I’m a big critic of the reliance on impressionistic data often peddled by the media. In classic high school essay form generally it’s rather clear that there’s a hypothesis, and that the journalist just goes looking for individuals who will validate that hypothesis. This is why survey data is so important, though it also makes a lot of political journalism worthless.
But adding numbers into the mix doesn’t always improve the situation. Consider this piece in Poll: Romney leads 2012 field. In reality, the pollster himself doesn’t put too much stock in the results:
“It’s really impossible to say who the Republican nominee for President next time will be,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. “There are positive things each candidate can take from the current polling, but there are warning signs as well.”
A year closer to the 2008 election than we are to the 2012 election, we had headlines like this: Post-ABC Poll: Clinton, Giuliani Lead Primary Fields. I think most people assumed that Giuliani’s lead was soft, and did not reflect the fact that he was far outside of the mainstream of the party on social issues. These sorts of polls lend the illusion of precision, of quantitative heft to what we already know qualitatively. But this far out quantitative assessments are worthless mostly because of the volatility of the trends. In fact, I think that these sorts of results tend to be cause problems because numbers often lend more of an air of authority to conventional wisdom which is dependent on current conditions (and so tends to underestimate volatility and changes in the future).
In 2006, it never once occurred to me that Barack Obama would be the Democratic party candidate for president. That’s why speculation as to who will be the Republican candidate in 2012 is an intellectual conceit. An interesting and entertaining conceit, but nonetheless a conceit. Palin may be a talk show host in 2012; in fact, I read somewhere that she’s planning to do some kind of reality show about Alaska. Romney appears to be running as hard as he can, but why so early? There’s always a danger of peaking too soon. Whoever ends up being the candidate could, three years out, be just a teeny blip on the national radar screen. Or not on the screen at all.
i thought obama’s candidacy was a joke. people were talking about it in 2006, but it seemed laughable. last laugh was on me 🙂 i even laughed out loud in the office i was working in when i heard it first on NRP through the feed i always had running in the background when i was coding.
Having researched the matter a bit, I now find that Time magazine had an October 23, 2006 cover story on “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President. Clearly, I missed that the first time around. In January of 2006, Obama said he would not run, and would serve out his full term as senator. By January 2007–I think–he had filed papers.
I’m trying to remember, but in late 2007/early 2008, I thought it would be Mitt or Rudy versus Hillary. Certainly not Obama versus McCain.
I think Palin’s taking herself out of the running for 2012. The reality show she’s planning is titled “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” focusing apparently on the natural beauties of the state, and she’s asking 1.2 million per episode to host it, possibly for the Discovery Channel. (Good luck with getting the 1.2 mil, since most cable shows have a budget of about $49.95 per episode.) Of course I could be wrong, and this is her way of running.