Upon further reflection, the discussion yesterday about whether voters make their choices with an eye toward representatives using their independent judgment or faithfully reflecting the majority views of the district seems less relevant to me now that we're moving toward a de facto parliamentary system where reaction and grievance seem to be the primary motivators for voting activity.

The recent PA Senate elections are a great example of this. I doubt that the views of Rick Santorum, that leading light of 14th century thought, ever enjoyed majority support in PA. But he won in 1994 because the country hated Democrats that year, and he won again in 2000 because he was an incumbent and the Democrats nominated a candidate of almost Coakleyan ineptitude. Then in '06, when the country turned strongly against Republicans, he suffered a defeat of record magnitude to another candidate who, let's face it, didn't really set the world on fire.

I could very easily see the exact same thing happening with Pat Toomey, who doesn't seem to be the vicious social reactionary that Man-on-Dog was but is even farther right on economic issues.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

mozartpc27 wrote:But we deride politicians who govern "through opinion polls." And the truth is, if all you want is for your representative to vote with however the majority of his constituency feels, why do we even need the middle person (i.e., congressperson)? Just do everything through ballot questions and direct democracy.

Aside from the republic/democracy thing...

any idea of how much goes into formulating the wording of ballot questions? The fighting, lawers, injunctions, threats, this and that of opposing sides trying to wrangle the question in the most favorable way to their point of view. These people fight for months over one frikkin word that is insignificant to the meaning.

The continued legal wrangling over the Second Amendment shows us that one word and even one punctuation mark can lead to a wide range of judicial interpretations as to what the ballot resolution actually means. In ballot initiatives, brevity is essential, which makes the Second Amendment example even more germane.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) will announce later today he will not seek another term

Might be a tough seat for the GOP to hold. Lotta Cubans, who aren't quite as Republican as they used to be. Maybe a seat Rubio winning the primary will help with.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j2Ov6u9e38[/youtube]

Glenn Beck, just asking questions, finds Texas Ron Paul/Tea Party lady up to 20% of the governor polls there against Rick Perry and KBH to be a little 9/11 truthy.

For as generally useless as I find Glenn Beck, the glee he gets in exposing 9/11 truthers on both ends of the crazy spectrum warms my heart.

This is interesting. Great example of how much small wording tweaks can influence poll results.

Is it an example of word-smithing or is it just that the first poll grabbed more conservatives. Also, that really seems like a question that should be either Favor or Oppose; where does this "Strongly" stuff come from? On a question like that, IMHO, the people who don't answer strongly probably could care less either way.

traderdave wrote:Is it an example of word-smithing or is it just that the first poll grabbed more conservatives. Also, that really seems like a question that should be either Favor or Oppose; where does this "Strongly" stuff come from? On a question like that, IMHO, the people who don't answer strongly probably could care less either way.

Probably a split sample. The question choices is a standard Likert scale. We can debate the merits of the 5 point v. the 4 point Likert scale if you like.

It's been a while since I've taken statistics, and I will need a refresher before I go to any grad school, but a 17 point margin on what is essentially the same question is almost certainly statistically significant even if you include potential sampling errors.

The word homosexual does grate on the ears in a way gay/lesbian doesn't, so the results are maybe surprising with the magnitude of difference in the result, but I'm not surprised that there is a difference.

Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

jerseyhoya wrote:
For as generally useless as I find Glenn Beck, the glee he gets in exposing 9/11 truthers on both ends of the crazy spectrum warms my heart.

need some clarification here: 9/11 truthers, what?

jerseyhoya wrote:It's been a while since I've taken statistics, and I will need a refresher before I go to any grad school, but a 17 point margin on what is essentially the same question is almost certainly statistically significant even if you include potential sampling errors.

The word homosexual does grate on the ears in a way gay/lesbian doesn't, so the results are maybe surprising with the magnitude of difference in the result, but I'm not surprised that there is a difference.

The difference isn't even a little surprising. What's surprising to me is that even with the homosexual wording, you still get a majority in favor.

TenuredVulture wrote:Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

Our only two open seats that are in really bad places are Castle in Delaware and Mark Kirk's North Shore district in Illinois. Probably have a 50/50 shot of holding the one in Illinois, and considering both men are well positioned to pick up senate seats, it's hard to complain about how house retirements have gone this cycle. Meanwhile a handful of the Dem retirements are in seats that McCain won or almost won in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas, etc. I guess this new open seat in Miami could be trouble for the GOP, but that will depend on how recruitment goes.

The higher numbers of House GOP retirements is partially due to a handful of members trying to move up to senator or governor, and partially because being in the minority in the house is pretty crappy.

not that I'm prone to denigrating the intelligence of the averaqe poll respondent, but I would guess they seldom strongly favor words of 5 syllables or more, and tend to get nervous when 'sexual' has anything to do with anything.

That is, they might as likely disfavor 'heterosexuals' as 'homosexuals' in the military, vis a vis 'gay men & lesbians'.

drsmooth wrote:not that I'm prone to denigrating the intelligence of the averaqe poll respondent, but I would guess they seldom strongly favor words of 5 syllables or more, and tend to get nervous when 'sexual' has anything to do with anything.

That is, they might as likely disfavor 'heterosexuals' as 'homosexuals' in the military, vis a vis 'gay men & lesbians'.

Now that would be an interesting split sample to run. Write it up and get a grant!

TenuredVulture wrote:Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

Where did you see that? I've been looking for a comprehensive list of retirees. This seemed like a pretty good list but it does not match what you saw, I think.

phdave wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

Where did you see that? I've been looking for a comprehensive list of retirees. This seemed like a pretty good list but it does not match what you saw, I think.

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.co ... t_to_r.php

Also, I kept reading comments about a flood of Democrats who were retiring, but there are really more Republicans?

phdave wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

Where did you see that? I've been looking for a comprehensive list of retirees. This seemed like a pretty good list but it does not match what you saw, I think.

The lists match

6+6+6=18
4+1+7=12

jerseyhoya wrote:

phdave wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Just read (I'm sure JH already knew this) that 18 Republicans are retiring from the House of Representatives this year compared to 12 Democrats. Interesting. Of course, what really matters is how many of those retirees are leaving competitive seats behind.

Where did you see that? I've been looking for a comprehensive list of retirees. This seemed like a pretty good list but it does not match what you saw, I think.

The lists match

6+6+6=18
4+1+7=12

I see. I wasn't counting those running for other office.

However, if they are running for another office, does that necessarily mean they are retiring from their current office? Maybe Senators can do that but reps can't?

Retiring is a bad way of thinking of them. I think vacancy or open seat is a better way of putting it. The GOP has 18 open seats to defend, the Democrats have 14. There are going to be special elections in PA (Murtha) and HI (Abercrombie) in the next couple of months, which is the difference between the 12 retirements TV was talking about and 14 vacancies.

Cook has the Castle DE seat Lean Dem, Kirk's IL seat as a toss up, and five other open seats as Likely Republican. He doesn't have the Diaz-Balart seat up there yet, but I'd guess that will be Lean GOP. That leaves 10 as Solid GOP holds, and I figure most of the likely GOP races will drift toward solid, with a few possibly becoming genuinely competitve.

He has three of the Dem vacancies as Lean GOP, five (six counting PA-12) as toss ups, and the Hawaii seat as Lean Dem.

The GOP has a few more open seats to defend, but the Democrats are playing defense in much worse districts.