we can speechify, and we can scream at each other, but we rarely debate constructively and in a way that encourages the participation of all. Our political system simply isn’t set up for that. Instead, what typically happens is that the people vote once a year or so and the politicians do the work—with the help of lobbyists, bureaucrats, judges, and lawyers, lots of lawyers. It’s actually a really limited form of democracy, when you think about it.

But the meetings of the Repeal Coalition are entirely different. They are utterly ordinary, yet incredible. The great Marxist revolutionary C.L.R. James once wrote a pamphlet about direct democracy called “Every Cook Can Govern.” He would have been inspired to see these cooks, cleaners, servers, chamber maids, college students, linen service workers, teachers, maintenance workers, warehouse clerks, and cashiers practice democracy in Arizona. And the Coalition doesn’t just go through the motions of democracy like most American voters; we debate politics. We come together, discuss the right thing to do, develop strategy, make decisions, and carry them out. People (mostly) raise their hand to speak and (mostly) listen patiently to others. And we do all of this in two languages!

The political theorist Hannah Arendt claims that ordinary people directly participating in politics is literally a miracle. Miracles, she argues, are the spontaneous creation of something new. This, she argues, is precisely what people acting in the public sphere do: they create a new beginning, a new community, a new political possibility, something that has never existed before.

That’s what happens every Wednesday night in Phoenix and Flagstaff. At one recent meeting, for example, Flagstaff Repeal discusses the finer points of a resolution we’ve written that demands the repeal of all anti-immigrant legislation in the state of Arizona. The resolution, which we hope the city council will pass, calls for the city to proclaim itself a safe haven for all people, whether they have papers or not. We discuss and then approve the resolution unanimously, to great applause. We then move on to developing strategy for how to get the city council to pass it. From there we discuss the situation of some undocumented workers who have been unjustly treated and fired by the local Hampton Inn, and then to plans for a protest and march against SB 1070 in downtown Flagstaff for the coming Saturday. The facilitator (who is doubling as translator) gets us through the agenda so that we can end by 8:30. We all marvel at what a great job she did—and it was her first time. The meeting ends by “clapping it out,” or a slow, disorganized clap that increases in speed and synchronization, leading to a crescendo of group unity and power until it bursts into individual applause again, reminding us of how the individual and the collective are interdependent.

These meetings are inspiring, boring, disciplined, way off track, frustrating, empowering, intimidating, and awesome—often at the same time. Like I said, this is what democracy looks like.

The Repeal Coalition’s slogan is “Fight for the freedom to live, love, and work wherever you please.” But this slogan is meaningless without another: “All people deserve the right to have an equal say in those affairs that affect their daily lives.” Democracy is not voting for elites every four years while quietly fuming at the tyranny of your boss for 40 hours a week (more if you’re undocumented). It’s the ability of all people to have a say in those affairs that affect their daily life. At our meetings, we seek to live out this principle of radical democracy. It’s built into the very heart of the Repeal Coalition: the weekly meeting.

The Repeal Coalition has been meeting every week since March 2008. For the first few months there were between a dozen and 20 people. Sometimes there were four of us, staring at each other, wondering what the hell to do next. That was the case last January, for example. Thanks to an inside source, we knew the notorious bill that would soon be named SB 1070 was coming, even before it was made public. We talked about how we needed to build a movement to fight it. But there were just four of us. What the hell could we do?

And then in April the world discovered SB 1070, and we went from six people to 40 to 60 in two weeks (plus 20 kids—I spent several meetings doing childcare in the adjacent room, occasionally sticking my head in the meeting room to hear what was going on). The primary language went from English to Spanish. The college students, who were formerly a majority in the group, became outnumbered by servers and laundry workers.

Since then we’ve had at least 25 people at every meeting. We’re busy, but we’re nervous. July 29 approaches. People don’t know yet how they are going to keep their families together. They are scared to drive, so they aren’t even sure how they’ll get to work, how they’ll get their kids to school, how they’ll shop for groceries. Down in Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls July 29 the “magic day” when he can truly begin to sweep the streets clean of brown people.

Another political theorist, Carl Schmitt, argues that the real miracle in politics is what he calls “the exception.” This is when a ruler declares an “extreme emergency” and suspends the rule of law. SB 1070 isn’t quite a miracle in this respect, because it is the law, even if it does suspend liberty and decency. Regardless, July 29 is Arpaio’s miracle.

In the face of this, Repeal keeps meeting, planning, fighting, and conjuring our own miracle.

The question in Arizona right now, as July 29 approaches, is which miracle will win out, the miracle of grassroots democracy or the “miracle” of unrestrained state power; the miracle of a new Arizona, in which ordinary people—with “papers” or without—control the affairs that affect their daily lives, or of the old Arizona, in which nativist politicians and business interests determine how the rest of us live.

I’m not sure which Arizona will win. But I’m damn sure that I’m not going to leave it to the lawyers. I’ll see you at the next meeting.

Joel Olson is a member of the Repeal Coalition, which meets every Wednesday night. The Coalition can be reached at www.repealcoalition.org or repealcoalition@gmail.com.

Surveillance in Classrooms at NAU

Just got an email from NAU administration that states that NAU will have detectors to track student IDs and thus attendance in classes. I find this highly disturbing. Not only does this have implications for privacy of students but also political implications. Will this be the only thing under surveillance? What happens to free speech on campus? Will social science faculty and students be tracked for the kind of speech they engage in? With Arizona's SB 1070 and the crackdown on Ethnic Studies departments in force NAU's new tracking device cannot be taken lightly. It must be protested at the highest level.

Previously, it was argued that tracking attendance would lead to more attendance rates and thus greater performance. The State is apparently to tie attendance rates to financial aid. While attendance rates might reflect good teachers, policing classrooms with detectors will not reflect the quality of teaching. It will reflect fear instead. A good university does not use policing techniques because it doesn't need to. Only an administration that has no idea how to stimulate teaching and learning would resort to such pathetic measures.

I don't think the administration has adequately argued the need for such invasive policies and if it had I can't imagine it would be accepted by the faculty or students at large. It would be good to have this new rule protested and removed. We can do without nonsense expenses also in such a tough economic climate.

Nativism & Fascism

Here's a link to an article I wrote for the Imagine 2050 blog on anti-immigrant protests in Arizona and their significance:

http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2010/06/15/nativism-and-fascism-the-meaning-of-anti-immigrant-protests/

Interview on the Repeal Coalition

Below is an interview on the Repeal Coalition that I did recently. It provides information on one group's grassroots strategy to change the immigration debate in Arizona.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/28/organizing-at-ground-zero