2008 Election
nisbetmc | January 15, 2008As funding and budgets flat line at the National Institutes of Health, science organizations are hoping to make NIH funding part of the election discussion. In a smart way, they are framing the issue in terms of social progress with the catchphrase "Science Cures," making personally relevant the value of basic research. Below is a press release from FASEB announcing their new election-oriented Web site at http://sciencecures.org/.
AS 2008 PRESIDENTIAL RACE HEATS UP, FASEB LAUNCHES VOTER EDUCATION INITIATIVE SCIENCECURES.ORG
Bethesda, MD - The Federation of American Societies for Experimental…
nisbetmc | January 12, 2008One of the political predictions I've heard goes like this: since Florida is frequently hit by hurricanes, competency at emergency preparedness is more of a salient consideration for Floridians, and that gives Rudy Giuliani an edge in the primary. What do readers think?
Assuming emergency preparedness is a salient issue for GOP primary voters, it would be a classic example of priming in campaign effects: the more salient an issue for the public, the more likely the issue becomes the chief criteria by which voters evaluate candidates. To see how this works, read this article at the Washington…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2008tags: ScienceDebate2008, Science Friday, Ira Flatow, National Public Radio, NPR, podcast
Remember how we have been lobbying for a presidential debate that specifically focuses on each candidate's planned policies regarding science and technology? And remember how things were picking up momentum fairly rapidly in the main stream media? Well, now National Public Radio's Science Friday with Ira Flatow is hosting a one hour call-in discussion regarding this very topic! [free podcast]. This show is being broadcast TODAY at 2pm EST, so be sure to call them in support of ScienceDebate2008! If you…
nisbetmc | January 10, 2008The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted an analysis of post-NH newspaper and television coverage and has a critical review of the "reverse direction" narrative.
nisbetmc | January 10, 2008The Clinton team has added a new message guru, advertising and branding wizard Roy Spence. From ABC News.com:
Spence, 60, a longtime friend of the Clintons, is the quirky Austin-based advertising legend who coined the phrase "Don't Mess With Texas," and developed the Southwest Airlines slogan, "You are now free to move about the country."...
...Spence was active early on in the campaign, but will now take on an even greater role, inputting how to rebrand Clinton's message to voters.
"Hillary wants somebody in there that is going to comprehend what messaging conversations are being had, and…
nisbetmc | January 10, 2008Perhaps the best quote on the horse race coverage goes to USC professor Marty Kaplan writing at the Huffington Post:
I wonder whether this humiliating turnabout, played out in real time over a very short period right in front of the American people, could be the MSM's Katrina. Political media, you've done a heckuva job.
nisbetmc | January 10, 2008In a lengthy column at today's Washington Post, media reporter Howard Kurtz pulls no punches in criticizing the horse race coverage that has defined the primary races: "The series of blown calls amount to the shakiest campaign performance yet by a profession seemingly addicted to snap judgments and crystal-ball pronouncements. Not since the networks awarded Florida to Al Gore on Election Night 2000 has the collective media establishment so blatantly missed the boat."
Here's how Kurtz describes the factors contributing to the news media's overwhelming fascination with polls and hyped…
nisbetmc | January 9, 2008Out of all the suggestions that have been thrown around about who should be the next Presidential science advisor, I think Bora over at A Blog Around the Clock might have hit on the best choice and that's Harold Varmus.
As I noted in a previous post discussing the possibility of Francis Collins as presidential advisor, the government's chief science policy person can also be an important public ambassador. In that role, and in dealing with a diversity of constituents and stakeholders, the science advisor needs to be able to communicate science in a way that connects with religious Americans…
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, 2008American 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, 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, 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…