« "Delightful" | Main | This Statistic Explains The Election. » The Knows Unknowns02 Nov 2008 01:38 pm 1. The Obama turnout machine (size, scope) 2. Racism 3. Secret Republican Obama Admirers (The Goodbye To All That Effect) 4. The demographic composition of undecided voters; the ideological composition of these voters; the actual size of this group of voters 5. Whether people assume Obama will win and therefore don't feel compelled to vote for him (the Democratic overconfident effect) 6. A few ballot initiatives (Florida, Colorado) 7. The pro-or-anti-Palin vote (suburban women, jazzed conservative base) 8. The Bradley effect (whites lying to pollsters and saying they have NO opinion when they actually support the white candidate) 9. The Wilder effect (whites lying about supporting the black candidate) 10. The Van Wilder effect (young voter surges in red states like Indiana) 11. Media backlash effect (?) 12. The weather -- (supposedly gorgeous) 13. The Republican depression effect (the counter to the Democratic overconfidence effect) 14. Independent-leaning fiscal conservatives turning Libertarian 15. whether African Americans vote at Census + 0, C + 1, C + 2.... 16. The effect of the last-minute McCain television advertising surge 17. Whether such a thing as the Howard Dean-Red-Cap effect exists (i.e, scary college kids trying to get older adults out to vote...and they're resentful) 18. the idea of a unified, uni-polar Congress excites people, turns people off, or doesn't really matter Others? TrackBackListed below are links to weblogs that reference The Knows Unknowns:
» What would the response be if McCain intimated Obama was a terrorist? from A Couple Things Comments (35)
There is no Bradley effect. 
Weren't Dean's caps orange?
19. The cell phone effect People who never got polled. These could be African Americans C plus, Hispanic Americans, the Van Wilder Americans, or just more mobile Americans who moved to Vegas last year from Ohio. Plus/minus who knows what%?
You forgot the significant percentage of voters who vote for the candidate most likely to win- because they like to vote for winners. A plus for Obama?
How many people who are still undecided (call it the they're-all-crooks crowd) will actually make the effort to vote?
Check your headline....
Unenthusiastic GOP voters who don't want to wait in line for hours to vote if they think NcCain will lose anyway. McCain voters -- mostly older - who will see lots of Black people in line and be too "scared" to wait in the same line and head home.
The impact of early voting. How large is Obama's lead and what percentage of the total electorate will this be? Obviously, the fact that this varies greatly by state makes it even more interesting.
Whether Americans will wake up in time to vote against the most doctrinaire liberal to run for President ever in American history, as recently described by Thomas Sowell...
"How many people who are still undecided (call it the they're-all-crooks crowd) will actually make the effort to vote?" Tyler Agreed. Especially if the lines are long. Most die hard Obama supporters probably aren't walking away for anything. If told they'll have a two/three hour wait though, undecideds in more populated areas might simply walk away or not show up at all based on the traffic reports.
Speck + Blogs = Final Death of Copy Editing
The Van Wilder effect Funny. I like it. My take on all of this -- you've got a lot of random variables and they probably cancel each other out. Expect the actual results to look a lot like the final polls.
Official (state DOJ eg. 50 WI assistant AG's dispatched to polls) voter supression, HAVA challenges of all types, (in particular driver license-new address mismatches), and provisional ballots. The extent of all of these issues on Tuesday.
Number of Americans beyond his immediate family who can identify Thomas Sowell and/or his writings.
20. Effect of Obama's Wednesday infomercial, which appeared to cause a mini-convention type bump in the Gallup tracker, if not other polls.
GOP suppression in Missouri -- too few voting machines in St. Louis, trying to shut down voting with thousands in line.
The Bradley effect has not been in evidence in any American election since the early nineties, and may in fact have been a chimaera of bad polling to begin with. The Democratic primaries in fact saw a reverse Bradley effect in areas with high African American and youth concentrations: Obama materially outperformed his polls in South Carolina and elsewhere. There are a lot of concerns about this election for Democrats, but I think one is considerably more likely to see Obama win a state we didn't expect -- Georgia comes to mind -- than one is to see him lose one it was thought he was leading.
I agree...majority of blacks don't even know Sowell and most whites will say who??? I think that Obama will win by 4-7 percentage points and he will reach 270 before Mccain. It will be closer in most states but there will be hidden factors..like whites who may vote for Obama in the privacy of their voting booth because they can't do it in public.
By #14 do you mean Barr voters?
MarkG on autopilot: "Whether Americans will wake up in time to vote against the most doctrinaire liberal to run for President ever in American history, as recently described by Thomas Sowell..." 1. MarkG votes for doctrinaire conservatives and thinks everyone else should, too. And Obama is no more liberal than McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, or Kerry, but when MarkGs want to make a point they feel compelled to pile bullshit on top of it. It's the Repiglican way. 2. Ah, Thomas Sowell! See, an actual NEGRO agrees with MarkG, so that's his go-to guy when it's time to go after a COMMIE NEGRO. 3. The conservative movement has been reduced to a twitching corpse of a joke.
Polling station problems (machines not working properly, undertrained staff, long lines) that could discourage some first-time or only-occasional voters who've been piqued by this election.
The IQ Effect: Are Americans really stupid enough to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin?
How about the HISTORIC ELECTION vote. The people who will stand in line for hours to say they voted for the first black president.
19. Cellphone only voters underpolled?
28. Theft of an election
19. A massive movement whereby thousands of people send this list of twenty non-partisan reasons to oppose BHO to all their friends, and that's sent to hundreds of thousands more, and by the end of Monday millions of people realize what a mistake electing BHO would be.
If you're Catholic (and my wife is) then the homily today (as it has been for the last several weeks) is about the evils of abortion and how a good Catholic cannot support a candidate who also supports women's rights. (Doesn't matter if that candidate agrees with the church on serving the poor, taking care of the environment, getting medical care to everyone, etc.) I think there is a reason that McCain seems to do better the early part of the week in trackers - people go to church and come home after hearing a McCain infomercial.
20. A massive movement whereby millions of people choose to ignore LoneWackAhead's pathetic blogwhoring. Here's a known unknown: what DrudgeRulesTheirWorld chooses to do with exit polling reports during the day. It's not just a question of embargoed data being leaked, but how it's leaked.
19. Machines flipping votes as they have been reported to do in West Virginia, all going from Obama to McCain, strangely enough. And yeah, the hats were orange. Deer Hunter Orange. I wore one. It was cold. I'm sorry.
5. Whether people assume Obama will win and therefore don't feel compelled to vote for him (the Democratic overconfident effect) What about conservatives who may stay home assuming McCain's is a lost cause, enhancing Democrats' chances in downticket races?
18+x)(combining Mike [official suppression] and Moscow Girl [historic vote]): Measurable effect of insufficient poll capacity (whether legitimate or contrived). I (a Virginia voter, fwiw) intend to arrive at my polling place at 5:45 AM, i.e. 15 minutes before it opens. I'll call in late to work if I can't get in quickly. I don't expect this to happen, but if I have to wait at the polls for 6+ hours to vote, I will.
I agree with the historic vote comments. I live in SC where we don't have early voting and I will be showing up at the polls with a trunk full of 'stuff'. I have chairs, water, snacks and magazines for those who are waiting with me. I want to be comfortable if I have to wait 4+ hours and I want others in line to be comfy too. For what it's worth...I spent this weekend canvassing in NC for Obama (first time ever volunteer). I went to a mostly white low-income area and they were Obama-crazy up there. I saw ZERO evidence of the Bradley effect. They were obviously enthusiastic and were happily sharing stories of voting early and waiting in lines for hours on end to try to vote for "change".
We need a post on "Unknown Knowns". How will the voter's unconcious impact the election?
- The Acorn voters, number of Mickey Mouses showing up at the polls - The number of Purged Voters having to cast Provisional Ballots (the counter to the Acorn vote)
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19.) The utter unmitigated stupidity and chauvinism of the typical American of a sort that at least has its act sufficiently together to register and get one's ass to a polling place in time to make one's vote count during election season.
They're out there in their tens of millions. HTH
Posted by Hey Nineteen | November 2, 2008 1:46 PM