It’s the End of the World as We Know It
Or is it? We’re not even out of January–haven’t even made it to Super Tuesday–and already the Mayer model has failed to predict one of the two nominees for president. The model predicted victories for Giuliani and Clinton. But, apparently, Giuliani will drop out of the race later today.
So what’s going on? It’s too early to tell. But here are a few possibilities:
1. Nothing has changed. The model will remain statistically significant even if it fails completely this year. (Note: Giuliani’s “lead” in the last Gallup poll was really no lead at all–well inside the margin of error.)
2. Everything has changed. Political campaigns now work exactly as portrayed by the press master narrative. [UPDATE: Actually, there could be several interesting things happening that fall under #2. Check out the comments for two possibilities.]
3. Something else has changed. For example, why are pollsters having such problems predicting outcomes? Could it be there’s something wrong with their system? I suspect it’s getting difficult to obtain accurate results in the era of cell phones, caller ID, and no-call lists.
I’m thinking we’re looking at a combination of 1 and 3. But wait and see. It could be 2. It could be something else.
Well, now, I think #2 is a bit unfair, isn’t it? How about #2: Campaigns have changed enough toward the master narrative that the Mayer Model is no longer reliable.
I wonder if one of the issues is timing; we talk about how the primaries are earlier, and are more compressed. The last national Gallup poll before the Iowa caucus may not be the right one, these days.
Still, if what we learned from the Mayer Model is that people do not, generally, change their preferred candidate because of Momentum (the results of the early primaries), I think there’s little reason this time to think that they do. Mayor Giuliani’s candidacy was dying well before the Iowa caucus. Senator Clinton’s candidacy still seems to be stable, not certain of course, but her supporters don’t seem to be deserting her, either.
And it isn’t entirely relevant, but David S. Bernstein (of the Boston Phoenix) has been consistently predicting that Senator McCain would win the nomination, and dismissing the ups and downs of polls and whatnot as imaginary narrative. The way that he put it to me is that (and I’m paraphrasing slightly) the Republicans pick Bob Dole, not Jack Kemp. If there’s a candidate running who was the second-place candidate last time, that’s who they will nominate. I think there’s more to the Bernstein Model than that, but as a prediction, he certainly seems to have been doing well. He also predicted the week before the 1996 Iowa Caucuses that John Kerry would be the nominee; I don’t know what his method was for that.
Thanks,
-V.
V- I can honestly say I have no idea what the results so far mean
But, yes, it certainly could be that the narrative has moved politics to a degree (and/or the public). I think I’ll update this entry to reflect your idea, which, correctly I think, challenges my sweeping generalization in #2.