Obama - Bad Sequel or Bad Remake??

Obama's new low poll numbers have caused some to state that he is now entering...[duh duh DUH!] The Carter Zone!

Glenn Reynolds suggest that in movie terms this is actually the sequel, Attack from Beyond The Carter Zone.

This is a tough call. Is the Obama Administration simply a bad sequel to the Carter Administration? Or is it, as Hollywood is addicted to doing nowadays, just a bad remake of a tired old 70s/80s television show?

I would propose that it is actually worse than either of those. The Obama Administration is actually a much anticipated prequel, where using new and modern special effects (and a lot more money) they can change/ignore the historical backstory, and they can make liberalism really works this time!

Of course we all know how that turned out the last time that was tried....

And like the Star Wars prequels, the unfortunate reality is that the machinations of this Obama 'movie' will be around forever...they will never go away...

More Thoughts on Brown v. Coakley Polls

Somewhere yesterday I read the thought that polls like the PPP poll that showed Scott Brown leading his Democratic opponent by 1-point might motivate Democratic voters to actually come out to the polls, thus negating the enthusiasm of the Brown voters.

This is certainly something to worry about. But if that is possible, then so is the opposite reaction.

It is entirely possible that today's Boston Globe poll showing Coakley up by 15-points, may in fact discourage semi-likely Democratic voters from heading to the polls on January 19th. If those who are luke-warm and not very enthusiastic think that Coakley leads by a country mile has it sewn up (like Dems usually do in MA), then they are going probably less likely to head to the polls, and the Brown enthusiasm could in fact carry the day.

So.....let's have some more of those Globe polls!

UPDATE: Move Along...Nothing to see here!

Boston Globe: Coakley Up Big

The big banner above-the-fold headline in today's Boston Globe:

Senate Poll: Coakley up 15 Points

Its like they were trying to send a message...

Of course this contrasts greatly with the just released PPP poll that showed Scott Brown to be leading by 1-point.

Why the difference? Well the Globe poll is a poll of 554 likely-voters, but was conducted from 2-6 January. The PPP poll was made up of 774 likely-voters, and conducted from 7-9 January. Perhaps the PPP poll is more updated due to the very recent phone-bank ops conducted by the Brown campaign.

What is interesting is the political make-up of the Globe Poll. PPP breaks out its respondents as 44% Dem, 39% IND, and 17% GOP. The Globe is 55% Dem, 15% IND, and 28% GOP.

So the Globe immediately has a heavier disposition towards the Dems. Now perhaps their weighting is better than that of PPP, only time will tell.

But the bottom line is that with widely disparate polls like this, one side is going to be extremely dissapointed on Jan 19th....

UPDATE: Jammie Wearing Fool has some related thoughts and a reminder about PPP's last prediction in NY-23.

UPDATE II: Another item I forgot to add originally....the PPP poll does not address an Independent candidate with coincidental name recognition, Joe Kennedy. He gets 5% in the Globe poll....

UPDATE III: William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection calls the Globe Poll "an outlier", and he has been working the phones at Brown HQ, so he has good feel of the pulse in the race...

Scott Rasmussen, Enemy of the Media State

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

That is the sound you hear nowadays whenever you might mention the name Scott Rasmussen to any thumbsucking lefty politico.

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

Well, if this isn't a good case of the pot calling the kettle....err...well you know.

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC [Republican National Committee].”

Once again...waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! One of my personal political axioms is that if the Lebs are accusing the conservatives of doing something dastardly and untoward, then you can pretty sure that it is something that they are actually doing, and they are just trying to distract from that.

Again, from the left...

It’s not just the data that Rasmussen’s critics object to — they also have a problem with the way the firm frames questions in its automated polls....

[...]

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman believes Rasmussen designs its polling questions to elicit negative responses about Obama and Democrats — a sentiment that is widely shared in the liberal blogosphere.

“I think they write their questions in a way that supports a conservative interpretation of the world,” said Mellman. “In general, they tend to be among the worst polls for Democrats, and they phrase questions in ways that elicit less support for the Democratic point of view.”

Now, does Rasmussen write his questions in a certain way that might be advantageous to one result over another. Perhaps. But the left should not get it's panties in a bunch pretending that this some newly invented idea from the angry right. Methinks they doth protest too much. Slanted questions have been a staple of MSM (i.e. Liberal) polls for a long time now. Or even worse slanted news coverage, which can then drive that opinion data.

Then there is the issue of sampling and screening...

Rasmussen, for his part, explained that his numbers are trending Republican simply because he is screening for only those voters most likely to head to the polls — a pool of respondents, he argues, that just so happens to bend more conservative this election cycle.

Polling all adults — a method used by Gallup, another polling firm that conducts a daily tracking poll of Obama — Rasmussen acknowledged, is “always going to yield a better result for Democrats.”

But critics note that the practice of screening for only those voters regarded as most likely to head to the polls potentially weeds out younger and minority voters — who would be more likely to favor Democrats than Republicans.

Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist, said there was “huge concern right now” that Rasmussen was polling a universe of largely conservative-minded voters.

Now sampling can be handled in a number of ways. If you want to know what President Obama's pure popularity is, then go to People Magazine for a poll that includes everyone and their kids. But if you want to know how President Obama might fare in the next election, then you (the DNC in particular) should only want to pay attention to those opinions of those who will actually go out and vote. This will give you the most realistic look at what might occur.

However in thesetimes, MSM polls are not used to inform reader/viewer on public opinion, but rather shape that reader/viewer's opinion. Create a poll through slanted questions and desired over/undersampling, and you can present the public with the reality that you want them to have.

This is why Rasmussen is so upsetting. He is presenting something that differs from the approved MSM story line.

But then again...maybe. he. isn't.

UPDATE: Similar thoughts at the American Thinker...

Rasmussen also weights his results by party more realistically than most other pollsters, giving the GOP numbers in the upper 20's compared to other pollsters who peg GOP support in the low 20's.

Regardless of how you slice it, the president's numbers are falling dramatically. And complaining about the guy bringing you that bad news won't change the dynamics of the situation.

I believe that this whole liberal line of argument is similar to this:

Hope. Change. Rinse. Repeat.

Line of the day:

Hope. Change. Rinse. Repeat.

From Don Surber's 'Blue States Sour on The Won'

As Don would say in his Daily Scoreboard....Good.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

#tcot #hhrs
I would like to propose a new poll question for Rasmussen, or anyone else who might want to ask it...

"Q - (2008 Voters Only) If the 2008 Presidential Election was held today, who would you vote for? Obama, McCain, Third Party, Not Vote?"

I think it would definitely be interesting to see the results, especially correlated to a preliminary question on who they had actually voted for in 2008. I would like to see how many "Moderates" might cross over from Obama, and how many people would have chosen not to vote at all....knowing what they know now.

King Julian on the Stimulus

I was watching our newly arrived copy of Madagascar 2 (Amazon Prime rocks!), and I saw a wonderful re-enactment of President Obama's op-ed. How, you ask, is that possible? Well, first lets go to today's lecture from the anointed one (i.e. op-ed from the President):

"What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis."

Unfortunately for the President, if we are to believe the latest polls Americans have yet to see "action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives".

The President goes on to list all the liberal paeans about how the "Stimulus" will save life as we know it, prefacing each with "Now is the time to..." He then begins his conclusion with "These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay."

So how does this relate to a cute animated film?

Well towards the end of the film, King Julian (a prancing, preening lemur with delusions of his own grandeur) proposes to thirsty animals at a dried up water hole that they should sacrifice someone into the nearby volcano to appease the 'gods' and get water. (Good video here) This approach reminds me of what President Obama proposes in his op-ed, as he asks us to sacrifice our money to appease the liberal gods and magically get back to prosperity. The best part comes after the animals agree to the plan, and King Julian says, "Hurry up...before we all come to our senses!"



Indeed. In fact that seems to perfectly complement President Obama's statements:

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis. These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. So let's hurry up before we all come to our senses!

Fun with Polls - Round 2

A few days ago I posted about some of the internal absurdities of an Ipsos/AP poll that had Hillary 9 points ahead of McCain.

I also saw a similar CBS poll that I did not have time to comment on.

Fortunately, David Freddoso over at National Review wrote a pretty good take-down of this poll in The Corner today. While I was concentrating on the various small points that I think added up to a skewing of the data, Freddoso focused on the ever important sample.

"This poll was conducted among a random sample of 671 adults nationwide." Very funny! Not likely voters, not even registered voters, but adults. This is the same flaw that was present in the recent ABC poll that showed Hillary 9 points ahead. I do not understand why such polls are even conducted — even if it is cheaper, it is still a waste of money.....There is no point in criticizing a poll for its results, but methodology is fair game. Even the use of "registered voters" instead of "likely voters" is highly suspect and tends to produce bad results.

This is of course the common sense analysis, that most in the media never seem to do.

I hope that Freddoso and others will make this poll analysis a regular feature of their election coverage. I will try my best, but soon my happy ass will be in a war zone, and my attention span will not be guaranteed.

Fun with Polls - Round 1

Rich Lowry posted the results of an Ipsos/AP poll that says that in a face-off between Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Hillary would beat McCain by 9 points (50-41).

Now, I hate most political polls since they are accepted at face value, with no concern for what the internal demographic makeup of those polled might be. Overweight the poll with Democrats and you can skew the results one way, overweight it with Republicans (Yeah, right!) and you can skew the results another.

So, does Hillary *really* lead McCain by 9 points? Maybe. But I would argue that the internal demographics of this poll skew it to her advantage a little too much to really believe those numbers. Ipsos' demographics are somewhat vague, but there is enough info to make some interesting observations. They also don't break out results for "Registered Voters", let alone "Likely Voters".

(2004 demographics were obtained here)

1) First, the make up of the poll is 45.7% Dem/Lean Dem, 34.5% GOP/Lean GOP, and 19.8% Unknown (Independent?) Now we may have had a greater amount of Democratic voters participating in the primaries, but that is mainly due to the fact that they still have an ongoing contest. In an actual cross-section of actual "likely voters" in this country, there is no way that Dems outnumber GOP voters by 11%. Maybe a few, but not 11. In the 2004 election, which was "extremely important" for the Dems to win, the breakout was 37%-37%. Hence the first portion of the poll skew.

2) It appears to me that they slightly overweight younger voters. In 2004 ages 18-24 was 8%, 25-29 was 9%. For this Ipsos poll, ages 18-35 made up 30% of those polled. While they don't line up exactly, that still seems like a bit of a disparity to me. Thus skewing the poll with a bloc of voters that breaks for Dems.

3) This poll has an unemployment rate of 17%. Holy stagflation, Batman! Thats a lot of unemployed voters. Gee, I wonder if they are going to break for the Dems?? For a bit of context, in 2004, those with incomes below $15k (which by my math would include $0, or unemployed) was only 8% of all voters. More skewed....

4) In terms of education those polled that have a HS degree or less make up 52% of the voters. Now there are no 2004 numbers from my source to compare this to, but methinks that this is out of sorts. The last US census shows that only 46% of those over 18 have a HS degree or less. A small disparity. Additionally, I would suspect that those who have not finished HS might be less inclined to vote, but those that do would break for the Dems. A little bit more skewed....

5) The racial demographics also seem a little skewed. Those identified as 'White' make up 74% versus 77% in 2004. Meanwhile those identified as 'Hispanic' make up 13%, whereas they only were 8% of the 2004 electorate. While the Hispanic demographic is growing, 5% in leass than 4 years?? Whites historically break for the GOP, while Hispanics break for the Dems. Even more skewing.

Now, none of these items are egregious enough that they would call the poll into question, but a pinch here, and a pull there, and you can make the numbers dance in a particular direction. That is why I never trust these types pf polls, because more often than not, their internal demographics do not reflect reality when it comes to 'Likely Voters'. So, if you oversample those demographics that break for the Dems, then you produce a poll that will be skewed towards the Dems.

Ultimately a poll like this is fairly irrelevant anyhow. National polls mean nothing. A Presidential election is not national election. It is lots of many state elections to select someone to lead the confederacy (oops, bad word) of those states. Bring me 50+ good state polls, tally up Electoral Votes, and project a winner, then I'll buy it.

But Don't bring me Hillary 50 - McCain 41%. It tells absolutely everybody, absolutely squat!