"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."
Theodore Roosevelt
We live in a culture that is obsessed with sports.
When we watch teams or individuals competing, we constantly want to know which team or individual is leading, and whether the other(s) can come from behind and win.
In a competition in which points are scored and running tallies are kept, it's easy to tell who is in front and by how much. Within the framework of the competition, it's also easy to tell when a winner can be declared.
In a political campaign, much attention is paid to gaffes on the campaign trail and the mud that inevitably is "slung" by both sides.
But there is no accurate way of keeping score, of being able to tell which candidate is really leading — or how secure that lead really is.
I mention this because we are entering the phase of the presidential campaign in which poll results are coming at us quickly. And, because that is the case, it is appropriate for Kate Zernike to wonder, in the New York Times, if there is a "Charlie Brown and Lucy" phenomenon at work here, in which Lucy (the electorate) yanks away the football before Charlie Brown (Barack Obama and the Democrats) can kick the game-winning field goal.
The sports analogy aside, Zernike wonders if there is something to the "Bradley effect," of which I have written in this blog before.
"In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome," Zernike writes.
Coincidentally, recent polls show Obama leading John McCain nationally by — on average — about six percentage points.
So it's a dead heat, right?
Actually, there's no way that I know of to tell — until the voters go to the polls on Nov. 4. But that doesn't stop political operatives from treating polls like actual vote results — and allowing them to influence their actions:
- The Miami Herald reports a lot of finger-pointing by Florida Republicans based on poll numbers — even though a McCain fundraiser says it's happening "a little bit too soon."
- McCain trails in Iowa polls by more than 10 percentage points, but the Los Angeles Times says he believes he has a chance to win that state.
- A Newsweek national poll, conducted Oct. 8-9, showed Obama with a 52-41 lead, but a Fox News poll conducted on the same days showed Obama's lead at 47-39.
- An NBC national poll, conducted Oct. 4-5, reported that Obama was in front, 49-43. CBS News conducted a poll from Oct. 3-5 that showed a narrower 47-43 lead, and CNN's poll from the same period revealed a 53-45 advantage.
The only historical evidence we have that is relevant is in the form of previous election results. But those results really only reflect preferences by political party.
This is the first national election in which a black man is the nominee for president. And that makes the 2008 election a national lab experiment.
To use another sports analogy, Obama is trying to be the Jackie Robinson of American politics.
In 1947, no one knew if Robinson could break baseball's color barrier — until he had withstood the avalanche of racism that came his way every day of that season.
In 2008, we won't know until the votes are counted if Obama has broken the nation's political color barrier.
We know that barrier has been broken in some states — but being elected governor of Massachusetts or senator from Illinois is not the same thing as winning a national, 50-state election.
Would the nation have been spared this kind of discussion if Hillary Clinton had been the presidential nominee? I don't think so.
That certainly would have re-focused the discussion, but, as the first female presidential nominee, Clinton's general election candidacy would have provoked questions about misogyny, not racism.
We might have been spared the sports analogies, though.
There are so many variables when it comes to polling:
- Are the respondent's answers different if he/she shares the same race as the pollster?
- If Clinton had been nominated, would the responses have been affected by whether the pollster and the respondent shared the same gender?
- How are the questions phrased?
- Are the questions designed to promote specific responses (including those considered "politically correct")?
That information can be useful, but it's not entirely practical in the current political context. Clinton and Obama are almost mirror images of each other in terms of political philosophy so the polls from their campaign for the nomination were not designed to assess support based on specific issues.
Democratic voters knew both candidates wanted to take the country in basically the same direction. Other factors (including race and gender) played key roles in the decisions those voters made.
The general election campaign matches two candidates with different political philosophies. The electorate in the general election campaign is more diverse than the electorate to which Clinton and Obama appealed in the primaries.
I'm always glad when I hear that more people are getting registered to vote. That means that, legally, they have the opportunity to participate in making important decisions.
But in the end, to win on Nov. 4, it comes down to that old bugaboo, turnout. I'm not talking about voter registration. I'm talking about actual turnout — getting as many of those new voters to the polls as possible.
Remember the old saying about how you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, the same thing applies to voting. Making sure that people are registered to vote is only the first step in the process.
What many political activists seem to forget (or overlook) is that, while the election may be at the center of their universe, it isn't necessarily that way for new voters. Those new voters are not in the habit of voting, and many of them need reminders — or even transportation to the polls.
That's not a very glamorous task. It can be a painstaking, incremental job — sometimes having to pick up elderly or handicapped people, perhaps one at a time, and take them to the polls.
It's fine to hear political parties talk about meeting or exceeding their registration goals, but if the new voters don't go to the polls in November, what have the parties gained?
Four years ago, both parties aggressively sought to sign up new voters and, for the most part, they met or exceeded their goals in many places. But the Republicans were more efficient in their efforts to get new voters to the polls, resulting in George W. Bush's 3 million-vote national margin.
One of the best lines Aaron Sorkin ever wrote for "The West Wing" is worth remembering:
"Decisions are made by those who show up."
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