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Tuesday, March 16, 2004
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TAKING ON THE THE NEW YORK TIMES
Granted, I'm not as good at it as, say, Jayson Blair, but I'll give it a shot.
One of the things that pisses me off about the media generally, and the Times in particular, in an election year is running national polls in March. In American presidential elections, national polls are generally worthless. Most foreigners (that is, people like me) tend to forget that Americans don't have national elections. The presidency is determined through 50 state elections. This is how the Electoral College works. Besides, national polling had Bush winning the popular vote the week before the 2000 election. At this point in '92, Bush 41 was comfortably ahead and by June, polling was suggesting that everyone should prepare for the first 100 days of a Perot administration. I think we all remember how that turned out. Oh, how I miss vice-president James Stockdale. He turned out to be like Kid Rock with a hearing aid.
This morning, a Times/CBS poll was released to great hoopla. Since after 3 or 4 days, the Times archives their articles and makes you pay for them and the fact that its virtually impossible for people outside of North America to register to read current articles, I'll copy/paste the good parts and comment here. I'm so accommodating when I'm sick.
George Bush and John Kerry enter the general election at a time of growing concern among Americans that the nation is veering in the wrong direction, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows. Mr. Bush faces unrest over his management of the economy, while the public has doubts about Mr. Kerry's political convictions.
Sounds pretty ominous, huh? Well, it is until you get to the next sentence.
Americans do view Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry as strong leaders who share their moral values and have a clear vision of where they want to take the country, the poll found.
Okay, let me get this straight. Americans believe both candidates have "a clear vision of where they want to take the country?" But didn't you just say that they also didn't like the direction one was taking it and weren't sure what, if anything, the other believes in? I'm confused.
Perhaps most significant for Mr. Bush, the number of Americans who think that the nation is heading in the wrong direction is now 54 percent, as high as it has been in his presidency. The right direction/wrong direction figure is a measure that pollsters view as a highly reliable early indicator of problems for an incumbent.
Uh oh. 54% is a pretty ominous number. Bush 41 won with 55% in '88, an election that is today remembered as a Deliverence -like humiliation for the Democrats. I think they're saying Dubya is doomed.
The Times/CBS News poll offered the latest evidence that the race for president was as tight as has long been predicted. Even after two weeks in which Mr. Bush has run televised advertisements promoting himself and attacking Mr. Kerry, and in which Mr. Kerry has enjoyed the glow of favorable coverage that greeted his near-sweep of Democratic primaries, the two men are effectively tied, with 46 percent of voters saying they supported Mr. Bush and 43 percent backing Mr. Kerry
Oh. I think I get it. 54% of registered voters feel that the sky itself is falling and the guy they ultimately will hold responsible is tied with Kerry? Are people really that stupid?
The candidacy of Ralph Nader looms as a potentially lethal threat to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House: With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry by 46 percent to 38 percent, with Mr. Nader drawing 7 percent of the votes. In a sign of the polarized electorate Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are facing, three-quarters of supporters of each candidate asserted they would not change their mind before the election.
And this is where the polling becomes utter horseshit. Ralph Nader doesn't think that Ralph Nader will get on the ballot in all 50 states. However, this polls methodology assumes that he will. That's flaw #1.
A lot of people have suggested that Nader won't even garner the 3% of the vote he got in 2000 and will be lucky to get 1%. I'm not one of them. I think that Howard Dean's maniacal supporters will hop aboard for Nader before they back Kerry, who they view as almost satanic. How significant this turns out to be depends on what states Nader has ballot access to. But assuming that Nader will be running on all 50 ballots distorts the results. Let's assume that Nader only gets on the ballot in states like New York, California, Vermont, Minnesota, Texas and Wyoming. There Nader can get 10% in each state and it won't make a difference. Bush or Kerry will win all of those states by more than 10%. But if Nader is on in states like Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and West Virginia, he only would have to get 2-3% for Bush to win in the Electoral College with something like 320 Electoral votes.
The nationwide telephone poll of 1,206 adults, including 984 registered voters, was taken from last Wednesday through Sunday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
This is the ultimate flaw in the poll. Polling registered voters is useless. The most accurate polls are of likely voters, not registered ones. Fewer than 50% of registered voters vote at all. And 222 of the respondents aren't even registered! What the fuck is that about?
After a month in which Mr. Bush called for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, he is viewed in sharply ideological terms, with more than 50 percent of voters describing him as conservative, again as high as it has been during his presidency. The finding suggests the risks Mr. Bush faces as he tries to build up his standing with conservative members of his party, and the challenge he faces as he seeks to expand his support.
What this doesn't tell you is how money has already been spent. As I write this, the president has raised some $150 million and spent $55 million, only $16 million of which has been spent on television. The rest has been spent on ground operations, probably including a get-out-the-vote machine in states like Florida that will be daunting to overcome.
The respondents also appear to be confused in ways that are endlessly amusing.
By 59 percent to 35 percent, respondents said they supported a constitutional amendment that would "allow marriage only between a man and a woman." But 56 percent said that they did not view the issue as important enough to merit changing the nation's constitution.
"Change the constitution if necessary but don't necessarily change the constitution." Precisely what the fuck that even means is not followed up on.
"It seems like a waste of time and energy when we should be thinking more about figuring out how we're going to have Social Security," said Ronald Sharp, 44, a Republican and retired mental health care aide from Detroit.
Having Social Security would be nice. So would having a law against bad weather. Guess which is more likely to get through Congress in an election year. Both are about as likely to have the desired effect, too. And there are Republicans in Detroit? Who knew? I've been to Detroit and it didn't look like a particularly Republican place to me.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents said it was unacceptable for candidates to use images from the World Trade Center's destruction in political advertisements. Mr. Bush is running an advertisement that shows the aftermath of the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and has refused to take it off the air in the face of criticism by Mr. Kerry's allies, firefighters and some families of victims.
"They shouldn't exploit what happened to make a political issue," said Nan McNeill, 56, a Republican ranch owner in Tonopah, Ariz. "The fact that it happened is something that no one can deny, but no political party can actually say this is what should have been done or shouldn't have been done, so I don't think that it should be an issue at all."
Huh? Two-thirds think that 9/11 shouldn't be used at all? The way I see it, the murder of 3,000 innocent people is a vaguely important issue. How do you run on National Security without using it? Do you refer to the World Trade Center as "those formerly tall buildings in New York that, for unknown reasons, are no longer there?" How else do you explain Rumsfeld being so fucking cranky all the time?
Mr. Kerry is viewed by Americans as much more likely to succeed at creating jobs and improving the economy than Mr. Bush. He also is viewed as more likely to protect Social Security and hold down the cost of drugs, two areas that could give him an advantage with the elderly voters.
Bill Clinton was viewed as having advantages in these areas, too and won twice. So why are Social Security and drug costs still issues? Hmmmmmmmmm.
And then there's some more yammering which suggests that neither candidate is particularly credible but ultimately really reveals nothing new. The best part is that both campaigns will read this polling and go even more heavily negative in the next few days. This year is going to be very long and very, very ugly. And, ultimately, that's why I love politics.
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