nisbetmc | January 9, 2008At ABC News.com, survey expert and Stanford professor Jon Krosnick has more on the likely primacy ballot effect that I reported on this morning:
Until this year, New Hampshire rotated candidate name order from precinct to precinct, which allowed us to do that analysis.
This year, the secretary of state changed the procedure so the names were alphabetical starting with a randomly selected letter, in all precincts.
The randomly selected letter this year was Z.
As a result, Joe Biden was first on every ballot, Hillary Clinton was near the top of the list (and the first serious contender listed)…
nisbetmc | January 9, 2008
American University students watch the Iowa Caucus returns as they prepare to head to New Hampshire to cover, film and analyze the first presidential primary in 2008. Photo by Glenn Luther.
The New Hampshire primary drew the analytical eye of 28 undergraduate and graduate students from American University's School of Communication, who were on the ground in the Granite State for the special topics course "Covering the 2008 Presidential Election."
Cross-disciplinary teams are creating short documentaries to show young peoples' influence behind-the-scenes and on the vote. AU students are…
nisbetmc | January 9, 2008One other possible explanation for the inaccurate NH poll predictions is the so-called Bradley Effect. Below is part of the discussion at Slate, a hypothesis that Krosnick is then quoted as doubting:
This sort of jarring of our expectations conjures up past examples of black candidates who have polled significantly higher than their white opponents, only to confront a very different reality when the votes are counted. Pollsters know this as the "Bradley Effect," christened for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man who narrowly lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to a…
nisbetmc | January 9, 2008Jon Krosnick, a professor of Communication at Stanford and perhaps the top expert in survey methodology, hypothesizes that the pre-primary polls in New Hampshire might have been wrong because they failed to take into account the NH ballot design and the miserly nature of voters. In public opinion research, the tendency for miserly voters to choose the candidate listed first or closer to the top of the list of candidates is called the primacy effect:
A further potential source of error stems from New Hampshire ballot rules. In previous contests, the state rotated candidate names from precinct…
nisbetmc | January 8, 2008
Key exit poll indicators explaining Hillary's unexpected showing in New Hamsphire:
She carried registered Dems 45% to 34% over Obama. Dems made up 54% of those voting in the primary compared to 43% independents who turned out.
She carried Baby Boomers, 50 and over, roughly 43% to 32% for Obama. Boomers made up 44% of primary voters.
She carried women voters, 47% to 34% over Obama. Women voters made up 57% of voters.
nisbetmc | January 8, 2008
Despite his deep faith and frequent use of religious language, Obama is the clear favorite in New Hampshire among the non-religious. According to the exit polls, among the 22% of NH Democratic primary voters who identified as having no religious affiliation, nearly half (46%) voted for Obama compared to just 29% for Clinton.
nisbetmc | January 7, 2008As I wrote yesterday, the key indicator following Obama's expected win in New Hampshire tomorrow night will be the distance that he has closed in the subsequent national polls. If he pulls even or ahead, it's over for Clinton.
In fact, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, Obama has already made up what was once a 25 point difference, pulling even with Clinton. As former Kerry strategist Bob Shrum writes in today's NY Daily News, Hillary is the KO'd Kid.
Meanwhile, the Gallup poll shows that Huckabee has taken the lead by five points nationally among GOP voters.
nisbetmc | January 7, 2008Vanity Fair has the clues and the reader is left to connect the dots:
Film is set in 1957 (ten years after crash at Roswell), was shot in New Mexico, and in contrast to previous Indy Films that pay tribute to 1930s serials, this one takes inspiration from 1950s B movie science fiction. The villains are the Cold War Russians and the race is to recover a "Crystal Skull," most likely an alien artifact with vast technological power.
Confirmation comes May 22nd with world wide release.
nisbetmc | January 7, 2008
The first two months that the new Fox Business Channel was on the air, it averaged a mere 6,900 viewers on any given weekday. The handful of viewers for the new Fox venture equals about 2% of the audience for its chief rival CNBC News.
With so many structural challenges plaguing Americans' ability to get ahead in the economy, it's likely that the Fox Business Channel's narrow focus on personal responsibility is not a credible sell with audiences.
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008Obama's Iowa momentum has proven too much for Hillary Clinton's campaign team to fight off. With multiple polls in New Hampshire showing a double digit lead for Obama, it looks like there is no chance that Clinton will be the Comeback Kid in Tuesday's primary. Depending on turn out, even a third place finish behind John Edwards is possible.
The relevant question now is whether Hillary has any hope of winning the nomination? The key indicator to watch post-New Hampshire will be Clinton's national poll numbers. If her once 25 point lead in national surveys falls to close to a dead heat or worse…
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008Over at Monkey Trials, Scott Hatfield suggests that in the next administration the new presidential science advisor should be a famous science popularizer such as EO Wilson or perhaps even better Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not only would these individuals have the breadth of knowledge to advise in multiple areas of science, but just as importantly, they could serve as leading public ambassadors for science.
Just one problem: Most science popularizers such as Wilson or Tyson don't have the years of government experience to understand the machinations of Federal science policy. Moreover, they have a…
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008
In the 1984 presidential election pitting the charismatic Ronald Reagan against the plodding Walter Mondale, polls showed that a majority of Americans when asked specifically about their policy preferences favored Mondale's positions over Reagan's. Yet Reagan ended up winning in a landslide.
The reason was that Reagan's radical stands on taxes, the economy, and social issues were eclipsed by the penumbra of the former actor's personality and charisma. Likeability and perceived character became the deciding selection criteria for Americans over the issues.
This tendency by voters to overlook…
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008
James Watson outrageously suggested that Africans were genetically inferior.
If race is a biological fiction, what are the reasons for persistent belief in this social myth? My colleague Tim Caulfield, Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, points to research that shows genetic differences can more accurately be called "genographic variations," and only roughly correspond to the visible characteristics we have come to identify with categories of "races" such as black, white, or asian.
In a must-read op-ed appearing at the Edmonton Journal and other papers across…
nisbetmc | January 6, 2008When a candidate falters, the first person blamed is the chief campaign strategist. Six months ago Clinton's top adviser Mark Penn could do no wrong. He was the guru of micro-trends, a man who understood the smallest details and nuances of the American electorate. The Washington Post dubbed him "Clinton's Power-Pointer."
But as Karen Tumulty reports in this week's Time magazine, insiders at Clinton HQ are already conspiring against him, offering an off-the-record narrative blaming Penn for Hillary's fall. The problem, as Tumulty writes, is that there is no viable candidate to replace Penn and…
nisbetmc | January 4, 2008
Did you know that while an Illinois Senator that Barack Obama successfully passed major bills on crime, ethics, campaign finance reform, and low wage work? And that these accomplishments reveal his experience and ability in working across party lines to craft solutions to complex problems?
The reason you don't know these things things is in part a function of the horse race coverage that has dominated this presidential race at a historically unprecedented level.
Charles Peters, the founding editor of the Washington Monthly, makes this exact point in an op-ed published at the Washington…
nisbetmc | January 4, 2008At the History News Network, my American University colleague Lenny Steinhorn teams up with his brother Charles, a professor of Mathematics at Vassar College, to point out the misleading nature of the framing of evolution in presidential coverage. As they argue, political reporters overwhelmingly tend to describe evolution as a "belief" akin to believing in Virgin birth or miracles.
Lenny Steinhorn, author of The Greater Generation, a defense of Baby Boomers, is one of the most sought out strategists in Washington. [Of interest to readers, his work and teaching was recently profiled in the…
nisbetmc | January 4, 2008In an editorial at this week's Science, editor Donald Kennedy raises concerns that religion has come to dominate the presidential race and argues that instead science should have an equal if not more prominent place on the election agenda. This week's issue of Science features statements on science policy by most of the major presidential candidates. Here's how Kennedy ends his editorial:
Given this new focus on religious disclosure, what does this U.S. election have to do with science? Everything. The candidates should be asked hard questions about science policy, including questions about…
nisbetmc | January 3, 2008
Ten months ago the patterns of attacks among some of the leading personalities at Fox News were already emerging.
With Barack Obama's win tonight in Iowa, expect the character attacks, innuendo, race codes, and islamo-phobia to pick up among various Fox News personalities. More than 10 months ago, filmmaker Robert Greenwald released a brilliant video montage of the emerging attacks on programs such as Hannity & Colmes and Fox & Friends. Watch the footage above.
In coming months, expect the following themes to be emphasized:
*Allegations that the only reason Obama could move from the…
nisbetmc | January 3, 2008As I have traveled across the country over the past year giving talks on new directions in science communication, one of my recommendations to science institutions and organizations has been to launch blogs and podcasts as important strategic communication tools for engaging with audiences and stakeholders.
There are a number of challenges a science organization faces when launching a blog. The first is staff time. In order to do a blog properly, you need to have a skilled staff person dedicated to the site at least half time, preferably full time. Moreover, to do a blog well, this staff…
nisbetmc | January 3, 2008Here we go again...another book telling us why religious belief is illogical. Shocker!
But this time it's from one of my favorite writers, John Allen Paulos. It will be interesting to see how Paulos frames his publicity campaign and what lessons might be learned from the Dawkins case. Neil deGrasse Tyson blurbs the book, so perhaps it's an improvement over the New Atheist preferred style of attacks and complaints.
It makes you wonder though, how many books confirming and reinforcing our beliefs can us atheists and skeptics read before we get bored? Ideology has a voracious appetite so don't…