We could probably rule by committee pretty well.

Um. Were you here for the first voting discussions?

"I've consulted with my Gang of Fourteen and we are in agreement: national F2F will be in Miami. Book early - rooms are going to be a bitch. Also: am not cowgirl. That is all."

I am actually picturing President Jesse speaking to Congress IN the cowgirl costume.

How quickly could President Jesse get Buffista academy up and running? This would be of national importance.

I am actually picturing President Jesse speaking to Congress IN the cowgirl costume.

Ditto

I am actually picturing President Jesse speaking to Congress IN the cowgirl costume.

It's because she's so real and folksy that the electorate connected with her. Who doesn't love a cowgirl?

I honestly don't think that Palin, when the votes are tallied, will have have garnered McCain any votes he didn't already have sewn up.

I agree in net terms. I do think there are, as my brother put it, agitated God-botherers who were sufficiently lukewarm on McCain to not vote for him, who will now vote for the ticket because he picked a cold-weather husky-whistle as his running mate; but as I understand it she's done at least as well in firing up lukewarm Democrats. And, frankly, the Dems were more lukewarm on Obama than the Repubs on McCain.

My natural tendency where it comes to the teams I support, both sports and politics, is pessimism. But gosh darn it, I'm daring to hope. Everything's pushing Obama's way. I expect McCain to decline slowly in the polls over the next month, and come election Day, I expect that the polls will have understated Obama's support. (Young people and minorities are harder to poll accurately).

I don't know that I would have done a better job than Bush, frankly, because I would have spent all my time avoiding work with you people!

Sir Humphrey Appleby calls it "Masterly inactivity".

Um. Were you here for the first voting discussions?

But we wouldn't have to work out voting rules for the U.S. Those are already in place. We'd just agree on how much they sucked, then cheerily go around subverting them.

President Jesse = ha ha ha!!

Um. Were you here for the first voting discussions?

Yeah, that was my initial reaction....

(Young people and minorities are harder to poll accurately).

I'm not that young, and many of my friends don't have landlines -- that's how they do polling, right?

I'm not that young, and many of my friends don't have landlines -- that's how they do polling, right?

Yep, and that's why the young and minorities are hard to poll. (We should add tech-savvy to the list.) Some pollsters try to compensate for it, but it's probably easy to understate these groups even if you're trying not to.

omg, I love PBS, but I have seen this dog documentary 5 or 6 times now!

This is in'eresting:

Ann Selzer on Youth & Minority Turnout

Selzer thinks that a lot of pollsters may be undercounting the youth vote, and potentially also the black vote. Young voters are becoming harder and harder to reach. They are in the habit of screening their phone calls. More problematically still, a great number of them (roughly 50 percent of voters under 30) rely principally or exclusively on cellphones, which most pollsters (including Selzer) will not call.

...

Moreover, many of the pollsters that do weight by age group may be doing so -- to her mind -- in the wrong way. Specifically, they tend to use the 2004 election as a benchmark, when 17 percent were aged 18-29. Selzer uses census bureau data as her benchmark instead; among American adults aged 18 and up, about 22 percent age 18-29. This might not seem like a large difference, but given Obama's strong performance among young voters, it makes a difference of about 1.5 points in the net Obama-McCain margin.

...

There is nothing particularly difficult about this algebra. But that may not be preventing some pollsters from getting it wrong. They may fix the youth voter figure at 17%, regardless of what their turnout model says (and ignoring the fact that youth voter turnout increased by 52% as a share of the Democratic primary electorate).