Saturday, October 23, 2004
POLLS = INSANITY
The polls can drive you insane. Today, we find out that the race is tied in Hawaii. All I can say is, HUH?!?!?!?
And here are the four daily tracking polls:
Yesterday
Zogby - Bush: 47 Kerry: 45
Rasmussen - Bush: 49.1 Kerry: 45.9
TIPP - Bush: 47 Kerry: 46
WaPo - Bush: 50 Kerry: 46
Today
Zogby - Bush: 47 Kerry: 45
Rasmussen - Bush: 48 Kerry: 46.7
TIPP - Bush: 48 Kerry: 44
WaPo - Bush: 50 Kerry: 46
I can tell a lot, can’t you?
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Friday, October 22, 2004
BATTLEGROUNDERS
More of my posts at NRO here, here, here, here, and here.
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DAILY BUMPER STICKER
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Thursday, October 21, 2004
ZOGBY AND SOME OTHER THOUGHTS ON POLLS
If you follow this link, you can see a report on a speech that pollster John Zogby gave in Hong Kong about the 2004 election. Assuming the report is accurate, I have to wonder if Zogby will get a lot of things wrong this time around.
In 2002, one pollster got 29% of the state races wrong, more than any other pollster. His name was John Zogby. Zogby is not any good at the state level. And given the weighting he now does for the youth vote, I suspect he is off at the national level--youths are the most notoriously unreliable voting group.
Also in that speech, he dismissed the 4 million evangelicals that didn't show up in 2000 as a myth. I wonder, would Karl Rove base the reelection strategy on something that is a "myth". And how come no other pollsters have noted this? I'm not saying Zogby is necessarily wrong, but it certainly should give rise to skepticism.
Finally, Zogby think Virginia could pull a surprise and vote Kerry. Huh? Even in 1996, when Clinton was mopping up the floor with Bob Dole, Virginia still went for Dole, albeit just barely. Bush is ahead in most polls, to my knowledge there has been no influx of Democrats to Virginia since 2000, so what is Zogby smoking?
A few other odds and ends:
Undecideds generally break 2 to 1 in favor of the challenger. The one exception to that is presidential races. Pat Cadell, Carter's pollster, was on TV a few weeks ago saying that the reason the undecideds broke for Reagan in 1980 was the debate the last week before the election, where Carter looked peevish and Reagan did very well. Cadell thinks Carter could have won if they hadn't debated. Barring any unforeseen mishap by the Bush campaign, there probably won't be anything that will turn undecideds against Bush at the last minute.
Finally, here is something that almost no one is talking about: What if the polls are misunderestimating the amount of support Bush is getting? My thinking here is that the left and much of the media (often indistinguishable these days) has spent so much time demonizing Bush these last few months, respondents may not want to admit to pollsters that they plan on voting for Bush. We know this often happens when one of the candidates in a race is a minority. For fear of seeming racist, respondents will say they are voting for the minority candidate, when they really intend to vote for the caucasion. Is a similar phenomenon happening in the current polling on the presidential race? No way to know for certain until November 2.
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DAILY BUMPER STICKER
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BATTLEGROUNDER
My latest at NRO's blog.
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I-884
Unfortunately, it is not an interstate.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
NRO BATTLEGROUND
National Review Online has a new blog that focuses on battleground states. I’m helping cover Iowa for it and hope to make daily contributions.
My first post from yesterday is here. My second from today is here.
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GUANTANAMO DETAINEES RELEASED—GUESS WHAT THEY’RE UP TO NOW?
Looking at the Washington Post Express from Monday, there is a small Associated Press report on page nine with the headline “7 Freed Detainees Back to Fighting.” All of these detainees singed a pledge to renounce violence and U.S. officials had determined the they no longer posed a threat.
Oops!
The article doesn’t give all the details, but:
-Two of them are believed to have been killed fighting in Afghanistan. I wonder, how many innocent Afghanis and, perhaps, American soldiers did they murder before they were justly snuffed out?
-One was recaptured during a raid of a suspected terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Hope he was just “in training.”
-Another assassinated an Afghan judge leaving a Mosque in Afghanistan. The judge may be fertilizing daffodils, but, hey, we upheld the rights of the detainee!
-One who has been identified by name, Abdullah Mehsud, masterminded the recent kidnapping of two Chinese engineers.
So, I wonder, where are all the lefties who cried out about abuses in Guantanamo, who decried the fact that the detainees were having their rights violated? Where are the Red Cross, Amnesty International and all the other social do-gooders who are more concerned with the rights of war criminals than they are about innocent civilians? That stampede you here is the so-called “civil libertarians” running for a place to hide.
For that matter, why is this such a non-story in the press? If Abu Ghraib was such an important matter, what about the fact that innocents have been murdered by those who were once tucked safely away in Guantanamo? Unfortunately, this story doesn’t fit the American-Soldier-as-thuggish-brutalizing-occupier template among the mainstream (read “left-wing”) media.
One of the few other places you might have come across a story like this is in the current issue of The Weekly Standard. In “The Good Terrorist,” Henrik Bering details the release from Guantanamo of a Danish Islamist, Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane. Lefties in Demark took up his cause early, and in a gesture for Denmark’s contribution to the rebuilding or Iraq, America released him. Recently, Slimane said he regarded the Danish prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, and Danish troops in Iraq as legitimate targets for attack. He now wants to leave Denmark to go fight with the Chechen rebels. Bering notes, “Suddenly it is dawning on the Danes that the detainees at Guantanamo are there for a reason.” No kidding!
For my two-cents, the detainees at Guantanamo should not be released until every nation in the Middle East is a democracy and the extremist Islamic movements have petered out. That may mean that some will die in captivity—so be it. And if the Middle East never fully democratizes? Then let them rot. They have shown that they are killers who are willing to murder U.S. soldiers and innocent civilians. It is too risky to let them go.
Here’s the final kicker: those mentioned above are part of a larger group of 146 released detainees. According to the AP, “Pentagon officials said most have steered clear of Islamic insurgent groups.”
Well, I’ll sleep better at night, won’t you?
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DAILY BUMPER STICKER
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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
DAILY BUMPER STICKER
A new feature, from here to the election.
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BAD OMENS FOR KERRY, I
Ever listened to C-SPAN radio in the morning? If you can get it, it’s worth listening to as they replay both Bush’s and Kerry’s speech from the previous day. As you listen, you’ll notice a substantial difference in the reaction from the crowds. Bush crowds often go borderline nuts after Bush finishes applause lines. The enthusiasm is palpable. Kerry, well, his crowds are more subdued. They’re not lethargic by any means, but they don’t have any where near the excitement displayed by Bush crowds. Is that an indication of whose supporters are more energized and, hence, more likely to go to the polls on November 2? Kerry had better hope not.
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BAD OMENS FOR KERRY, II
I was in North Carolina this weekend covering the Richard Burr campaign. While in Wayne County, a gent by the name of Joe Daugherty, who is on the local board of elections mentioned that in the first two days of early voting, 2,250 people showed up at the polls. In Wayne County, 33% of the registration is Republican. But 49% of those participating in the early voting were Republican. Daugherty too this to mean that the GOP side is more motivated.
Worse for Kerry, 30% of registered voters in Wayne County are African-American. According to Daugherty, only 250 African-Americans had voted, or 11%. Looks like Kerry isn’t getting that all-important black vote fired up.
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Monday, October 18, 2004
SPENT THE WEEKEND IN NORTH CAROLINA
Following the Richard Burr campaign.
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