Electability

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I would like to conduct a poll. If the election for President of the United States were held today, would you be more likely to vote for a) a person you've heard of and have neutral or vaguely positive feelings for, or b) someone you are unfamiliar with but who has been repeatedly castigated in the mainstream press as a charlatan who you can't trust?

Well, I think that poll has essentially already been run several times, and the results have been the basis for droves of pundits claiming that Mitt Romney isn't as electable as some of his more famous opponents. Every time I hear these stats I'm slightly alarmed that ANYONE takes any conclusions whatsoever from them. That people believe that such a poll implies anything at all about reality just reassures me that the vast majority of Americans have no clue what limitations polls and statistics have.

Granted, I'm not an expert on polls either. But I do know something about science in general, and I spend a fair amount of my time discussing biostatistics in my training.

The takehome point of most scientific papers I read is that people put WAY too much confidence in the conclusions they are fed from ostensibly "academic" efforts to gather or create information. Don't believe everything you are told! In the case of Romney pitted against a democratic candidate, we need to acknowledge that the overwhelmingly prominent image of Romney most people have at this point is based on the caricatures of the press. And, as I've said before, those caricatures are just plain not accurate.

When people get to know Governor Romney, he earns their confidence and respect. When people start to hear him speak for himself and define his own image in their minds, the whole question of electability will become a curious doubt of the past.