Your morning jolt: Nathan Deal steps up on transportation sales tax
On Monday, Gov. Nathan Deal chose Savannah as a venue for one of his strongest endorsements yet of a penny sales tax to boost transportation spending. From Larry Peterson and the Savannah Morning News:
Deal acknowledged that people don’t like higher taxes.
“The question,” he added, “is what is the alternative to keep your area growing and progressive?”
…He said funds from the measure would help move goods more efficiently in and out of the port of Savannah.
Deal said the increase, which would boost sales taxes in Chatham County to 8 percent, is needed because other revenues haven’t kept pace with growth.
***
On a similar note, Lori Geary of Channel 2 Action News draws a line between July 31 transportation vote and the burgeoning race between Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock and Republican challenger Brandon Beach:
***
Then we have the case of Cobb County Commission Chairman Tim Lee, who took time from his re-election campaign last week to refer to critics of light rail as “spoiled brats.” From Geoff Folsom and the Marietta Daily Journal:
In a Monday email to the Journal, Lee attempted to retract his remarks.
“Let me apologize for calling anyone a spoiled brat,” he wrote. “Sometimes my passion for an issue gets ahead of me and I certainly wish I had chosen a better description.”
***
The AJC’s Politifact Georgia today takes a look at an anti-transportation tax group’s contention that light rail in Cobb County would double the commute time for automobiles on I-75.
***
The campaigns of Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have moved on to a discussion of Bain Capital, but last week’s gay marriage discussion continues. From New York Times, on a new poll:
Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought that Mr. Obama had made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, with nearly half of Democrats agreeing.
The results reinforce the concerns of White House aides and Democratic strategists who worried that the sequence of events leading up to the announcement last week made it look calculated rather than principled.
***
In a Monday report, Paul Crowley of 11Alive allows GOP strategist Ralph Reed to theorize on the problem that President Barack Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage has posed for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.
***
For the last two years, Jessica Colotl, the former Kennesaw State University student, has been the Georgia face of young people caught in the illegal immigration trap – brought here by their undocumented parents.
We may about to get a new contender for public sympathy: A Thursday rally will be held at Pebblebrook High School for Jesus Cruz, a recent graduate of that Cobb County high school who has been in deportation proceedings since last August. Cruz has been in the country since he was 11, brought here by his mother.
***
Jimmy Carter will be off to Egypt next week to watch the voting. From the Associated Press:
The Atlanta-based Carter Center has been accredited by Egyptian authorities to send international election witnesses for that country’s presidential election.
The Carter Center says it received approval from Egypt’s Supreme Presidential Election Commission to deploy 22 witnesses from 14 countries. The presidential election is set for May 23 and 24.
They will be joined by a larger delegation of 80 witnesses from over 35 nations who will travel to Egypt several days before the election, led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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121 comments Add your comment
td
May 15th, 2012
3:05 pm
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:03 pm
“because there are more Democrats! Duh.”
Never heard that one before so you are going to have to prove it with a source please.
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:06 pm
“What in the h3ll do you call the fact that the poll stated that of all the people polled 34% were Democrats and 30% were Republicans?”
Do you really believe there are the same amount of Democrats as there are Republicans td???? Every major poll out there disagrees with you. Gallup, Pew, Wall St, ABC, CBS, IPSOS. Its not a liberal conspiracy.
td
May 15th, 2012
3:10 pm
Partisan Trends: Republicans 35.1%, Democrats 33.1%, Unaffiliateds 31.8%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/partisan_trends
PRINCETON, NJ — In 2010, 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, down five percentage points from just two years ago and tied for the lowest annual average Gallup has measured in the last 22 years. While Democrats still outnumber Republicans by two points, the percentage identifying as independents increased to 38%, on the high end of what Gallup has measured in the last two decades.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145463/democratic-party-drops-2010-tying-year-low.aspx
This one proves your point but is within the margin of error.
Aquagirl
May 15th, 2012
3:12 pm
Did you take basic statistics 101 in college?
This question just drips irony. td, do you realize statisticians ADJUST the percentages if there are more respondents in one group than another?
Basically this means if a poll has 100 respondents, 65 Democratic responses and 35 Republicans, a “yes” or “no” by a Republican carries more weight. Their yes or no does not equal 1% of the results, it equals more than 1%. An individual Democratic response would mean less than 1%.
I understand your frustration and I’m trying to say this as gently as I can…but don’t you think people who do numbers all day long have noticed that not accounting for more Republicans or Democrats would give skewed results?
Have you considered this situation has happened before and maybe they deal with it so the percentages are NOT skewed if the sample is skewed? You almost never get a non-skewed population in real life.
td
May 15th, 2012
3:16 pm
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:06 pm
The above two are the only polling agencies that I have found that polls total number of Dems V Repub in the country. One says the Repubs have 2 point lead and the other says Dems has a two point lead. That tells me they are the same.
Now go and look up people in the country that consider themselves conservative V liberal.
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:18 pm
td your Gallup link is nearly a year and a half old!!!
Try this one: http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
And this one which shows the history of all the polls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/30/party-id_n_725948.html
td
May 15th, 2012
3:19 pm
Aquagirl
May 15th, 2012
3:12 pm
I understand the weighting of data to take out statistical anomalies but do you not think that would be stated in the methodology if they actually weighted the data as such?
td
May 15th, 2012
3:25 pm
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:18 pm
From reading the data in Gallop it appears that they are listing their polling data on asking the respondents their party affiliation and is not polling specifically to check party affiliation. I could be wrong but I do not think so. The Ramussen poll I cited appears to be an actual poll nationwide to determine party affiliation.
Sorry but I do not believe anything written in the Huffington post.
Aquagirl
May 15th, 2012
3:34 pm
do you not think that would be stated in the methodology if they actually weighted the data as such?
It’s always something that you do in statistics when converting raw numbers of respondents to percentages. The press release does have weighted and unweighted numbers so obviously somebody thought of it along the way. But I don’t know of anywhere to find the full step-by step calculated methodology of the poll online. I don’t know if anyone besides other statisticians would care. God, talk about glazed eyeballs….
Question Man
May 15th, 2012
3:36 pm
Why did Georgia end up with tax-and-spend Republicans?. Don’t we now have the worst of all worlds?
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:37 pm
“Sorry but I do not believe anything written in the Huffington post.”
All they did there is list the results of individual pollsters td, can’t find much bias in that. All you have to do is click the name of each poll listed and it brings you right to the source of the poll. That is a cop out. The Gallup poll is indeed accurate, another cop out.
Rasmussen is the only pollster to have Republicans ahead. Now a little research will also show they have been one of the most inaccurate. If you want to go with Rasmussen so be it, despite the overwhelming evidence.
td
May 15th, 2012
3:42 pm
Aquagirl
May 15th, 2012
3:34 pm
Below is the methodology Gallop uses and it has no statistical variances formulas to weed out anomalies.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105226/world-poll-methodology.aspx
td
May 15th, 2012
3:47 pm
DannyX
“Overwhelming evidence”? It appears that Rasmussen and Newsweek where the only two to get the 2008 Presidential election exactly correct.
Poll Accuracy in the 2008 Presidential Election
—Initial Report, November 5, 2008—
Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science
Fordham University
For inquiries: cpanagopoulo@fordham.edu or (917) 405-9069
For all the derision directed toward pre-election polling, the final poll estimates were not
far off from the actual nationwide voteshares for the two candidates. On average, preelection
polls from 23 public polling organizations projected a Democratic advantage of
7.52 percentage points on Election Day, which is only about 1.37 percentage points away
from the current estimate of a 6.15-point Obama margin in the national popular vote.
Following the procedures proposed by Martin, Traugott and Kennedy (see Public Opinion
Quarterly, Fall 2006, pp. 342-369) to assess poll accuracy, I analyze poll estimates from
these 23 polling organizations. Four of these polls appear to have overestimated McCain
support (indicated with a * below), while most polls (17) overestimated Obama strength.
Pre-election projections for two organizations’ final polls—Rasmussen and Pew—were
perfectly in agreement with the actual election result (**).
The following list ranks the 23 organizations by the accuracy of their final, national preelection
polls (as reported on pollster.com).
1. Rasmussen (11/1-3)**
1. Pew (10/29-11/1)**
2. YouGov/Polimetrix (10/18-11/1)
3. Harris Interactive (10/20-27)
4. GWU (Lake/Tarrance) (11/2-3)*
5. Diageo/Hotline (10/31-11/2)*
5. ARG (10/25-27)*
6. CNN (10/30-11/1)
6. Ipsos/McClatchy (10/30-11/1)
7. DailyKos.com (D)/Research 2000 (11/1-3)
8. AP/Yahoo/KN (10/17-27)
9. Democracy Corps (D) (10/30-11/2)
10. FOX (11/1-2)
11. Economist/YouGov (10/25-27)
12. IBD/TIPP (11/1-3)
13. NBC/WSJ (11/1-2)
14. ABC/Post (10/30-11/2)
15. Marist College (11/3)
16. CBS (10/31-11/2)
17. Gallup (10/31-11/2)
18. Reuters/ C-SPAN/ Zogby (10/31-11/3)
19. CBS/Times (10/25-29)
20. Newsweek (10/22-23)
http://www.fordham.edu/images/academics/graduate_schools/gsas/elections_and_campaign_/poll%20accuracy%20in%20the%202008%20presidential%20election.pdf
td
May 15th, 2012
3:48 pm
td
May 15th, 2012
3:47 pm
Should be Pew and not Newsweek (they were the worst).
td
May 15th, 2012
3:52 pm
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
3:37 pm
Another site that rated the polls
http://electoralmap.net/2012/2008_election.php
Aaron Burr V Mexico
May 15th, 2012
3:55 pm
(munches popcorn)
Rules violations galore. Watching. Counting.
Aaron Burr V Mexico
May 15th, 2012
4:00 pm
http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/costas_panagopoulos.html
For those of you who want to know who Mr. Panagopoulos is, he’s a political consultant for Politico.
He is also a member of a trade group of national political consultants.
On the other hand, Michelle Malkin hates him so your mileage may vary.
Nate Silver at 538 has a different opinion.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/
DannyX
May 15th, 2012
4:04 pm
2010 mid terms, Rasmussen missed badly. They were obviously overestimating the number of Republicans, just like they are doing now. They are currently out of sync with every single polling organization concerning political affiliation.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/
Rasmussen was the only thing Republicans had going for them in 2008! Rasmussen would release a poll that had McCain in front and Republicans would go crazy! All of the other polls contradicted Rasmussen, Rasmussen came around at the very end.
Aquagirl
May 15th, 2012
4:06 pm
td, that’s the methodology of how Gallup conducts a poll.They list it because there are variances between polling organizations–like calling cellphones or not, how many attempts, etc. They don’t go into statistical methodology because that doesn’t vary. How you calculate 100% based on 2971 responses doesn’t vary. Or at least it shouldn’t. If it does, that’s not called methodology, it’s called sucking at how you do math.
It’s been a while since I took statistics but I believe the breakdown of a non-stratified sample is called “statistical benchmarking.” You do that when you can’t deliberately get 50 men and 50 women, and you don’t want the results artificially skewed because 75 women picked up the phone.
There’s lots of squiggly figures involved that would make normal humans tear their hair out, but if you want to see what it looks like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_benchmarking
honested
May 15th, 2012
4:36 pm
This has been fun (although a bit slow) to read.
Yet I though everyone knew about the raz-munchken rule – Subtract 5 from the repug. Add 5 to the Democrat, then be just below margin of error (usually at the limit) still for the republican.
Their polls are never right because of their lazy (inexpensive robocall) methodology.
But if you want to prove the inaccurate, they are definitely your guys.
Edward Ruffin
May 16th, 2012
7:15 am
Agree with John Galt, Deal is an establishment Republican who will raise taxes while talking about less taxes. The recent “tax reform” proves it. It shifts a whole bunch of taxes around but I have a hard time seeing where anyone’s taxes were cut.