Who "Wins" Wednesday's Debate?

The pundits and the public will, of course, reach some kind of consensus over whether Obama or Romney wins tomorrow night's prez debate.  But why wait?  The latest Quinnipiac poll has folks predicting an Obama debate victory -- by about a 2-to-1 margin.

Here's the lede:

An 18 point lead among women puts President Barack Obama ahead of Gov. Mitt Romney 49 - 45 percent among likely voters nationwide, and voters expect 54 - 28 percent that the president will win the debates, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. 

That pretty much says it all.

Except, of course, it's probably wrong.

Usually the challenger "wins" the first presidential debate with an incumbent (think John Kerry against George W. Bush not so very long ago).  Why?  Because the incumbent is on the same stage, looks presidential, and assuming no goof comes off ahead merely by not seeming as kooky as some people thought.

That's Romney's mission.  Not to look kooky or scary, to seem, well, as Ronald Reagan did so well in 1980 -- to seem reasonable.

Can people predict the winner?  Are they right?

No.

In part, the expectation comes from people choosing their preferred candidate to win.  It's called wishful thinking.  There's a long body of social science research to back it up.  But that doesn't explain the 2-to-1 margin, much greater than Obama's poll advantage.  No, I think this is a function too of Romney's faltering campaign, of stumbling from gaffe to gaffe (47 percent), from a smooth Democratic convention compared to Clint Eastwood mumbling at an empty chair.

So I suspect the public has it wrong.  Romney will "win" Wednesday night -- for what little that's actually worth -- but unless Obama makes a huge blunder it won't really matter in the numbers.  Yes, they'll tighten a bit in Romney's favor, but the math for him, in a state-by-state comparison, needs to significantly improve for him to win the electoral count.

Who Wins in November?

It's a standard survey question:  who ya gonna vote for?

Less standard:  who ya think is gonna win?

A new WPost/ABC News poll has both questions.  The one getting attention is the tie, at 47 percent apiece, on who people say they're going to vote for in the presidential election.  In fact most people are settled on their candidate (4 percent of Obama supporters say there's a chance they'll change their mind, 8 percent of Romney supporters say so).  Obama's also ahead in the "enthusiasm" scores.

Less attention is going to the question asking people to predict the outcome.  Six-in-10 say Obama wins come November, and only a third predict a Romney victory.  In the scholarly biz, we talk about wishful thinking, which means we tend to predict our preferred candidate will win.  Yes, I've written about this topic on my own blog, in at least one newspaper column, and in my own academic research. 

It's fascinating that the two candidates are in a tie but there's a significant difference in predictions of who will actually win, leaning heavily toward Obama.  Lemme break this question down a bit more for you.

• Party ID:  87 percent of Dems predict an Obama victory, while only 60 percent of GOPers predict a Romney victory.  For you budding scholars out there, this supports the wishful thinking hypothesis.  It also demonstrates the softness of Romney's support among Republicans.  Oh, among "independents," 51 percent predict an Obama win and 38 percent predict a Romney victory.

• Ideology:  Looks like party identification above, with 52 percent of conservatives expecting Romney to win and 86 percent of liberals predicting an Obama victory.

• Education:  By a small amount, the greater the education, the more likely you are to predict an Obama victory (56 percent predicting Obama at the lowest level of education, 62 percent at the highest level).

• Region:  Respondents in the Northeast were the most likely to predict an Obama victory (68 percent), while in the South 54 percent predicted an Obama win.  It's interesting that even in solid GOP South, over half expect Obama to win.

• Income:  No real effect here, ranging from 58 to 62 percent predicting an Obama victory.  I find this fascinating in that it suggests the 1 percent and the 99 percent are about the same, at least in predicting an election outcome.

• Sex:  No real difference between men and women.

• Religion:  This gets a bit messy.  Among those with no religious convictions, 77 percent expect Obama to win.  White evangelical protestants are the least likely to say Obama wins (31 percent).  No real surprise if you read this in terms of the results above on party ID.

• Previous Voting:  Not surprisingly, 86 percent of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 expect him to do it again in 2012.  Among those who say they voted for McCain last time around, 66 percent expect Romney to win.

What's this tell us?   First, it says I need to find another way to spend my summer afternoon.  Second, it tells us that Romney's support is indeed soft, or softer than he'd like.  Third, it tells us that people really do expect outcomes based on preferences.  There's a danger here, or at least theoretically a danger, when you expect one kind of outcome and you get another.  That could possibly lead to less trust in democracy and voting, at least it's a plausible argument, but I've tinkered with this question and have never found this to actually be the case, even in the tortured 2000 U.S. prez election. 

Wishful Thinking in Presidential Elections

Instead of reading me here, read me instead in this column about wishful thinking in elections.

Paul is Dead

Yes, it's all over the news, but I can't help but also note the passing of the incredible Paul, the octopus that called seven World Cup games correctly, the ones involving Germany, and then correctly predicted Spain's victory over Netherlands.

Paul's remains will be cremated.

Biologists are uncertain as to whether cephalopods are particularly adept as futbol prognosticators or whether Paul tapped into some inner knowledge (this is a blog about knowledge, ya know, so I had to work that in).  As we know from our social science reading, people tend to engage in wishful thinking when it comes to predicting the winner of a sporting event -- that is, predicting their favored team will.  Paul, of Germany, picked against Germany ... and correctly so it turned out.  Take this as evidence that sea life is unaffected by wishful thinking.  I see a psychology article on the way.

And now we must search for another animal before the next World Cup.  Will we go with another octopus?  Maybe move up the evolutionary chain to a mammal (certain college students excepted)?  Or downshift to the insect world?

Good news is, we have until 2014.  Or maybe that's bad news, because I'm ready for some more World Cup action.

Wishful Thinking

I've been wrestling with a wishful thinking manuscript, and of course -- as always seem to be the case -- the data are getting in the way of a good theory.  Wishful thinking is when preference leads to expectation.  In other words, if I'm for Candidate X, I'm probably also likely to predict Candidate X will win the election.  How often does it happen?  See below. This graphic I created from the ANES cumulative data file and goes only to 2004, but I'll tell ya now the wishful thinking in 2008 was just as high. The predictive accuracy is just that, what percentage accurately predicted the election. As can be seen, in close elections the accuracy tends to be low, in runaway elections, it tends to be higher.

I may write up a version for Like the Dew or one of my other favorite places. The paper I'm working on takes a simple idea -- that those who expect to win, but don't, are likely to have lower scores in government trust or satisfaction with democracy. And, from the media angle, exposure to the news should moderate this effect.

But do the data show that? Not as well as I'd like, so I may push this idea aside.

Wishful Thinking

I've always liked scholarly work in the area of wishful thinking and I've published a few pieces myself on this very human tendency to project our own preferences on predictions of some outcome.  In other words, because we prefer a certain candidate, we're more likely to predict that candidate will win an election.

This study examines the 2008 election and young people, which is a neat twist.  Published in Psychological Science, the authors find results that are not very surprising if you've read deeply in the literature -- such as those with stronger partisan ties are more likely to engage in wishful thinking.  They do something here many studies do not, following people over time.  That's different and important.  They conclude:

Taken together, these findings make for the most compelling case to date that electoral expectations are indeed driven by political preferences. These expectations, in turn, influence reactions to the election, so that above and beyond the influence of political preferences, optimism about the losing candidate can also exacerbate disappointment.

The first part, that preferences drive expectations, is hardly new.  Study after study has documented this effect.  Indeed it's a lot more complicated than that.  Partisans are more likely to see their candidate as a winner even when presented polls that suggest otherwise.  So are those who feel strongly about an election.

It's that last line I find fascinating, the "exacerbate disappointment."  I spent a couple of months cranking data to test if those who expected to win an election -- but lost -- had lower feelings of trust in the democratic process than perhaps those who were also on the losing side but expected to be losers.   I didn't find much, but dammit it's a good idea, so maybe I'll revisit the issue some day.  The problem is, this gets all caught up in which political party is the winner and loser and what election you study.  The 2000 presidential election year, for example, is an obviously weird one, and 2004 only a little better, and a 2008-only focus means the losers are clearly GOPers who may be pissed a losing but, I suspect, don't score low on trust in the democratic process.  The only way to truly do this is to collapse many years together and examine the trust thing.


Finally, the study's major flaw is that it fails to cite my own wishful thinking study.  Reason enough this study should never have been published! (just kidding.  really.  okay, maybe not)

When a Good Idea Unravels

Another good theory -- shot down by the data.

I'm looking at how much people trust the government and are satisfied with democracy after an election. There's been a lot of work that shows, much of the time, losers are -- not surprisingly -- more unhappy with government and democracy after they become, well, losers. It occurred to me that when you expect to win, but lose, you'd be even less satisfied with democracy or the government.

Not so much.

Playing with data from the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections, I really found no significant effect. I was sure people who predicted their candidate would win but ended up on the losing side would be really pissed, for all kinds of solid theoretical reasons. But noooo, the data says I need to find something else to think and write about, at least for publication in a respected academic, peer-reviewed journal. So instead I write about it here, and a not-so-respected, no-peer-review blog

The winner-loser thing doesn't always work, either. In fact, winners in 2000 (Republicans) actually score lower on trust than the winners. This gets all mired in partisan and ideological feelings about big bad federal government that goes beyond mere winning and losing. A lot of the research fails to take this into account, by the way. A serious failing.

Anyway, I'm gonna set this one aside as one of those great ideas that didn't quite pan out, one I may revisit at some point if inspiration strikes.

But while I'm in prediction mode for elections, I am going to do some work in a favorite topics of mine, wishful thinking, which is basically the notion that we tend to see our own candidates (or sports team, or whatever) as the likely winner. This effect is robust and even exposure to polls that tell us our guy/gal is certain to lose does not moderate this preference-expectation link.

Basically, who we prefer is who we think will win, and all other information be damned. Gonna play with that and examine the effects media consumption might play, because dammit it ought to moderate the effect. But ... and here's an angle worth exploring, selective exposure/attention to bias-confirming information (conservatives watching Fox News, for example) may actually enhance wishful thinking. Here we have two competing hypotheses -- that means if I present 'em both, maybe I'll nab support for at least one of 'em.

Time to get the old SPSS rolling ...

If Obama Loses

Obama has been steadily ahead of McCain now for a while, with polls all pointing to him winning the White House. When asked who is going to win, about 60 percent predict Obama. Expectations, oh the power of expectations.

But what if McCain wins?

A UK article suggests police around the U.S. are planning for this. Friggin scary. Says one cop who will have his people on standby: "We always try to prepare for the worst."

Why am I going on about this? Because perception is everything. We know that those on the losing side of a close election tend to be a little more down on democracy and the fairness of the vote, but what if they really really really are sure their preferred candidate is going to win and all the polls have told them their candidate is going to win and all the pundits have said, yeah, your guy is going to win. And then your candidate doesn't win.

Oops. Bad karma. Hanging chads. Riots?

It's a recipe for electoral disaster should McCain pull it out. All the numbers say Obama will win, even if there is a Bradley Effect. It's hard to argue with the numbers. But if Ohio and Florida and a few other places screw up the voting -- and McCain wins -- there could be some ugliness.

Honestly we'd be better off if the race tightens now and people go into Election Day with it being neck-and-neck. That way, whoever wins, at least both sides would have a little less of an expectation effect. Otherwise it might indeed get ugly.

Who Will Win

Predictions of who is going to win a political campaign are fascinating stuff. Many people project their own preferences onto an outcome. In the literature that's called wishful thinking. The origins of wishful thinking research is out of studies of sport fans who think their team is going to win even when all the evidence suggests otherwise. Then the notion got moved over into politics. A few studies have been done. Here is some my own data.

Respondents were asked who is going to win. I then combined that with who they supported. Looking at presidential elections from 1968 to 2004, you see how much preference guides prediction.


Republicans: Out of 6,960 surveyed, 81 percent predicted their preferred candidate would win.
Democrats: Out of 6,664 surveyed, 64 percent predicted their preferred candidate would win.


The amount of wishful thinking from year to year is fairly stable, but predictive accuracy (getting it right) ranges wildly from election to election. This is important. When elections are close (like 2000), personal preference and wishful thinking gets in the way and people are less accurate in predicting the outcome.


When it's a runaway election, like 1972, then accuracy improves. You'd think media exposure would improve accuracy, if for no other reason than reading or watching the news would expose people to public opinion polls and the viewpoints of others, but it does damn little to dampen the preference -> prediction bias.

Addendum to Below

On my earlier post today I talked (at length, sorry) about perception of opinion and why it matters. In reporting Obama's lead over McCain, a new Fox poll tells us:

A 61 percent majority of voters believes Obama is going to win the election — more than three times as many as believe McCain will (18 percent). A month ago it was evenly divided: 41 percent Obama and 40 percent McCain (Sept. 8-9). This summer, voters were more likely to say Obama would win: 51 percent Obama and 27 percent McCain (July 22-23).

I wish I could remember where I once read that perception of who is going to win is a better predictor of an election outcome than merely seeing what a poll tells you on who people prefer. Let me say that another way. Asking who you are for ends with Obama getting 45 percent of the vote to McCain's 39 percent (according to this very poll). But asking who is going to win gets Obama with 61 percent.

I vaguely recall reading once, as a grad student perhaps, that asking who you think is going to win is a better predictor than just counting up those for or against the candidates. This question, neat as it is, suggests a sense of inevitability among even McCain supporters. That gets right at the power of perception.

Some other day I'll blog about a related matter -- wishful thinking. Again, this is about perception and I've done some work in the area, but basically we tend to wishfully think and see our own preferred candidate as likely to win. Fun stuff, as of course all mass comm research is -- if you're into the whole research thing.