Day: October 14, 2010

Polls Could Be Dialing the Wrong Numbers

Buck Banks

We’re all pretty sick of the relentless drumbeat of the MSM over the mid-term meme that the Dems are going to take a shellacking in November, right? How much of the doom and gloom is driven by poll numbers? Oh, I’d say about 90 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus four points.

But what if the polls were wrong? What if, because of the way telephone polls are conducted, they were inherently biased toward more conservative results?

According to Pew Research, there’s a pile of stinking bias behind almost all of the telephone polls, and it’s even higher and stinkier behind the automated polls. The reason is simple — people who only have cell phones tend to be more liberal while people who have land lines tend to be more conservative. Pollsters conduct polls using land lines, and automated polls are strictly land lines; very few polls reach a significant percentage of cell phone users.

Pew conducts its polls using both land lines and cell phones, and has identified bias in other polls it says could be worse than in 2008, when it was first detected:

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Voters Have to Hunt for Charlie Crist’s Name on Florida Ballots

Trish
Ballot
In the words of John Lennon: Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine...

With polls showing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist at about 30 percent in his race for U.S. Senate against Tea Party Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek, the newly independent candidate is already swimming upstream.

I just got my sample ballot, and not only is Crist not listed third, he’s at number nine, ahead only of one other guy and the space to write someone in.

Blame it, along with many of his other campaign woes, on Charlie’s decision to go no party affiliation (NPA) rather than face Rubio in a Republican primary.

Here’s how ballot order works in Florida.

Florida Statutes, 101.151(2)(b):

The last time ten names were listed for one office on a Florida ballot was in 2000. And you know how that turned out.

“The names of the candidates of the party that received the highest number of votes for Governor in the last election in which a Governor was elected shall be placed first under the heading for each office on the general election ballot, together with an appropriate abbreviation of party name; the names of the candidates of the party that received the second highest vote for Governor shall be second under the heading for each office, together with an appropriate abbreviation of the party name.”

So that explains why Rubio jumped to first and Meek is second, but why is Charlie second from last?

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Verbatim

Buck Banks

I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich. While I was eating it, they come running and they say, ‘Paladino became gay!’ I said, ‘What?’ And then they showed me the statement. I almost choked on the kosher salami.

— Rabbi Yehuda Levin, quoted by the New York Times, when told New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (R) apologized for his attack on gays.

AK Sen: Why Is the National Media Ignoring Scandal Roiling Tea Bagger Joe Miller’s Campaign?

Jon Ponder

The campaign for the Alaska U.S. Senate seat has taken a dramatic turn in the past days. Joe Miller, the candidate chosen by Sarah Palin to take out her enemy, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has been accused of ethical violations that may have led to his forced resignation as a part-time local government lawyer last fall.

He has also been accused of using other people’s computers without their permission to vote for himself by proxy when he ran (unsuccessfully) for chairman of the Alaska Republican Party in 2008. A job he sought, he said, in order to weed out corruption in the party.

Miller, a rookie in major league politics, has reacted to the controversy by stonewalling the media, a move that has had the predictable effect of bringing the local media’s interest in the story to a rolling boil.

Alaska Dispatch, which took an early lead in the investigation, recently sued Miller’s former employer, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, in an attempt to discover whether Miller was forced to resign or was fired outright. Over the weekend, the Dispatch framed its pursuit of information this way:

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OH-08: Speaker Wanna-Be Boehner Donated $5,000 to Infamous Nazi Drag Dressing Republican Candidate Rich Iott

Jon Ponder

$5,000

Amount boozing, schmoozing Speaker Wanna-Be John Boehner donated to the campaign of Nazi-in-drag GOP-tea bagger candidate Rich Iott, who is running against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th District. Boehner is the only politician who has donated money to Iott, however Iott has received donations from National Tank Truck Carriers, the National Federation of Independent Business, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List and the Council of Insurance Agents and Broker. Update Oct. 25: A new report shows that Boehner gave an additional $2,000 to Iott in October.

Beck: If You’re Parading Around in a Nazi with Your Son, It ‘Might Be Fun’

Jon Ponder

If you were doing this with your son, I could see how this might be fun. If you happen to have a Nazi uniform in your closet and you’re wearing it and you’re like, yes, i’m wearing my Nazi uniform around, you might question someone. But if you are part of an reenactment group and you are war gaming, I could see that as, again, not something I necessarily would participate in, but nothing wrong with it.

– GOP-Fox’s Mormon televangelist Glenn Beck.

House GOPTers Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Sessions, Bachmann Voted with Pelosi over 50% of the Time

Jon Ponder
Top GOP Pelosi Votes
Leader Boehner 52%
Whip Cantor 57%
Chairman Sessions 57%
Chairman Pence 52%
Michele Bachmann 58%

The House Republicans’ “Party of No” strategy to obstruct legislation and drive up negatives for the Democratic leadership and the president certainly appears to have been successful. Every pollster out there is predicting that the GOP’s lazy, boozing, schmoozing leader, John Boehner, is set to become Speaker of the House in January.

On every issue that made news, the top GOPTers have hurtled themselves in front of any available camera to bellow, “NO, no, no and HELL no!” But, according to a new metric compiled by the Democrats, when it came time to register their vote, some of the most vociferous Republicans voted with the House Democratic leadership more than half of the time:

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