I Can't Get Enough Of This Stuff

Yes, this vid is like a lot of others but it showcases some facets previously ignored.

 Maddow states with utter glee that Trump had but one newspaper endorsement (the number would later swell to two I believe).

Maddow's attitude towards what could be seen as a stacked deck or rigged system or worse yet, a testimonial to the irrelevancy of newspapers shows an arrogance incapable of shame.

More nuggets: Maddow recites NYT, Nate Silver, et al, and their wondrous gifts of prophecy. Trump's 3% chance of winning. It's fun to go back and think how the ruling class's propagandists tried ever so hard to discourage us.

 This is a gem.

Not A Scientific Poll But...Hillary In Fourth Place!

ABC LIVE POLL HAS TRUMP AT 70%

The Post That Became The Alcatraz Around My Neck

Channelling Mayor Thomas Menino today. You know him. He's a bit conspicuous with that Alcatraz around his neck. Sad but true, this figure of speech will follow His Honor's memory longer than his lifetime of public service to do City of Boston.

I tried once more to post something written and submitted to websites in 2007. Charts and tables on Blogger make this exercise an Alcatraz...let's just say it is time consuming.

First, I will take partial credit for the update from the 2007 version. Here goes.

I trust exactly two pollsters: Zogby and Rasmussen. Of the two, Rasmussen is more accurate and I have to question Zogby's integrity. As far as I know, Zogby has never doctored numbers but there was the Zeigler incident.

Shortly after the 2008 election, Filmmaker John Ziegler released "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." One of the premises of Ziegler's video is that the low-information voter carried the day for Obama. Yes, they were well-informed about which candidate had a daughter who had delivered a baby out of wedlock. But 57% of Obama voters were unaware that the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress on election day. To confirm what everyone knew--that Obama's supporters were ignorant of basic facts--Ziegler hired Zogby to poll McCain and Obama supporters. http://obotomy.blogspot.com/2012/02/retro-thursday-infamous-zobgy-poll.html

Zogby suffered blowback from the Dems. He was threatened with a party boycott if he worked with Ziegler again. So just how much credibility does Zogby have?

Rasmussen's polls have me wondering if someone has dirty pictures of Scott. "Right Track" suddenly jumps fifty per cent and suddenly the consistent 3:2 repeal health vanishes. More than convention bounce if you ask me. So even my two favorite pollsters are viewed with a lens of suspicion. But they are still far and away better than the field.

I might actually finish this post but in the meantime, I refer you to two sites. The first is nolanchart.com, a website that cannot recognize parentheses and apostrophes. http://www.nolanchart.com/article667-the-bad-science-of-scientific-polling.html

Because the presentation is so awful with all of those silly special characters floating around, I submit a second site for the primary data. http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04dem.htm

If you are not put off by special characters or jumping from site to site, please connect the dots. In any event, I will summarize the results. In the 2004 Democratic Primaries, the pollsters were not even close. One poll had John Kerry collecting 7% of the vote three weeks before the New Hampshire Primary. This survey was not atypical by any means.

Point is, polls can be discouraging. They can even be demoralizing. They can also be used to procure donations for a floundering candidate. But the science of polling has a long way to go.

Is there a Jeremiah in the house?  Not now, there isn't.

Proactive Spin: Why The Obamamedia Inflate Their Leader's Poll Numbers

Obama might get re-elected but that's not the way things are trending. The tea leaves look bad for the O'Man and the media realize it. There has been chatter on the leftist blogs advocating throwing the president under the Greyhound. Blame his defeat on Obama's ineptitude and spare his collectivist worldview. In other words, he had great ideas but he was too (what is the NPR word for stupid ally?) inexperienced/unpolished/ blah blah blah to make it work.

That is one spin. Another spin is in the works. Throughout primary season Romney could only spend a fraction of what Obama was spending. That changes post-convention. Get ready for wall to wall Mitt.

And should Mitt win? "Obama was in the lead until the Citizens United decision blossomed in the real world. Romney bought the election."

The advantage of padding Obama's numbers in June or July is that one cannot be disproven. A perfect media crime.

If the race card flops in focus groups (and it will) it will be replaced by a new meme: Romney bought the election.

Polling Redux

A good friend of mine, Hank Pyro, wrote an article on opinion polls at his now defunct website. It got some attention and nolanchart asked Hank to repost it on their site. We tried to post it here but the charts and graphs don't post right and it takes too long to troubleshoot. We are linking to nolanchart.com with a few disclaimers. Nolanchart cannot handle special characters (quotation marks and apostrophes.) It is a distraction but you can get the gist of it.

http://www.nolanchart.com/article667.html

The article was written prior to Hank's discovering Scott Rasmussen. Prior to Rasmussen, all public consumption polls were bullshit. Post Rasmussen, all public consumption polls not named Rasmussen are bullshit. Odd, but polls frequently favor the candidate endorsed by the pollsters. Case in point, "The Boston Globe" had Scott Brown trailing Martha Coakley (whom they endorsed) by 15 points about two weeks before their election.

Which brings us to the state of the art of political polling. I believe the pollsters are underselling the demise of the Democrats. Rasmussen is great but not all of his polling is for public consumption. He gives freebie snapshots. I cannot justify paying for his expertise.

Larry Sabato is a rival/chum/friend of Rasmussen. I thought Rasmussen had linked or posted some of Sabato's numbers but now I can't find those links. But here are Sabato's predictions:

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/category/2010-senate/

Sabato has the Indiana Senate race in a toss-up. Rasmussen has the Dem trailing three Republican candidates, two by double digits and one of those by eighteen points. From my correspondents in the Hoosier State I get the distinct impression that the Democrat is in big trouble.

Sabato has the GOP picking up 7 Senate seats and 27 House seats. Usual disclaimer, if the race was held today. But I think the Dems are in worse shape than that, especially in the House. In the coming weeks we will point out some Democratic soft spots that have not been acknowledged.

Not All Rasmussen But...

DailyKos has Obama's Arkansas unfavorable rating at 55 while Rasmussen has it at 61. Funny how those things happen, isn't it?

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/10/latest-round-up-of-obama-polls-by-state/?icid=main|search4|dl1|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2010%2F01%2F10%2Flatest-round-up-of-obama-polls-by-state%2F

The King of all Polling

Rasmussen was the most accurate pollster in the 2008 national elections. I like him for a number of reasons, one of which is his accuracy. But to paraphrase Tony Robbins, it's sometimes more about the questions than the answers. For instance a poll that asks if we are doing enough or not enough to combat global warming does not leave room for the answer that we think the whole subject is bunk. Are we on the right track or the wrong track? Have we gained ground or lost ground?

People actually get paid to ask really stupid questions to honest people. Rasmussen is a cut above the dunce cap brigade. He has isolated a group of elitists that he has labled "the political class." These are people who believe in government by experts. They would be considered a top down model of management. They believe that citizens are not particularly bright and need the constant, gentle guidance of enlightened entities. What Plato might have called philosopher bureaucrats. Rasmussen monitors this political demographic.

Here's Rasmussen:

The questions used to calculate the Index are:

-- Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more - the American people or America’s political leaders?

-- Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?

-- Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

In addition to monitoring overlooked demographics, Rasmussen monitors topics like people's belief in man made global warming. Oh, and while we are on the subject, check out the pampered president's approval ratings. They have consistently dropped a point per week since his inauguration.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll