With a record 17 prominent Republican candidates vying for the nomination (so far), no system for determining admission to the debate stage will please everyone. But the GOP can certainly do better than the statistically unsound procedures announced by Fox News and CNN.
To qualify for Fox’s August debate and CNN’s September one, recent national polls must rank a Republican candidate in the top 10. Those who fail to make the cut will attend separate debates guaranteed to have a fraction of the viewership and a fraction of the potential payoff.
As polling experts of all ideological stripes have pointed out, the margin of error in surveys is so large that it is statistically impossible to determine who should fill the last two or three spots in the top 10. Effectively, all the polling bottom-dwellers, those who have one percent to four percent, are tied, and a good chunk of the field is now in this category. Just this week, the Ted Cruz campaign, whose candidate is ranked eighth according to the Real Clear Politics average but is in a decent position to make the first debate, questioned Fox News’ debate standards and suggested it select candidates only through polls that interviewed more than 1,000 primary voters and were conducted via telephone.
Cruz has a point: Both the candidates and the voters are not well served by the current jerrybuilt system for debate inclusion. It is going to force some candidates into a frenzy of costly, premature activities, from splashy media events to paid advertisements to controversial pronouncements.
For example, a Super PAC supporting Rick Perry is launching a national ad buy, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as a way to boost Perry’s poll numbers and help get him on the debate stage. These stunts are designed to one-up opponents and add a couple of artificial, temporary percentage points in the polls. Our presidential selection process is insane enough without adding another crazy layer.
Did we finally get rid of the meaningless Iowa straw poll only to substitute wild early debate maneuvering?
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment