UGA Starts This Week. And That's Stupid.

UGA starts this week.

Yeah, that's stupid.

UGA classes begin August 11, the earliest of any school in the SEC. By far. Check it out below:

8/11: UGA (yes, way too early)
8/16: Auburn and Mississippi State
8/17: Alabama and Tennessee
8/18: South Carolina
8/22: Arkansas, Ole Miss, and Florida
8/24: Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, and Vanderbilt

Wow, so four schools start two weeks later than us. Our 8/11 start is the earliest I can find in the history of UGA, but I'm only going back to 2005. In one previous year we began on 8/12, but nothing as early as 8/11. And of course back in saner days of the quarter system we didn't begin until mid-September -- as it should be.

To make things worse, we start on 8/10 next year. Effing insane. And again on a Thursday. And again, stupid.

I wonder whether UGA is opening classes earlier than any other major university in the country. That would take forever to figure out and I'm not about to try, but my casual eyeballing of the data says this is the case. But for fun let's look at a few of UGA's "aspirational" institutions, schools we'd like to be like. When do they start? Well, UNC and Virginia are on the list and they begin classes on 8/23. Penn State and University of Texas are aspirationals too, and they open 8/22.

Saving myself the time, let's just argue that UGA is opening earlier than any other major university and ask ourselves, WTF?

A Libertarian in the Presidential Debates?

Can Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, get a seat in the presidential debates? I think probably not, but let's dig into the details.

The debate commission criteria present three challenges. First, you must be qualified to serve as president. That's an easy one. Second, you must be on enough state ballots to mathematically have a shot at the 270 electoral votes needed to be elected president. That one's covered.

The third one, though, is tougher. Here's the language with my boldface:

The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five national public opinion polling organizations selected by CPD, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly-reported results at the time of the determination. CPD will rely on the advice of a recognized expert or experts in public opinion polling in determining the polls it will rely upon. The polls to be relied upon will be selected based on the quality of the methodology employed, the reputation of the polling organizations and the frequency of the polling conducted. CPD will identify the selected polling organizations well in advance of the time the criteria are applied.

The polls will likely be "gold standard" surveys, meaning they use live callers (not robo-polls) of both landlines and cell phones (probably not online panels, though there's a good one out there). The major news organizations spend the money for such quality polls. Pew also produces these quality polls, as do a few other shops. Looking at the most likely polls, Johnson ranges today between 8 and 12 percent -- and he's dipped a bit in the most recent polls, but we're talking a point here or there, a statistical blip. Can change in a heartbeat, or a Trump miscue.

The commission does not make a decision on who gets a chair on the stage until after Labor Day, though of course in plenty of time before the first debate, which is Sept. 26.

Remember, third party candidates poll better than they actually perform in the election. Gary Johnson also ran in 2012. One poll had him at 6 percent support, another at 7 percent. He captured 0.99 percent of the popular vote. In other words, a hair under 1 percent, while polling at 7 percent.

My money is Johnson doesn't make the stage and instead will find a ready seat on any number of late-night television shows to make his case.

Weighting the Survey Data

There's a new Georgia poll out that shows Hillary Clinton 4 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, just within the margin of error but signaling that the state is, indeed, in play.

Election surveys are a mix of art and science. The art can be question wording and the special sauce that goes into deciding who is a likely voter. The science is how to weight the data to reflect the population you're trying to describe. Simply put, survey responses are usually off to some degree -- too many women, too few young people, not enough African-Americans, etc. In Georgia surveyors can look at the demographics of previous elections and "weight" their results to reflect the population and those who vote.

Here are the crosstabs of a new AJC poll. Most folks don't bother with this stuff, but you'll find interesting tidbits. See the two rows called Unweighted Base and Total Respondents? Unweighted Base reflects the raw numbers, in this case 847. The Total Respondents reflects (I'm guessing) the weighted numbers of 767. It's possible the total reflects "likely" versus "unlikely" voters but I can find no evidence of that, so I'm gonna assume I'm reading this correctly until told otherwise.

Check this out:

• Unweighted number of young respondents (ages 18-39): 165, or 19.5 percent of total unweighted respondents.

• Weighted number of young respondents: 248, or 32.3 percent of total.

How did they invent 83 respondents? They didn't. Again, if I'm reading these xtabs correctly, they've weighted the data to reflect how many young people failed to respond to the poll but actually participate in elections. (We can argue about 18-39 being "young" on another day). That means each "young" person's opinion gets a little heavier in the final calculation. When that happens, someone loses, probably older respondents. In this survey, those 65 and older made up 29.9 percent of the unweighted base, but only 19.6 percent of the "Total Respondents." We see the same for blacks, though not as dramatic, with 26.2 percent of raw respondents in the survey but 30.8 percent in the "total respondents" category, meaning they got weighted slightly higher and whites slightly lower.

What's this all mean? In Georgia, not much, as we have good socio-demographics collected at the voting booth, giving us a solid comparison of previous voters. Some states do this, some don't. Often we have to guess as to "likely voters," which is the special sauce I mentioned above. Different polling shops have slightly different methods, and sometimes their methods are so off that they end up badly projecting an election.

By the way, the weighting didn't seriously affect party identification. For example, 29.0 percent were Democrats in the raw data, 28.8 in the weighted data.

Also I can't see in the AJC story how the survey was conducted. Landlines? Cells? Smoke signal? Live callers, or robo calls? Given the firm they use, real pros, I'm assuming a quality survey.

Who is John Roberts?

There's a set of survey questions the ANES asks every four years. Respondents are provided the name and asked what office that person holds, in a multiple choice format. The office holders are vice president, prime minister of the U.K., speaker of the House, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The names, obviously, change depending on who holds that job, and these items are often used to construct a political knowledge index. Sometimes they stand alone, sometimes they're combined with other questions, such as which party controls the House or Senate.

For fun, let's take the chief justice question. That's John Roberts, in the 2012 survey. Respondents were provided his name and asked to answer what "job or political office" he now holds. If they didn't know, they were probed with "Well, what's your best guess?"

Some of my favorite answers are below. Note: spelling is from them as they could type in their answers in the national survey. I've added a few comments in parentheses.

• Don't know where did you come up with these people (by the way, this respondent didn't know any of the office holders)
•  Fox News Correspondent (there is a guy by this name on Fox)
•  Hair stylist (love this answer)
• I haven't a clue, I've been more preocupied with looking for a job than the election.
•  I have no idea.//Is he the Supreme Court Chief Justice?//The only judge I know is Judge Turnbull.
•  Member of Obamas team (some Republicans agree with this after the Obamacare ruling)
•  Oh I don't know.//Chairman of the Republican Comittee, if he's a black guy, if I remember, the name and face.
• i think he is part of the school dept. 
• I dk I dk whose whom sometines I don't care makes me feel seilly n n=knowing but dont care
•  Who the hell is that chic....? (I have no explanation for this)

This question is somewhat controversial, or as controversial as questions get among survey academics. Seems that for years the answers were coded as incorrect even when actually correct. If I answer "supreme court justice" that's technically correct even though he's Chief Justice. If I say "judge on the supreme court" that's correct too, but was getting marked as incorrect. But someone this survey answered "Republican judge." How do I code that? Correct? Kinda sorta correct? I've not yet taken a stab at this coding.

Is Georgia In Play?

Two polls out suggest Georgia is "in play" in terms of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. One poll is by Landmark/Rosetta, which gets only a "B" in 538's pollster grading scheme, but SurveyUSA gets an "A" in the same scale. The "why" of these grades has to do with reliance on robo-calls, on landlines (bad, and HuffPo just announced it is no longer using such polls in its aggregate measure of opinion), accuracy in previous polls, and being forthcoming in poll methodology. The Landmark poll has it dead even between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (45-45), but the SurveyUSA poll has it Trump 46, Clinton 42, just within the 4 percentage point margin of error. I'd lean toward the latter poll and a nod toward Trump given Georgia's previous election tendencies and fundamentals.

So, is Georgia "in play?" Not in the same way Florida or Ohio or Pennsylvania are "in play," despite these polls. They will require Trump to spend a few more bucks here than Romney did in 2012 (Romney aired all of four ads, best I can tell, and Obama zero). Then again, as tightfisted as Trump has been, he'll probably visit Atlanta more than Romney did in 2012. In other words, Georgia is just close enough that Trump will need to play a little defense to keep Georgia red.

Other interesting stuff from the polls.

Landmark has it 2/3 of independents do not believe Trump has the temperament to be president. Those independent voters matter, and that's a damaging number (crosstabs here).  We see similar stuff in the SurveyUSA details (available here). Clinton has only double of Trump's Hispanic vote. I thought it'd be more, though keep in mind the numbers surveyed are relatively small, so these numbers are iffy.

Other (specify)

Often in surveys we ask such questions as my favorite -- what religion is Barack Obama? In the 2012 ANES survey of 5,914 U.S. adults, responses offered to candidates were generic: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, and Not Religious. Respondents could volunteer Christian or Baptist or some other denomination, but some took a different journey. Today I was digging into that question a bit deeper, into the raw text responses of people who took the Other (specify) option, some 306 of them.

In other words, they can come up with their own answers.

Here we find such gems as Obama is "a hybrid of Protestant with Muslim teachings from childhood" and another said he's "Muslim trying to be Christian." Another listed Obama's religion as "Marxist" and another as "Mason" still another as "Freemason." You get the idea. Two respondents see something even more dark, with one saying Obama's religion is "Satan" (dunno how that works) and another more specific, as "Satanist."

Another said it "depends on who he's [Obama] talking to."

Heh heh.

And finally, "Who knows for sure what he is?" Which, when you get right down to it, is an honest response. All we really know is what religion someone says he or she is.

Overall, the most popular response among the categories listed in the first paragraph was, of course, Protestant, followed by Muslim (1 out of every 5 responses). Most of the Other (specify) options were various versions of Christian in some form or another.

Students and UGA

Buried in a lengthy survey about the climate at UGA are some questions student media, particularly The Red & Black, could mine for stories. Take page 228 of the report, for instance. The subhead is:

Students Who Have Seriously Considered Leaving UGA

There's rich stuff. Allow me to hit a few high points (or low points, if you prefer):

• A quarter of all students (undergrad and grad) have considered leaving UGA, most of them in their first year as a student here.
• Thirty-eight percent of African American undergrads considered leaving.
• Forty-seven percent of tho undergrads with multiple disabilities considered leaving.

A few caveats. This was not a random survey, but rather a self-selected survey. See my methodological criticism of it here.

What are the top reasons students considered leaving? Here ya go:

1. I didn't belong
2. Campus climate was not welcoming
3. Personal reasons (medical, mental, etc.)
4. Financial reasons
5. I didn't have a support group

There's a treasure trove of data here, starting points for stories about student life at UGA. The numbers alone are not a story. You need to find folks who illustrate the issues brought forth in the data. And you must include caveats about the survey itself. Indeed, the survey probably deserves a longish R&B piece, or a multi-part story with graphics and sidebars.