AAPC New York Regional Conference Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 Time: 8:00am - 8:00pm Location: Fordham University School of Law Street: 140 West 62nd Street City: New York, NY Description Cost is only $175 for AAPC members and $225 for non-members Register now http://www.theaapc.org/events/regional/2010/newyork/agenda/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8:30 am-9:30 am Registration and Breakfast 9:30am- 10:45am Panel 1 The New York Strategic Outlook: Battleground 2010 What happens in New York this election cycle will affect the State for the next decade. Hear from a bipartisan panel of pollsters who are monitoring trends that will shape voters' decisions.

Senator Obama in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll has led Hillary 10 followed by 11-points over the last two days, while Clinton has had a second day at 40%, a three week low. Obama who had dipped to 49% on Saturday has steadily increased his lead to 51% as of today’s posted numbers. Obama has had a convincing 9-point average lead over Hillary for each day over the last three weeks.

Clinton holds a 6-point lead unchanged from its April 8 results according to a Quinnipiac University poll, which shows a 50 - 44 percent lead among likely 2,103 likely Democratic primary voters for Hillary. The results in this latest survey of primary voters released today by the independent Quinnipiac University also shows: White voters for Clinton 57 - 37 percent, compared to 56 - 38 percent last week; Black voters back Obama 86 - 8 percent, compared to 75 - 17 percent; Women back Clinton 54 - 40 percent, unchanged from 54 - 41 percent last week; Men are for Obama 51 - 43 percent, compared to a 48 - 44 percent tie last week;

Today's Gallup Tracking Poll gives Obama an 8-point lead over Hillary, 51% to 43%, which is a long sustained 4.94-point average lead for Obama over the last 17 days.

A score of candidates are campaigning on Second Life. After all, the avatars are not cartoons; they are the front for actual people. Candidates have held campaign rallies and press conferences mirroring ones that they have held in real life (it is sought of odd to be making that distinction). Ron Paul’s supporters even held a march. Why go on Second Life? To paraphrase Willie Sutton—it’s where the voters are, especially younger voters. Now this from techPresident: “Yesterday Rep. Ed Markey presided over a subcommittee hearing on virtual worlds, so it only made sense to give the hearing a presence in a—you guessed it—virtual world. Congressional Quarterly's Leah Nylen, the latest political journalist to attempt to explain Second Life to the masses, reports that, despite appearances in the world from Nancy Pelosi, George Miller, and Jerrold Nadler, Markey "appears to be the only lawmaker who has a continued presence in Second Life." No worries; I'm sure Newt Gingrich will give another talk there soon.”

For Obama, with his new technology social networking field, fundraising and communications ops, continuing the primary process only serves to broaden his network of support, making him stronger. In February, Obama had about three-quarters of a million donations raising $55 million. By the third week in March, he already passed one million donations and is expected to have an even stronger month in fundraising despite a relentless attack. More over, largely due to his social network web site, there have been nearly four million complete views on the web of his Philadelphia speech on race. Far surpassing the cable views becoming one of the most effective damage control communications in politics, which served to erased a polling dip putting him significantly ahead nationally.

If you have not figured it out by now, one of the reasons the Obama campaign is miles ahead of Clinton and McCain is that his campaign web site has a Facebook style social networking platform. Not only is the campaign organized more elegantly and effectively than his competitors, you can expect his government will interact with the public on policy and events using a Facebook style social networking platform at a new Whitehouse.com. See: http://mathoda.com/archives/189

In 1988 at the Democratic National convention, the then state treasurer Ann Richards opened her speech saying she was delighted to be there, “because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like.” She was talking about the father, not W. Next, she made a complaint about being only the second [Texas] woman since Barbara Jordan to address the convention, and then delivered a quote well known to women in politics, “But, if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” In focus groups of baby boom and older women, the reaction to this comment is, “You go girl!”

Why did Team Hillary ignore the youth vote to its peril? In this year’s presidential election there are more than 18.5% more 18 to 21 year olds than there were for Bill Clinton’s last election in 1996, back when the World Wide Web was only 5 years old and just a year after AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy began dial-up internet service. Not only is Team Obama speaking to young people, framing his message in terms they understand, and talking to them with all the new technology that they use for communication—there are actually more of them to turn out. Team Hillary, on the other hand neglected them in their modeling. Are they fighting Bill’s last campaign?

Now that we are past Super Tuesday it is obvious that there are numerous micro targets that are affecting the outcome in each locality in the race for the Democratic nomination and some overriding demographic factors. The candidates, Obama and Hillary, are very close on issues, but there are people who see important differences on the war in Iraq, health insurance, immigration reform, entitlements, security concerns and environmental issues. There are policy wonks and average voters moving to one candidate or the other after looking closely for differences. But there is an overriding difference that colors voters listening to the candidates’ image and the candidates’ message that results from when each of four cohorts grew up.

Terry McAuliffe acted to move the primaries earlier to end the process sooner, leaving more time for the Democratic nominee to organize the party faithful to beat the Republican; at the time he though his candidate, Hillary, who was better known, would run as the inevitable candidate and would be likely to win as a result. Unexpectedly for old-technology people, the process seems to have given more voice to the new media users and the candidate who speaks to them. Modeling and targeting voter files including added consumer data, e-mailing and text messaging precinct locations to favorable voters, pumping rally attendance with high-tech communication, interactive web sites pumping field ops and fundraising, YouTube videos, Facebook organizing, talking points to all true believers, PDA canvassing tied to the campaign database, do-it-yourself leaflets controlled centrally, viral campaigning, and most of all web fundraising, which includes going back to small donors after major events, prospecting other elected officials’ e-mail lists after their mega-name endorsements, and small money bundlers working their LinkedIn lists, has changed everything.

The NY Times had a piece today that said Team Clinton spent $3.0 million and Team Obama spent $4.3 million, a total of $7.3 million on television in all the Super Tuesday states in advance of February 5th’s mega primary day. Obama alone spent more money that that on baby-size Iowa television. Despite all the pundit talk about Romney poring in millions of dollars to win Super Tuesday, none of the Republican candidates have spent money on television buys in any February 5th markets. What’s wrong with this picture?

New Must Read: The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House by Garrett M. Graff, Howard Dean’s first webmaster. New technology is changing the globe and it’s also changing American presidential politics. He notes that, “When the Supreme Court settled Bush v Gore in 2001, it was a different world…blogs and podcasts barely existed, cell phones were a novelty, Blackberry’s were barely a year old…and MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube were years away.” Also, “The very technology that has transformed the global economy has transformed the campaign process as well, so that the race will be run as much on the World Wide Web as in union halls and town squares and on television.”

Before the Iowa caucus some candidates aired as much as 21 weeks of television. For February 5 primaries and caucuses we haven’t even seen 21 days. As of the close of business Friday, Obama placed media money for TV next week in Arizona/Tucson, Hartford, Missouri, Tennessee, and San Francisco markets while Clinton place in San Francisco, Fresno, and Utah. Station sales managers in other February 5th markets are waiting for the windfall that their colleges in Iowa and New Hampshire got, but it may be in vain. Where did all that money go?

A major New York daily paper ran one story called “How the pollsters got is so very, very wrong” about how the polls were so off in the New Hampshire primary on the Democratic side and on the next page they ran a story headlined “Prez Mike? Most N.Y.ers say they’d pass.” First off, primaries are notoriously harder to poll, because it is more difficult to determine turnout in primaries than in general elections. And turnout is obviously not a factor in public opinion polling in general. Secondly, polling in this short run period after Iowa ended too soon; they polled large groups of people who, after the polling ended, were still deciding whether or not to vote, were undecided who to vote for, and for some whether to vote in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary—not to mention the incredibly large number of events that occurred after the polling (some calculated, some chaos) that effected the outcome.