Marc Ambinder has a good write-up of the final numbers on voter turnout for 2008.  Delays in counting and certification of all ballots meant that the total number could only be determined now.  What he found was very interesting.  Read more...

I'm seeing a big potential problem in the polls right now.  We're talking potentially catastrophic.

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While I was off watching the Obama Infomercial Pregame, Avi Zenilman snuck into JMart's Politico blog and tagged a Washington Post article about pollster accuracy and the McCain campaign's contention that this election is still a close race.

Take that however you will, but the WaPo article itself is a nice discussion of some of the problems I've been discussing recently (regarding voter turnout modeling) and how the polling community is trying to respond to an historic election.  It's worth checking out.

Accuracy of Polls a Question in Itself by Michael Abramowitz

In the interest of fairness, I have to give an unqualified thumbs up to Florida's Republican governor, Charlie Crist.  Facing massive turnout that could cause issues on election day, he chose to extend early voting.  It's rare for somebody to unambiguously do the right thing for the right reasons, and Crist deserves praise for it.

In a rare occurence, Nate Silver writes something today that is, at a minimum, imprecise.  Explaining why he's optimistic about an Obama victory, he says that "McCain is pushing back against the fact that Obama is banking votes every day with a substantial national lead."  This is not the only time I've seen this argument, so I don't mean to pick on the 538 crew.  But in my view, this really oversimplifies the difference between early and regular voters. 

Ben Smith on Politico has a new story today about research coming out of the University of Washington that suggests we may see a "Reverse Bradley Effect" this election cycle.

The Bradley Effect describes a situation where polls overrepresent the support a black candidate receives in the actual election.  It's named for Tom Bradley, a black Los Angeles mayor and 1982 California gubernatorial candidate.  Both pre-election polling and exit polling on election day showed Bradley to be the favorite to win the election, and some media outlets predicted a Bradley win.  Instead, once the votes were tallied, his white opponent George Deukmejian carried the race.

Instead, Anthony Greenwald and Bethany Anderson suggest that we may see a reverse effect this year, citing results from the Democratic primaries which suggested Bradley Effects in only three states (New Hampshire, California, and Rhode Island), but reverse effects where Obama exceeded polling predictions in 12 other states.  Greenwald and Anderson set as their threshold for identifying Bradley or Reverse-Bradley Effects a difference of more than 7% between predicted performance and actual performance.

Now, it's time for some intellectual honesty.

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All kidding aside, this is a good review in the American Prospect and the book itself does seem interesting.  Definitely worth checking out.