Poll Insanity

With six days until the election, the steady trickle of tracking polls has become a barrage. What to make of all the conflicting national and battleground state numbers?

First of all, I do agree with the general liberal blogger consensus that most of the polls in use are seriously flawed. If more Democrats than Republicans voted in 2000 in a given state, it doesn't make sense to have significantly more Republicans in a sample for a poll for 2004, especially when the Democratic base is much more energized than in 2000. Also, minority voters are consistently underestimated, and could make the difference, as even a Republican pollster admits.

However, another piece of dem blogger gospel--that the undecideds will break for Kerry 2 to 1--may not be a sure thing. I certainly hope it is true, but the polls that take "leaners" into account seem to be calling this into question. While this has been true so often in the past as to seem like a sure thing, the fact is a significant portion of the electorate thinks of this as wartime, and that may cause them to break for Bush. We'll know soon how this works out.

All that being said, I don't think we should pay that much attention to polls right now. We know the race is going to be close, both campaigns are pretty locked into their plans by now and this thing will be won on the ground by GOTV (and, possibly, by Republican voter suppression). Virtually all of the last week polls in 2000 had Bush leading, and Gore won by half a million votes. Until Nov. 3rd, all we just have to keep our eyes on the prize and get out the vote. Keep the Faith.

The Red Sox go up 3-0...

And the Nation begins wondering if this is could be the second act of the most heartbreaking collapse imaginable. In deference to the superstitious, I won't say this team has got the series in the bag; but if these guys don't win, it would seriously alter my whole understanding of the universe. If they somehow managed to blow it, I would have little choice but to conclude that there is, in fact, a God; that he takes an interest in baseball; and that he would have designed the outcomes of all the postseason games so far just in order to maximize the suffering of one particular group of people with little in common other than team allegiance.

Why is that the common wisdom about baseball is seemingly the most riddled with nonsense about "clutch," "curses," and so on, when it is almost certainly the sport in which psychology, character, etc. matter least? I often find talking about baseball with most fans infuriating, due to their lack of a basic understanding of what true skills are and what a batter or pitcher can control in a single game or at-bat. As much as I'd like to believe in a story about the unbelievable character and dedication of the Boston Red Sox, and the Yankees totally choking, it's kind of a sham. Winning in the postseason is about getting lucky and getting hot at the right time. Given enough time, certain "storylines" will emerge that seem to reveal truths about the teams they involve, but basically if you buy into this you're just attaching values to the "ability" of a person to win or lose repeated coin flips. Boston's failure to win a world series has a lot to do with poor management, of which the Babe Ruth sale is but a symptom, rather than the cause of all the trouble.

Then again, I wasn't really aware of baseball in 1986, so perhaps if I had been a Sox fan then I wouldn't be quite so rational about all this. I did survive the 2003 postseason, however; a huge difference in the abilities of the Yankees' and Red Sox's managers to make tough decisions was the reason for the Game 7 loss, not a curse.