Why Real People Think Romney Lost

A lot has already been written about why Mitt Romney suffered such a resounding defeat in last week's election. Political insiders will attribute it most to President Obama's unprecedented ground game, rooted in breath-taking applications of large-scale data and analytics. We fall squarely in this camp, perhaps for selfish reasons, because data science is religion around here.

But to the average voter, the nuances of micro-targeting, GOTV, and quantitative analysis are meaningless. Most of us will trace Romney's loss to something more basic or, if you will, more "macro." A few days after the election, once it had a few days to sink in, we surveyed 10,182 people age 13* and older in the US asking which, among a simple list of reasons, was most to blame for Romney's defeat. Results were reweighted where necessary to represent the full US adult population by demographics and geography. (*- Yes, we included 13-18 year-old respondents, since most in this age cohort will be of voting age in 2016.)

Here's what they said:

Overall, the largest number of Americans (48%) blame the defeat on a misalignment between the current Republican message and the general views of the US populace.  The second largest group either can't decide, needs more time to figure it out, or simply doesn't care. The remaining respondents were split at 14%, equally blaming the quality of Romney as a candidate and the relative strength of the Republican's campaign strategy.

After looking at these topline numbers, we can run our cross-tabs against hundreds of different traits of the respondent group. A few obvious ones surfaced quickly. Look at the difference among respondents based on their party affiliation:

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Big Data and Polling: Our First-Ever Attempt at Large-Scale Political Forecasting

(Editor’s Note: If you want to skip right to our forecasts, they’re at the end. But we highly recommend that you read the preamble for background and context.)

We started CivicScience five years ago to develop new ways to measure public opinion at a time when traditional methods of polling were becoming more and more difficult to sustain. Landline phone ownership continues to decline and fewer people have the time or inclination to respond to lengthy surveys, which means there is little remaining randomness in who participates. Meanwhile, pervasive advertising, biased 24-hour news cycles, and group-think social media can cause public sentiment to shift sometimes daily. The longstanding model of calling people on the telephone is broken and not likely to get any better. 

We were far from the first people to see this coming. The advent of Robo-calling aimed to reduce the cost of polling so that more people could be called more often. Larger firms began augmenting their data with cell-phone respondents to put expensive duct tape on a romantic but fleeting obsession with random probability. Pioneers like Doug Rivers at YouGov introduced new models derived from captive “panelists,” recruited to answer online surveys in return for rewards. But the costs associated with panelist incentives, combined with biases among the people who have the time and inclination to join panels (Do you belong to one?), put a potential ceiling on this creative method.

Now, we are seeing a new frontier in opinion research, spearheaded by rock stars like Nate Silver and websites like RealClearPolitics.com. These innovators surmise that inherent flaws in traditional polling can be normalized by combining all the results published by reputable firms and producing an average of some sort. This is the first time we see the “Law of Big Data,” which suggests that more data can outperform clever algorithms, applied to opinion research. The problem with poll average models, however, is that we are merely aggregating disparate, small samples of non-representative responses, combined with precarious reweighting techniques. Just because these polls are all mashed together does not mean that Silver and others are solving this underlying problem: As phone-based polling becomes less reliable, so too will the resulting averages and dependent forecasts. 

The CivicScience approach, while in some ways radically different, is the next stage in an evolution that moved from Gallup to PPP to YouGov to Nate Silver. Like Gallup, we believe in the fundamental premises of science and we work to achieve as much engagement, randomness, and representativeness as we can muster. Like PPP, arguably the leading Robo-calling firm in the country, we believe in speed, near-constant measurement, and reducing fixed costs for research. Like YouGov and Doug Rivers, we believe that the web represents a better way to engage more people than by calling them on the telephone.  And, like Nate Silver, we believe that more data is better and that by applying advanced techniques in data mining, we can find signals and correlations that might otherwise be overlooked by the naked, politically-contaminated eye.

But we take everything a step further. By polling millions of people every week, meticulously organizing the data we collect, and automating the way those data are analyzed, we aspire to be the first true “Big Data” polling firm. Consider some of these numbers for context:

- In the past two years, we have collected over 191,000,000 poll responses from over 13,800,000             unique respondents, segmented by demographics, geography, and consumer behavior.

- Since January of 2012, we have collected over 16,300,000 responses to a total of 337 different               poll questions related to campaigns, politics, policy, and ideology, including: 

• 2,240,018 observations on voters’ reaction to specific negative campaign claims
• 619,539 observations on voters’ exposure to specific campaign ads
• 581,287 observations on President Obama’s approval rating
• 516,333 observations on who voters predicted would win the Presidential election in their state
• 311,765 observations voters’ intended choice in the Presidential election
• 287,611 observations on intended choice in the Republican Presidential Primary between February 8^th and April 30^th.
• 202,362 observations on who won the three Presidential and one VP debate, all collected within 24 hours of each debate.
• Over 100,000 observations each on sentiment toward policy issues like energy, consumer privacy, Voter ID regulations, charter schools, health care, government spending, public education, illegal immigration, and dozens more.
• Over 58,000 observations each, on media behaviors including how much people like Jon Stewart, Glenn Beck, Donald Trump, and what TV networks and newspapers they prefer
• Over 10,000 observations on key statewide races ranging from the US Senate elections in Missouri and Virginia to the Auditor General’s race in Pennsylvania.
• Yesterday, we asked 85,798 people how likely they were to vote today. As of 6pm today, we asked 49,24 people if they have voted yet. 

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Emergency Preparedness Needs to Improve Among US Residents

By eerie coincidence, about three weeks ago, we added a question to our daily tracking poll asking people about their overall preparedness for potential disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, or terrorist attacks. With the impending approach of Hurricane Sandy this week, the most recent results provide interesting, if disconcerting, insights into how ready various households might be.

The results indicate an alarmingly low level of emergency preparedness, particularly in the US Northeast and among lower-income households, where the storm is expected to hit the hardest.

In the past week, we surveyed 2,666 online US consumers, asking how prepared they consider themselves for a disaster or emergency. Responses were reweighted where necessary to reflect the full US adult population.

It appears that few US households have taken significant steps to prepare their homes for an emergency like Hurricane Sandy. Overall, only 8% of respondents considered themselves “Very Prepared” for a potential disaster like Hurricane Sandy. 32% said they are “Somewhat Prepared,” 30% said they are “A Little Prepared,” and 30% said they are “Not At All Prepared.”

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The Legacy of Lance Armstrong

A lot has been made of the recent report from the US Anti-Doping Agency and its damning conclusions about Lance Armstrong. In the days since that report was made public, the mainstream media and social media alike have become a battleground of debate about Armstrong. Some believe that Armstrong's indiscretions forever tarnished his legacy of chairty work. Others believe that his public works, particularly in the areas of cancer awareness and research, dwarf the fact that he broke the rules of his sport.

In the past 24 hours, we asked 1,627 Americans where they fall on the big Armstrong debate. The results were weighted where necessary to ensure that the respondent sample accurately represents the full US population over age 13. Here's how they came out:

When added up, a full 45% of Americans believe that Armstrong legacy of charity work should remain in tact despite his doping activity, while 31% believe his legacy is now overshadowed. While there are certainly a number of people in each camp, the largest group falls in the most pro-Armstrong category.

We took a close look at the cross-tabs too and, quite unusually, very little stood out. Among all demographic groups, the numbers were really consistent...except one.  Look at this:

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America Pumped Up for VP Debate

Note: This is a special guest post by Taylor Griffin from Hamilton Place Strategies. 

Vice Presidential Debates are usually side-skirmishes that don’t draw the same level of interest as the Presidential main events. But more people say they are “very likely” to watch tonight’s VP debate than said they were “very likely” to watch last week’s Presidential match-up. The growth in plans to watch provide a good indication that the last debate had an impact. 

According to a Civic Science poll conducted in the days leading up to both debates, 53% said they were “very likely” to tune in to tonight’s Biden-Ryan match-up -- 11% more than said they were very likely to watch the first round of Obama-Romney.

Republicans, buoyed no-doubt by Mitt Romney’s performance last week, showed the biggest increase in interest. Fully two-thirds of Republicans plan to watch tonight versus 42% before last week’s debate, an increase of 17%. Half of independents said they planned to watch tonight versus 42% last week. Democrats were about the same.